Episode 1 – The End and the Beginning

Dave arrives in Creston, and begins to set up his practice in his grandparents’ dilapidated cabin.  His first vet call is to a goat farm, where a buck goat tries to breed him. When he arrives back in town, he makes the acquaintance of Gordon Veitch, realtor, who will become a lifelong friend, and his evil genius.  Gordon invites him to dinner, where they’re interrupted by a call about an injured dog. Gordon comes along to keep Dave safe from the local hot momma, and then helps perform surgery in Dave’s primitive cabin. Gordon decides to make Dave his personal mission, and to find him a clinic in town. Dave is about to return the dog to its owner the next morning, when it escapes. He looks everywhere for the animal, and finally it comes running to him, just ahead of an irate farmer, who’s protecting his chickens. Dave and Gordon return the dog to its owner, then Gordon takes Dave on a tour of his run down “new” office.

Episode 2 – This Takes the Cake

Dave gets an early morning call from Dick Douma with a sick calf. An exam determines that the calf has a twisted bowel, so Dave gets ready to do surgery. He discovers that he’s left his instruments behind in West Creston, and he has to dash back for them.  The ferry takes him across the river, but doesn’t come back for him, leaving Dave to zigzag through a construction site to get back to the calf. He makes it and operates on the calf, which is clinging to life.  Dave leaves the farm and goes to his new office in the run down building, trying to figure out how to make it livable. Gordon finds him and takes him to lunch, pitching the idea of a local lady, Doris Currie, as Dave’s assistant. Dave fobs him off, saying he has to go to the bank to get his loan. The bank visit goes badly, with the bank manager saying he “doesn’t care much for degrees”. Dave stomps out of the bank, breaking the manager’s window on the way. He goes to a farm to see a mangled kitten which has been caught in the workings of a dump truck, and determines that it has to have a leg amputated. He takes the kitten with him, and goes to meet Gordon before meeting this “new” assistant. Doris turns out to be a stellar person, who helps him do the kitten amputation in her kitchen that night.  The next day, Dave and his new assistant Doris go back to Dave Douma’s farm, where they find the calf with the twisted bowel doing miraculously well. Doris starts working on the clinic building, and Dave gets a call about an injured pony in Yahk. Dave goes to look at the pony, and finds out that you can’t use the term “put it to sleep” as a way of smoothing out the truth – the family that owns the horse expects him to cure it. Dave goes back to town to collect Gordon and Doris, in a “hail mary” move to fix the pony’s leg. They get back to the farm to find that the family has called all their friends and neighbours together to watch the miracle working vet. Dave balks at going into the crowd, but finally sets up the procedure for the pony, and fixes its leg. They celebrate with a picnic meal, only to find that the farmer and his wife have a truly filthy kitchen – but only after they finish their lunch.

Episode 3 - Love is in the Air

Dave goes out to a farm on the flats to look at a cow, only to find that there’s nothing wrong with it.  When the husband walks away, the wife makes sure Dave knows that she finds Dave attractive, and her husband and children will be away that night. Back at the clinic, Gordon is proving to be a jack of all trades, and helps redo some of the electrical wiring, while Doris uses Dave’s mother’s old pressure cooker to sterilize the instruments.  Meanwhile, Dave is worried about doing his first dog spay, particularly because the dog is severely overweight, which can cause lots of complications.  The barber next door is giving a very loud music lesson to a rank beginner through paper thin walls as Dave wades through reams of blubber. Doris struggles through the entire event with her legs crossed  while Dave does the spay, and she finally rushes off to the bathroom, undoing her skirt as she’s running into the tiny, dark shared bathroom at the back of the clinic. She sits on the lap of the old Indian that often visits the shop next door, who is already using the facility. Doris returns with a screech, suddenly no longer needing to pee. Twin boys come In with their dog to get a shot, and one brother can’t watch – he goes weak in the knees when he sees shots. His twin thinks its hilarious.  Even though the clinic is just starting to come together, Dave starts having people turn up to have their dogs and cats immunized and examined. He gets a call from a farm with pink eye in calves, and ends up skidding around in the mud while he gets them treated. Back at the clinic, Dave and Doris find out that their next door neighbor spends very little time giving haircuts, but a lot of time giving music lessons – and selling pot. Dave gets another call from the farm on the flats – their cow is sick “again” and the farmer’s wife needs him to come out. He insists that Doris come along, although she is sure that he’s mistaken about the evil intentions of the farmer’s wife. When they arrive after dark, Dave walks out to the barn, only to have the farmer’s wife float out to meet him in a negligee. Doris gets out of the car – the wife sees her, lets out a shriek and runs into the house, slamming the door. Oh – and the cow was fine.  Dave and Doris go for dinner at the China Kitchen restaurant.

