It's spring in 1938, and a trip back home to Glasgow presents James Herriot with a dilemma that will mean choosing between the people he loves when he is offered a position at his old mentor's forward-thinking practice.
The Herriot parents hope James will accept a position near home offered after he did an interim well, but he returns to Yorkshire. There he challenges, with Tristan's support, Siegfried's blind authority, by refusing to put down the dog of his beloved Helen's dominant father Richard's brat daughter Jenny, who scared a neighbor farmer's sheep to dangerous stress, proving the canine can be trained instead. James and Mrs Hall also get Siegfreid to let Tristan treat an allegedly easy patient alone: a blind old Mrs Tompkin's only company, a budgie, which alas dies in his hand.
