All Creatures Great and Small

Chapter 11 begins with James facing a tragic situation. An old man’s beloved dog has cancer, and the only thing James can do is put him down to stop his suffering. No words of comfort he can think of feel good enough, and he can’t bear to charge Mr. Dean for putting his dog to sleep. But Mr. Dean still thanks him by giving him a long-saved cigar.

Another skirmish in the endless struggle between brothers Siegfried and Tristan involves Siegfried trying to get Tristan to do some work by putting him in charge of the account books on market day. Everything goes well until Tristan loses the receipt book, so they no longer have a record of who has paid their bills. The farmers who have already paid are furious to get their bills again.

With all the difficulties of farm work, James is pleased to have small animal clients. One is Tricki Woo, a spoiled Pekingese whose owner, Mrs. Pumphrey, imagines Tricki to be nearly a person with strong opinions and even a lonely Dalmatian for a pen pal. James is happy to put up with being Tricki’s “uncle” because Mrs. Pumphrey also spoils him, giving him sherry and sending delightful gifts and hampers. He is so pleased by the Christmas hamper that he writes a letter of thanks to Tricki, but unfortunately makes the mistake of calling him Master Tricki—appropriate for a youth—instead of Mister Tricki—appropriate for an adult.

As a consequence of Tristan losing the receipt book, Siegfried decides to hire a secretary for the practice. He chooses Miss Harbottle, a paragon of efficiency. She is so efficient that Siegfried, who is the most disorganized of them all, feels quite harassed. As a further move toward efficiency, Siegfried decides they should keep hens and pigs and puts Tristan in charge of them. Under Tristan’s unenthusiastic supervision, the hens produce no eggs at all and continually escape to bother the neighbors. Finally, they must get rid of them and, to Siegfried’s indignation, they lay 10 eggs a day as soon as they are in their new home.

The pigs are also a disaster. They grow quickly, but one day when Tristan opens the gate to feed them, they make an escape, bowling him over, fleeing the yard, and invading the marketplace. Tristan eventually recovers nine 9 of 10, but this misadventure spells the end of their attempts at stock-keeping.

Although James is growing confident as a vet, a memory from his school days keeps him humble. Coming back from a lecture focusing on horses and feeling full of knowledge, student-James spies a horse to examine to test his knowledge. When the horse bites down on his shoulder and won’t let go, he learns not to “meddle” with things he’s unprepared for, as the horse’s owner tells him.

An invitation from Tricki Woo to one of Mrs. Pumphrey’s grand parties gives James a taste of the high life. He drinks champagne and glories in the soap Mrs. Pumphrey has, which lathers at barely a touch. But afterward, when he’s in bed, a late-night phone call drags him out to a farm, where he must strip down in the cold, put his hand inside a pig, and deal with soap that lathers like a stone. This single evening is an example of how the life of a vet is one of “endless interest.”

The skirmishes between Siegfried and Miss Harbottle continue. Miss Harbottle complains that Siegfried is always taking money from the cash box for personal reasons and doesn’t finish his entries in the day book, which makes it impossible for her to send the bills in a timely manner. Siegfried gathers his defenses and marshals his complaints—how he wasn’t able to give change one night because there was no cash in the cash box and how he was disappointed that it was already the 10th of the month and the bills had not gone out yet, entirely ignoring the fact that Miss Harbottle had informed him that she could not send the bills out until he finished his day book entries.

When a dog coming out of anesthesia starts making uncanny piercing howls, Siegfried assigns Tristan to watch it. Even with earplugs and plentiful beer, Tristan is still put on edge by the noise. When the dog finally wakes up, Siegfried decides it must stay in Tristan’s room. It paces for the whole evening and Tristan gets no sleep that night.