Episode 4 - Life and Death

Dave goes out to the Rayfield farm to tube worm the horses – Dave and Isobel Rayfield breed racehorses for the track and are regular customers, and friends of Dave’s.  They invited Dave to come up to Kootenay Lake for a day of boating.   Dave’s father Marsh comes over from Trail to help Dave fix up the clinic. Dave has promised his dad a day off at Kootenay Lake so he takes Marsh along to meet the Rayfields.  As they get ready to leave for the lake, someone arrives with a dog that has ripped its ear. Dave stops to sew up the ear, and then literally has to back out the door to get away from the crowd, taking his father with him.  At the lake, Dave Rayfield tries to get Dave to learn how to water ski, which doesn’t go well.  They land on the far side of the lake and explore the old CPR cabins still there, then go back out for another waterskiing lesson, which almost dislocates Dave’s shoulder while giving him a major enema.  Dave Rayfield cajoles him into getting back into the water – this time Dave falls forward and cuts his eye open. Finally the Rayfields let him back into the boat.  They return to the beach where Dave has to suture his own eyebrow in the car mirror, while Isobel looks on in horror.  As a consequence, Dave has a little more than normal to drink.  After a barbeque and drinks, Dave and his father start back home. A police car passes them, then suddenly stops, turns around and pursues them. Dave and his father are alarmed, trying to figure out how much Dave has had to drink.  The officer stops them and asks if Dave is the vet – the police are looking for him.  An elderly dentist was traveling through Creston with his equally elderly dog when something went drastically wrong with the animal.  The dentist has taken it to the emergency room of the local hospital and is refusing to leave until they treat the dog.  The hospital has asked the police to find Dave, so that he can take care of the dog. When the dentist gets his dog to Dave’s office, it is close to death, with a torsion of the stomach.  Dave realizes that he has to operate on it immediately, so he calls Doris, getting her out of bed. She comes and helps and they manage to save the dog. The elderly dentist appears and tells Dave that the dog is pretty much all that he has left of his family, and he would do anything to save it. By the time the surgery for the dog is finished and it’s in a cage recovering, it’s time to open up the clinic for the day.  The elderly dentist goes to a motel to get some sleep, while Dave and Doris wearily clean up the clinic in preparation for their first clients. The next day, Dave helps the dentist get the dog into the back of the car to travel home.  He gets a call later from the dentist’s regular vet, who wants to ask Dave about the bill that he charged for the surgery and care.  Dave is defensive, thinking that maybe he’s overcharged for the procedure. The other vet says the he wanted to know how Dave could stay in business when he charged so little for the treatment – he would have charged at least three times as much.

