- [Christopher] In the heart of glorious North Yorkshire lies the quaint market town of Thirsk.

(melodic music) Here, the world's most famous vet, James Herriot, lived, worked, and wrote his best selling books.

His former surgery and home are now a museum, but his practice lives on nearby.

(phone rings) - Good morning, Skeldale Veterinary Center.

- The practice is the original Herriot practice and that brings with it a certain feeling of responsibility that we're carrying on that Herriot tradition, treating animals of all types and sizes.

- [Christopher] Julian Norton is the Yorkshire vet.

- A-ha!

Coming to work in the morning, we're never quite sure what's gonna happen, and it's a great place to work.

I think it's the best job in the world.

- [Christopher] Julian runs the practice alongside partner and former Herriot trainee Peter Wright.

- There's no better sight anywhere.

I've been doing it for 35 years now and I still never get bored of it.

It's what it's all about really.

- [Christopher] Here, together with Skeldale's dedicated team.

- She's a fast one.

- [Christopher] They treat animals of all shapes.

- Ah you've got it, well done.

- [Christopher] Sizes, types.

- Oh, crikey.

Get off me.

- [Christopher] And temperaments.

(cat hisses) - [Christopher] It's definitely not glamorous.

But it's varied.

- [Julian] That shouldn't be there.

- It isn't every day you get the chance to cuddle an emu, is it?

- [Christopher] It's rarely easy.

(dog whimpers) As the Yorkshire vet carries on the Herriot tradition, treating all creatures great and small.

(dramatic classical music) Dramatic skies blanket the moors, as rains swell the streams and nourish the land on which the wildlife heartily feed.

Sheltering at the Skeldale surgery are animals of all types, keeping Julian and the team busy.

- Hey, steady.

- Sit.

Sit.

Sit.

No.

Don't worry.

- [Christopher] Come rain or shine, the Yorkshire vet's work is never done.

Today Julian's braving the elements to dehorn some young bulls for herdsman Ian Park.

- Get on cow.

Come on.

I get on well with Julian, he's a good vet.

He knows all the ins and outs of the herd, so he tends to take all our work on.

We can't complain.

- [Christopher] But today's weather means the same can't be said for Julian.

- It's not great weather, is it?

At least it's just rain and not snow.

To be honest it's fairly standard for North Yorkshire in November, isn't it?

So what we'll do, we've got, I think, about half a dozen young bulls I think that have got horns on, and the plan is to take them off this morning.

Horns are a nuisance for cattle because they can get caught and knocked and damaged and therefore bleed.

But also they can damage each other by prodding them horns into each other and it tends to make them bully other cattle as well.

So generally speaking, they're better to be taken off.

All right, Ian.

- All right.

You picked the right day, didn't you?

- Yeah.

So we're just gonna put these bulls through one at a time.

And I'm gonna inject, this is local anesthetic.

So this goes into the head near where the nerve is that goes to the horn.

And that'll numb the whole area around the horn base.

Obviously it doesn't hurt when you do it.

So you feel in there, there's a little groove on the side of the head where the... Conveniently for us that's where the nerve goes, so it's quite an easy place to find.

So I always like to put quite a lot of anesthetic in because they're just quite big strong animals and sometimes they do feel it a little bit, don't they?

And they struggle.

So, I like to give a fair dose.

That takes about 10 minutes to work and then we'll walk 'em back again.

- [Christopher] Julian's next job will be to take the horns off by hand.

- There will be blood, yes.

Yeah.

There will be sweat.

And there might be tears, but who knows.

(upbeat music) - [Christopher] Back at Skeldale, Peter has his hands full.

- Dexter's a ferret.

He's been quite a few times before.

He's quite a little handful, bless him.

It's just a little lump on his shoulder here.

You can't hardly see it.

I thought it was a tick but it isn't, so I just wanna get it checked out.

He usually sees Peter 'cause he handles him and he knows him, so he's quite friendly with him.

