NEWBERG, Ore. — In his cramped office inside a horse barn, Dr. Jack Root, owner of Oakhurst Equine Veterinary Services in Newberg, was scratching out a drawing.

His client, Jean Marie Marsh, leaned in, watching the veterinarian sketch a horse’s spine. As he drew, Root described to Marsh how he would perform incisions on her horse for a procedure called “kissing spine surgery,” intended to correct “kissing,” or overlapping, spinal vertebrae.

Root, 68, has performed more than 100 of these surgeries using a technique and surgical tools he invented. Compared to traditional kissing spine surgery, Root’s method is gentler and less expensive.

“He is one of the few vets in the nation that has this down,” said Marsh.

Root is widely considered to be an innovator in his field, and his work has created ripple effects in farming communities across the Northwest. Root is a farmer, expert horseman and accomplished equine veterinarian whose legacy includes inventing new surgical methods, treating lameness, developing famed genetic lines and training the next generation of large-animal veterinarians.

On the morning the Capital Press visited, Root’s schedule was packed: collecting semen from a stallion to ship to Texas; treating a horse with a blocked intestine; checking the health of a day-old foal; and between veterinary tasks, feeding farm animals.

“Ehhh — Monday mornings,” he said.

He shook his head and chuckled.

Outside veterinary work, Root and his wife, Cookie, run a working farm with cattle and pigs on 147 acres in Newberg that they bought in 1996.

“This is both a veterinary practice and a working farm. I love that about it,” said Cookie Root.

Horses, however, are Jack Root’s favorite animal — he has 35 of them. Root even kept two Kentucky Derby winners as studs at Oakhurst: Giacomo, the 2005 winner, and Grindstone, the 1996 winner, who died in March.

Root’s love for horses started when he got his first horse at age 6. By age 9, he knew he wanted to be a vet.

He was captivated by race horses since early childhood and got his first Thoroughbred broodmare while an undergraduate at Oregon State University.

Root studied veterinary medicine at Iowa State University, interned with equine veterinarians around the U.S., then returned to Oregon, where he set up a practice in 1979.

Today, Root’s passion includes training young large-animal veterinarians.

“There are fewer and fewer people doing large-animal practice,” he said.

Root has seven veterinarians on staff at Oakhurst. They help one another and draw from Root’s wealth of knowledge.

One of the biggest challenges rural veterinarians face, Root said, is lack of work-life balance. To combat burnout, Root has his veterinarians take turns with emergency shifts.

Root said he knows that’s not possible for everyone, but he encourages even solo vets in rural regions to connect with other nearby vets and form partnerships, covering each other’s emergency shifts.

Root told the Capital Press that he has a neurological autoimmune disease that almost took his life at one point, but he survived and was able to continue teaching young veterinarians.

“I think God sent me back from the edge of death to make these young people into vets, so that’s what I’m trying to do,” he said.

Hometown: Born in Durango, Colo. Childhood in Farmington, N.M. Moved to Oregon in high school.

Age: 68

Education: Joint B.S. degrees in biology and general science from Oregon State University, 1974. Doctorate of Veterinary Medicine from Iowa State University, 1978. Currently pursuing certification in International Society of Equine Locomotor Pathology (ISELP).

Occupation: Equine veterinarian and owner of Oakhurst Equine Veterinary Services in Newberg, Ore.

Family: Cookie Root, his wife, and four sons