Episode 5 – Blood Brothers 

Dave is out painting the front of the clinic – he’s up on the roof, with a long roller on a stick, painting downwards. A young boy rushes down the street with his injured dog, both covered with blood – he introduces himself as Brian, and says that his dog has been hit by a car. He doesn’t know what to do as he has no money, and he knows his mother won’t pay to have the dog looked after. Dave tells him to leave the dog, and Dave will patch it up, and they’ll work out something for payment.  When Brian and his older brother John appear again at the clinic, Dave begins to be aware of the truly horrific living conditions of the two brothers. Children of an alcoholic, indifferent mother with an abusive “stepfather”, the boys have learned to rely on their wits and on each other to stay alive. Dave has to go out to Tsolum Farms to deal with a cow with milk fever, and when he comes back, he has dinner with Gordon and Ruth Veitch, and tells them about the boys.  When the boys come back in to get the dog, they tell them that they have no money, so Dave offers to hire them to help paint the walls of the clinic.  They set to work with a will, and at the end of the day, Dave gives them their wages and the boys leave.  Dave gets a call to do a C-section on a cow and when he gets there, he finds out its out in the middle of nowhere. He has to make trips back and forth from his car, and then he finds himself cutting open the cow in the middle of a field.  When he’s driving back into town, he sees Brian and John starting a fire in the middle of a sidewalk, and putting a can down in the flames. Dave stops and puts out the fire, then asks the boys what they were doing. They say that they were trying to heat up some beans that they’d bought with Dave’s money. He asks why on earth they were doing it out on the sidewalk – they explain that there is no electricity to heat anything up at their apartment as their mother hadn’t paid the bills.  Brian says that his mother doesn’t work and his stepfather has worked as a carpenter but doesn’t have a job. Dave says that he hasn’t eaten either, and asks if they can come to the China Kitchen with him for supper.  Afterwards he drops them at home and goes to the Creston Hotel bar.  He sees their mother and stepfather sitting there drinking. Dave asks the stepfather if he’d like to make some money doing carpentry work at Dave’s office.

Episode 6 – While You Were Out

Dave has a dog that needs an x-ray, so he’s going to take it to Nelson, as he doesn’t have an x-ray machine.  He tells Doris that the boy’s stepfather is coming to help do the carpentry work then he leaves quickly before she can comment.  Dave goes to the other vet’s (Hugh) office in Nelson and ends up helping him with his clinic after they x-ray the dog and set the leg.  Hugh invites Dave back to his house for dinner – it ends up being an all night affair and a hangover the next morning.  Dave comes back to Creston to find his clinic in carnage (flashback – “24 hours earlier” – the boy’s stepfather has destroyed the clinic with a chainsaw. Doris greets Dave with a flashlight in her hand – Gordon walks in with a toolbox, trying to get the electricity up and running again.  Dave asks where the guy got a chainsaw – Doris says that he’d gone to Creston Hardware and charged all the tools up to Dave’s account.  Dave is called out for a cow torsion – he finally gets it fixed, but ends up covered in blood in the process.  When he gets back to the clinic, a little poodle named Gidget goes crazy over him. Her owner is charmed by the dog’s instant liking to Dave.  Doris whispers to Dave that he has blood all over around his ears, which the enthusiastic Gidget is busy licking off.  The boys – John and Brian arrive, and they’re frantic. They don’t know where else to turn, so they’ve come to Dave.  Their mother got drunk and decided to get rid of Brian’s dog – he pushed her and she called the police. Dave has to referee when the police arrive, and then they find out that their mother and stepfather are leaving town – without the boys.

Episode 7 – Man’s Best Friend

Dave takes the boys to breakfast and then drops them off at their foster home in Riverview and we’re introduced to their foster mother, Martha Raybel.  An RCMP officer is called to the end of Kootenay Lake about a dog running loose and going after other dogs. He arrives to find Lug, a wanna be German Shepherd, and he’s told that it’s a stray – someone must have dumped him off.  The officer takes Lug to the local dump and prepares to shoot him. Lug looks at him trustingly and wags his tail. The officer puts down his gun and tells the dog to get into the back of the car. The RCMP officer walks into Dave’s office with the dog tied on a piece of binder twine.  He tells Dave that he was just about to shoot the dog, but he just couldn’t. He offers to pay for the dog’s euthanasia out of his own pocket.  Dave examines the dog and says he looks like he’s been well taken care of until recently, and suggests that maybe he can find a home for him. He puts him in a kennel.  Margaret  Rogers comes to the office to start work as an additional assistant to Doris, so Dave shows her around. The twins come in again – this time their dog has a cut on his paw and the one that passes out is the one that thought it was funny before when his twin was faint at the sight of blood. Cousin Marsh comes in and sits down in the waiting room, then asks Dave for five dollars for a taxi to get home, as he’s been drinking. This becomes the “floating five”. Veronica Hadikan comes in with a dog that she says has suddenly become “gay” – all the male dogs around are trying to breed it. Dave finds out that the dog has an undescended testical which has turned cancerous and is now a huge tumour inside the dog. Dave does surgery to remove it. An elderly German man brings his old dog in – Dave looks at it and says it has to be put down, and does it. The old German starts to cry, then walks away, carrying his dead dog to a waiting taxi. Dave starts to close up shop, when the old German man comes back. In broken English, he tells Dave that he didn’t cry in the war, when there were horrible atrocities. He buried his brother and his best friend in Russia, and endured terrible torture, but he never cried until now, about his old dog dying. He leaves.  Dave turns to close up the clinic for the day and walks past the kennel where Lug is sitting patiently.  He whines as Dave walks by, and Dave stops to look at him, then gets a collar and a leash, and takes Lug out for a walk.