Usually.

(laughs) - You little beggar.

- Come on.

- Last time you wanted to bite me, didn't you?

- [Christopher] So far today, he's on his best behavior.

- [Claire] He's got a little lump on the side of his shoulder.

Show, Peter.

I thought it was a tick, but then it isn't.

- It's not an abcess.

Sometimes we do get abscesses, subcutaneous abscesses, but this isn't.

It's got a cystic component to it.

Has it come on quite quickly?

- [Claire] Yeah.

- Yeah.

It is partly cystic.

But it's not all cystic.

There may also be a cancerous component to it as well.

I think we might be better getting rid of it.

- [Claire] Yeah, that's what I thought.

- Cutting it off, yeah.

So we better have him in.

- So it looks like we have to come back in, son.

- Right mister, yeah.

- [Christopher] Dexter's not exactly delighted at the prospect.

- [Claire] You didn't hear that, did you?

- [Peter] Yes.

- I heard that, Dex.

All that excitement.

It's milk does that for him unfortunately.

- Yes, yes.

- He loves his milk.

- Doesn't love him though does it?

(laughing) - [Claire] Dexy, that's not nice.

- [Peter] I think he's just telling me what he thinks about me, isn't he?

- Yes.

- Right, I'll see you tomorrow.

Okay?

Bye bye.

I don't think it's looking highly malignant.

You can never be sure.

And I think we'll have a look at it when we get it removed, and if there's any doubt, we'll send it off for histology.

But with a bit of luck, once we've got the thing off, that should be the end of it.

(upbeat music) - [Christopher] Coming up, Julian prepares to take the bull by the horns.

- Look at that.

- [Christopher] And both vets fight to save a working dog's life.

- So we're in a pretty precarious state at this moment in time.

- [Christopher] Wintery rains drench Yorkshire.

Julian is braving the elements on a local farm.

- It's like being on a boat in the middle of the North Sea.

- [Christopher] He is about to dehorn some young bulls for herdsman Ian.

- They just get completely in the way.

Whenever they're trying to feed or put their head through barriers, that sort of thing, they just get in the way, so cattle are far better with the horns taken off.

- [Christopher] They've all been given anesthetic, and Julian's preparing his tools to take the horns off by hand.

- We use this wire for sawing off the horn of these young bulls in a kinda cheese wire effect.

And then when we do that it tends to leave the blood vessels slightly open, so you often get bleeding.

So the point of that is to cauterize the blood vessel so that it doesn't bleed everywhere.

There's different ways.

I mean you can do it with a saw.

So I prefer this.

It's a bit more physical, so you need to be quite strong to do this.

They can't feel anything or they shouldn't feel anything, but they don't really like being pulled around by their horns.

Some cattle, even though they've been completely numbed, just start to object don't they?

This one'll probably object like mad.

I'm not even doing anything yet and it's already... That was easy.

So this is to just stop the bleeding.

You can see there, there's no feeling there, so it's not as if it's a painful procedure, even though they do sometimes object a little bit.

- [Christopher] That's one down, five more to go.

(upbeat music) - [Julian] Keeps you fit this.

- [Christopher] It's a bloody job, but someone's gotta do it.

- You know, people think being a vet, it's like all sort of sunshine and fluffy lambs and things, but it's not always the way.

The best thing is if you go to the supermarket on your way back home for lunch 'cause you go straight to the front of the queue then, 'cause people think there's a mad murderer behind them.

There's a big hole there where my finger is, that goes actually into the bull's head, and they're all full of air actually.

So if you tap on the side or the front of the head, you get this kind of hollow sound.

How long will that take to heal over?

About three weeks.

- Yeah.

- So it's best not for them to go outside when it's raining 'cause his head will fill with water.

I'll get off and get dried up.

- Same here, I think.

- See ya.

Thanks, Ian.

Bye, Amy.

- All right, see you now.

- See you again.