Episode 8 – Guardian Angel

John and Brian stop by the clinic to walk the kennel dogs. Dave has an opportunity to give Lug away, but he turns it down – twice. He’s called out to a farm to give an injection to a cow for milk fever.  The cow drags Dave across the pasture as he gives the injection, getting stronger as the drug takes effect. Dave goes to the local Volkswagen dealership and buys a brand new blue station wagon, which will be delivered soon. Next he goes out to the flats to pregnancy check a herd of beef cows – when the owner and the prospective buyer disagree about which ones should be shipped and which ones should be kept, Dave ends up refereeing a fist fight.  Next he heads for the Maletta’s house – they have an unregistered Arab palamino from the Prince of Wales ranch in Alberta. It’s a slight case of colic, so Dave gives painkillers and they walk the horse, and the owners invite him to supper.  When he gets back to the clinic, Margaret Rogers tells him that she doesn’t really like working with the animals because she can’t hear well, but she’d be happy to stay on and do Dave’s books.  He agrees.  Dave takes Lug out of his kennel and out for a walk, then he gets a call from a Yahk resident – the owner thinks his dog has been poisoned, and the owner drives it to the clinic.  He arrives too late, as the dog has died, but Dave agrees to do a post mortem on it to find out if it was poisoned. When Dave opens it up, he realizes that it actually had cancer of the spleen, and the spleen had ruptured, sending blood everywhere.  He puts the dog’s body into a body bag, and starts cleaning up the clinic floor.  As Dave walks past Lug’s kennel with the body bag, the dog goes crazy, barking and howling. Dave tells him to be quiet as he walks out into the back alley, headed for his truck with the body.  Suddenly someone comes out of the shadows, yelling “Freeze”.   Dave stands there with the dead dog in his arms with a cop holding a gun on him as another police car roars up the alley, and the corporal who brought him Lug jumps out of the car. He yells at the rookie not to shoot, that it’s the vet, and to put his gun away. The rookie is very shaken, and keeps repeating that he almost shot Dave. Dave puts the dog in the truck and goes back inside the clinic.  He opens up Lug’s kennel and brings him out, burying his head in Lug’s neck as Lug tries to lick him.   

Episode 9 – Winter Wonderland

Winter has hit the Creston Valley with a vengeance. Dave has his new blue VW wagon with Lug in the back as he heads up the zigzags to West Creston to see a cow at Fred MacKay’s farm. Bea bustles around and gives him coffee with really thick cream and fresh biscuits. He tells them how thrilled he is to have gotten a new car. Bea asks him what he’s going to do for Xmas. He says he would like to go home. As he’s coming down the switchback, he hits some fresh snow and very slowly slides over the edge of the road into the bush. He says “why my new car.”  Dave is called out to the Shopa farm because one of their cows has aborted.  While he’s there, he talks to Shirley about becoming an additional assistant at the clinic.  She’s interested and she reminds Dave about the c-section he’d done for them last week, and how she loved seeing him take the calf out. He’s back in the clinic working on a dog when he looks up and sees something being pulled behind a car on Canyon Street. He suddenly realizes it’s a dog and runs outside after the car – finally getting it to stop up the street. The man had inadvertently attached his St. Bernard to the back of the truck and he had dragged it for several kilometers behind the vehicle, through the snow. The dog is clinically dead, but Dave manages to resuscitate it.  The weather is getting worse each day, and the pass is closed, which means Dave can’t go home for Christmas. Doris sets a small tree up in the office, but she doesn’t put the top ornament on as she gets busy with something else. Dave phones his parents to say that it looks like he won’t be able to get home. Both his sisters and their families will be there, just Dave will be absent.  He gets a call in the middle of the night to go out to the Davis farm – it’s now 40 below and he almost freezes to death trying to get a calf out of a cow. His scalpel literally is frozen to his fingers, and he has to stick his hand back inside the cow’s body to thaw the scalpel off his hand..  He gets home and tries to warm up, then gets called out to another farm and hour later – this time the cow on the Creston Flats is having twins. When the second calf comes out, the farmer’s wife throws cold water on the calf – and Dave – to get it breathing. By the time he finishes there it’s dawn.  He stops to see Eleanor and her collection of old horses – her old horse O’Bian is down in the field – Dave offers to put him down but Eleanor wants to try to keep him alive. Dave helps her arrange a tarp and blankets over him in the field.  Later that day he is coming home from a calving, and he sees the tarp still in the field – he thinks he’ll stop and see if the horse is dead.  When he gets to the tarp, he finds Eleanor under the tarp, covered in blankets, curled up against the old horse – who looks better.  Dave walks back into the clinic as the sun is coming up. The radio is on, and the announcer says that the pass has now re-opened. Dave picks up the phone and tells his mother that he will be there – with his friend Lug – for Christmas.  He hangs up and puts the star on the tree.

Episode 10 – The Land Baron

Gordon and Dave are working on his grandparent’s cabin in West Creston. Dave says that he likes to come up here to get away from the “big city” of Creston. Gordon tells him that he needs some property of his own, that he can’t live over the vet office all his life. He tells him to “think big”. Dave says he doesn’t have the money, and Gordon says that’s why banks were invented.  Verna brings in a pig with a hernia, and basically pushes rudely past everyone else – she is very abrupt. A dachshund with a broken toenail is brought it – it needs some work. Dave’s cousin Marsh shows up, looking for money, and falls asleep in the waiting room.  Dave gives him the “floating five”.  Gordon comes and picks him up and drives him to Lister to look at fifty acres that are for sale.  Dave falls in love with the land. It has no house, just the bare land and a hay barn.  Dave goes out to Duck Lake to help Tilly’s cow have her calf.  The cow chases him up a tree, even while it’s trying to have the calf. Back at the clinic, Dave wakes up at night and sees the lights of the City Centre Motel flashing. He gets up and takes Lug and drives out to the property that Gordon suggested, and watches as dawn breaks over the fields.  A cat is brought into the clinic for treatment – it gets Doris in the face, bites her nose and claws Shirley’s arm. The cat’s owner is a doctor, and he insists that they go to the hospital for tetanus shots. Dave and Gordon sit down with the owner of the acreage and he tells them how it’s been cut in two pieces – the one with the barns and the house, and the other one which Dave wants to buy.  Verna the pig farmer is at the border crossing.  She tells Bob Tipper that she has to get home fast  because someone is trying to buy the farm that she wants out from under her.  Bob wants to search her truck and tells her she can go when he says she can go. He climbs in the back of her pig truck. She pulls out of the border crossing with Bob still inside. Bob falls into the pig poop in the back of the truck. He screams and yells at her to stop – finally she pulls over and lets him out. He orders her to take him back to the crossing, and she tells him to walk, then gets in her truck and drives away.  Gordon comes in and shakes Dave’s hand and congratulates him – he’s now a land owner.