- [Christopher] So it's back to the surgery for a very wet Yorkshire vet.

(upbeat music) - Hello.

- Morning.

We've got Dexter in.

- Hello, Dexter.

- [Christopher] Feisty ferret Dexter's back to have a suspicious lump removed.

Owner Claire's concerned.

- Peter said it's part cyst, so, what the other part is we don't know yet.

So it's a bit worrying.

Hopefully it's nothing serious.

- [Christopher] Nurse Helen Quartermaine will be assisting Peter.

- Bye baby, be a good boy.

- Thank you, I'll look after him for you.

- Thank you.

Bye-bye.

It's gonna be a long day waiting to see what his lump is, but hopefully it'll be good news.

- [Christopher] He'll need a sedative.

Peter and Dexter have history, so he's not taking any chances.

- He doesn't bite badly but he nibbles.

- [Helen] He nibbles.

- He's a nibbler.

That's great, thank you.

All right, are we?

- [Helen] Yeah.

- [Peter] Lovely.

- [Christopher] Once it's kicked in, Peter gets to work.

- You're looking quite sleepy, aren't you my old mate?

Hey?

Right.

- [Christopher] The surgery's busy, and Julian can't resist a nosy.

- Shouldn't be the biggest job in the world, that, should it?

- It's too much for the likes of you.

Skin tumors in ferrets tend to be quite nasty.

Mass cell tumors, not uncommon.

They tend to be cancerous.

Well I'm deliberately giving it a wide margin, so that if there is any local spread, then we can make sure that we've got that as well.

Just have a look at that now and see what we've got.

Yeah, it is very cystic.

Yeah, looking at that I don't think it is particularly malignant.

I think that's quite safe.

But with ferrets, you can't be too careful.

Right, good.

So I think the outlook is good for Dexter, and we'll send him home to put his feet up for 10 days.

Don't want him going back to work yet, do we?

Hurtling down rabbit holes.

Not good for wound healing, is it?

Having said that I don't think Dexter's seen a rabbit hole in his life.

I think he just lives the life of luxury.

- Perhaps he likes trouser legs instead.

- Probably.

- [Christopher] Being a Yorkshire lad, ferrets hold fond memories for Peter.

- As a child, growing up in a village we used to go work ferrets.

They weren't mine, but I used to go with mates that had them.

40-45 years ago, it was the done thing.

But it's not something we see commonly round Thirsk.

So I think the market for wild rabbit is not particularly great.

- [Julian] They make good pets, don't they, though?

- [Peter] Ferrets?

Yeah.

I think they're very interesting characters, aren't they?

Very interesting.

- [Julian] I used to have one when I was little.

- [Peter] Did you?

- [Julian] Called Fangface.

- [Female] Fangface.

(laughing) - Fangface, yeah.

My mum hated it and mysteriously it disappeared one day, and I still to this day think that she had it kidnapped.

Or ferretnapped.

- And that's why you became a vet.

Poor Fangface.

- Good.

- [Christopher] Owner Claire is anxiously waiting.

- I've been shopping but not concentrating much on it 'cause I was just really waiting to pick Dexter up.

Been horrible, waiting.

- [Christopher] It's up to head nurse Sarah Ashbridge to deliver the news.

- Right.

He's doing absolutely fine.

The lump Peter's taken out today, fairly certain it's a cyst.

Which is brilliant news.

We've got some stitches in there that we'll need to take out in 10 days time.

It's really just a case of let him get home and just keep an eye on him.

Is that all right?

- Yeah.

- Splendid.

All right.

Right so I'll just be a minute, I'll just go and get him.

All right?

- I feel relieved that he's back and he's got his lump out.

You're supposed to be sleepy.

There's no chance.

(gentle music) - [Christopher] Working dog Floss has been referred here by another practice.

Owner Kim's troubled.