Episode 11 – Love Thy Neighbour

Dave has been teaching the boys, John and Brian, how to drive by going out to his new property in Lister. They’re now living in a foster home in Riverview, but they do a lot with Dave during their time out of school. He pays them for odd jobs, like today when they’re helping him haul branches over to burn in the fire. John is so proud of his new jean jacket that he’s bought with his earnings. He carefully takes it off and sets it down far away from the fire. When he goes back to get it, he finds a pile of ash – a floating cinder has landed on it during the afternoon and burnt it completely up.  Back at the office, Mrs. Dremeler brings her kitten, “Audrey” in – she’s very elderly, and the kitten has somehow broken its leg and gotten a concussion. Dave says he can fix it for $100.  Mrs. Dremeler burst into tears and says she can’t do it – its too expensive, so she tells him to put the kitten down.  Dave gets the kitten out, ready to give it a lethal injection, and it starts purring.  He pets the kitten for a minute, then starts an IV and leaves the kitten in the cage.  Dave goes to Bea and Fred Mackay’s house for coffee. Fred says that it’s time for him to start slowing down, so he’s going to sell his big tractor, and he’s also going to sell some of his cattle.  Dave buys the tractor, and drives it home from West Creston to Lister – a long drive.  He goes  back to the office and tells Doris that he’s going to do his good deed for the day – he’s going to operate on the kitten and present it to Mrs. Dremeler for free.  He gets the kitten out and fixes the leg.  That night he goes to Ruth and Gordon Veitch’s place for dinner, telling them about his new tractor. When Gordon finds out that Fred plans to sell the cattle, he gets wildly excited – he says that he and Dave are going to set up their own cattle company. Dave goes out to the Rockwell ranch in West Creston to see their bull – the Rockwells were a prominent Colorado family, in fact the father was a Senator. They left everything they owned and moved to Canada to keep their son out of the Vietnam War.  Now they’ve started up a cattle business, but their bull won’t cooperate. Dave examines the bull, and finds out he’s cut his penis on some barbed wire, trying to “breed through a fence” – ouch – and he will be better soon.  Dave and Gordon move their new cattle herd over from Fred’s farm and decide that they should be vaccinated before they’re allowed to run free. Dave has a chute system set up, but the last cow not only takes out the chute, but drags Gordon through the mud and cow manure.  Dave’s new neighbor arrives on the farm next door, which used to be part of the same property as his farm.  It’s Verna, the pig farmer, and she’s furious – he’s “stolen the property” out from under her nose and she vows to drive him away. Dave goes back to the office and phones Mrs. Dremeler to let her know that he’s saved her kitten at no charge. She’s furious – she says that he’s put her in a terrible spot, because she already has a new Audrey – she will send her homemaker to get the “old” Audrey but Dave will never see her again, as both Audreys will be going to see Keith Marling instead from now on.

Episode 12 – All’s Well that Ends Well

Dave arrives at his new property to water his cattle – only to find Verna standing in the middle of his driveway digging a hole. Dave asks her why, and she says that she’s found out that he doesn’t have a water license – since the property used to be one large piece, there was only one water license, and it became hers when she bought the property next door to Dave. The pipe that has been bringing water to Dave’s cattle is coming from her new farm, and her water supply. She’s come to cut off the supply. Dave immediately goes to the stock tank and turns on the tap to fill it up, even as Verna keeps furiously digging. Finally she hits the pipe, and gets her axe, chopping the pipe open so that a geyser of water erupts. Then she gives Dave a nod, turns and walks away as he watches the tap at the stock tank trickle down to nothing.  Dave has to go out to West Creston to see an old milk cow that’s having problems – he makes sure that she still has a magnet in her stomach by checking with a compass, and explains to the owner how it works. Dave comes back into town and finds Gordon, telling him what Verna has done. They visit Len Huscroft who manages the water district, and he confirms that Verna does own the water license for that property, and that Dave doesn’t have one, thus no water. They’re going to have to dig a well, or truck water to the cattle. Dave goes out to West Creston to help Dave Rayfield breed his mare to a stallion – things don’t go well, and all leave exhausted and without any success. Meanwhile Gordon has arranged for a backhoe, and Dave arrives back home to find a very large, dry hole. No water.  Dave goes back to the clinic, where Doris tells him that she’s ordered a new autoclave to sterilize their instruments as his mother’s old pressure cooker “just won’t do” anymore.  He finds Trixie the dachshund is there with the owner’s mentally challenged son. He’s been asked to bring a urine sample but he doesn’t have one, so Dave asks him to take the dog outside with a cup and get one.  The son comes back in a few minutes later with the cup brim full of urine, and the tiny little dog. Dave looks at the cup and realizes where the urine sample came from.  He tells Doris to keep the dachshund in the clinic and get a new sample – from the dog this time.  Dave rushes back to the property to find another dry hole.  His father Marsh has arrived and has been watching the backhoe dig this dry hole.  Gordon says not to worry, he’s going to “witch” for water. He gets two coat hangers and straightens them out, then walks around with them until he finds “two streams that cross”, then grandly points to a new piece of ground.  The backhoe digs, and hits water – lots of it. They install the culvert and gravel, and Dave’s got water again.  Dave comes back to the clinic just in time to see Doris and her daughter Jean, with the daughter’s new Airdale puppy. Doris asks Dave to take a look at it – he finds that it has a double row of eyelashes, which is a congenital defect and can lead to blindness. He advises them to get ahold of the breeder and ask for a refund, or get the breeder to pay for health care for the puppy’s problem.  Wearily he climbs the stairs back to his tiny apartment, only to smell something scorched.  He can’t identify what it is, but notices that the ladies have put a new area rug under his table.  Lug accidentally moves the rug, revealing a large burnt spot in the flooring.  He looks around and finds his mother’s old pressure cooker, now ruined by overheating. Someone left it on too long while they were sterilizing the instruments - thus the need for the new autoclave.

Episode 13 – To Yahk’N Back

Dr. Clark introduces Dave to his summer student from vet college, and attractive young lady named Marcie. He asks if Marcie could work with Dave’s practice sometimes when the provincial office is quiet. Dave is immediately drawn to Marcie and says “yes”.  Dave Lougheed calls, asking Dave to come up Goat Mountain to worm his horses, and look at a yearling with a foot problem. Dave brings Marcie along on the call. When they get to the yearling, they realize that it has a broken bone in its foot. They fix it up and talk about treatment, then Dave Lougheed mentions the Yahk raft race that is coming up soon. He urges them to enter it. Each team has to build their own raft from raw logs, so Dave Lougheed agrees to supply the logs for Dave’s raft and help him move it to Yahk for the event. As they are working on the raft, Cory arrives in town unexpectedly.  He ends up getting involved in the race, along with Doris’ daughter Barb. Now they’re making two rafts instead of one, with two people on each raft.  Dave and Marcie are on one raft, Cory and Barb are on the other.  The day of the race arrives, and everyone gets to the site on the river where the race is to begin.  It continues for ten miles down the river and ends at the U.S. Canada boundary. One man, George Huscroft, says very loudly that women shouldn’t even be allowed to get into the race.  There are a lot of unlikely rafts and participants, and everyone has great misgivings, but they get into the water and they’re away! Partway down, they see Doris, John and Brian waving from the bridge in Yahk, then Doris and the boys race ahead to jump out and encourage them on again and again at each bridge or river bank. There are a lot of adventures on the river as they try to simply stay above the water, unlike many of the participants.  Barb tries to get out at one point and her mother makes her get back on.  As they round a bend at the halfway mark, they see one man, George Huscroft, clinging to a log jam on a corner in fast water, and it’s obvious that he is hypothermic, about to go under. They bring their rafts in against the bank, and Dave races back along the shore, makes his way out onto the log jam, manages to get ahold of George and drag him ashore. They load him on their raft and continue on to the end of the course.  The border guards are waiting there with the rest of the crowd – they have to make sure everybody gets out of the river at that point, or they’re in the U.S. illegally.  Even though they didn’t finish first, they’ve saved someone’s life, and completed the race.  As they celebrate, Dave begins to realize that he finds Marcie really attractive.