- I'm not quite sure how she did it but she's eaten a bone, and it's got lodged in her esophagus before her stomach, and she's feeling a bit of discomfort from that and really not very happy.

- [Christopher] For several days, everyone's been hoping that nature would take its course.

- [Julian] All right, Floss.

- [Kim] She's lost quite a bit of weight.

I mean, she was quite chubby before.

- [Julian] And does she eat bones and things?

Not normally.

- Well, she does eat raw chicken bones as part of a raw diet, but this isn't that.

This is something else.

- Oh this is a different bone, right.

- She's gone and scavenged something I think that she shouldn't have had from somewhere.

- [Julian] It doesn't happen very often this but it's always serious because-- - [Kim] Because it's so near the chest.

- Yeah exactly and the main thing is we put an endoscope down and see where it is.

The esophagus is quiet vulnerable.

Depending exactly where it is, what shape it is and how kinda stuck it is, you can pull it out.

Sometimes the better option is actually to push it down into the stomach, but we need to get it out one way or another.

- [Kim] Yes.

- [Julian] Right then Floss, you can come with me.

- Do you need her lead?

It's a little bit worrying.

We'll just have to see, you know, cross our fingers and leave it to the professionals.

- It's in about the least accessible part of the gastrointestinal tract.

I mean, it's a very serious problem to have.

Of all the foreign body incidents that we get, an esophageal foreign body is about the most serious.

I'm hopeful we will be able to get it out, but it's not gonna be easy.

- [Christopher] As it's a complex case, Peter is lending a helping hand.

- It's been there for a week has this bone.

Regurgitating and not really keeping food down, but she looks remarkably bright considering.

Floss.

Time for a sleep.

- [Christopher] Julian checks the bone's location.

- So, here we are.

This is the heart here, and that's the back bone, these are the ribs.

And this is the lung area.

And you can see here there's a long, white, pretty pointy and sharp looking structure going from there to there.

And then it looks like there's another bit up here.

- It does look quite sharp that, doesn't it?

- Can perforate through the esophagus which is fatal really, if that's the case, and coupled with that it's in a really difficult place to get at.

I tell you what, if we try to pull it out it's a long way to go, if we try to push it in, it's a long way to go.

(upbeat music) - [Christopher] Coming up, Skeldale's most colorful characters have a donkey in distress.

- [Peter] It's all right, it's all right.

- And that's hungry Horace.

'Cause he was that hungry when he come you couldn't fill him.

- [Christopher] And Peter and Julian face a difficult decision.

- There's just a big bleeding piece of esophagus right nearby.

- It's either a case of open her up or put her to sleep.

(slow melodic music) - [Christopher] Earlier, working dog Floss came in with a bone wedged in her esophagus.

- [Julian] It doesn't happen very often this, but it's always serious because-- - [Kim] 'Cause it's so near the chest.

- Yeah.

The main thing is we'll put an endoscope down and see where it is.

But we need to get it out one way or another.

So this is the thing that's interesting for the person looking down the scope but boring for everybody else.

- [Peter] We're used to you boring us.

- It's very red down there and very inflamed.

Not surprisingly.

There's a lot of bubbles and blood at this point.

- Shall we just try sucking everything out?

- [Julian] Yeah, yeah yeah.

- With a dog catheter?

- [Nurse] I did get one.

- There's quite a lot of saliva and debris around the foreign body now, so we're just going to remove a bit of that, just try and suck a bit of that out.

- [Julian] Look at that!

Urgh.

- No wonder you can't see anything.

It smells pretty awful, so there's obviously bacteria at work in there.

- [Christopher] As there area's become infected, the bone needs to come out, and fast.

- Have a look at that.

- This end of it looks pretty blunt.

We might be able to grab that now.

- [Christopher] They're going to try and pull it out, and Julian has just the thing.

- What that's for, that's for removing polyps from rectums, actually.

But in this case, we're not using it for taking polyps out, we're hopefully gonna use it to lasso the bone.

So what you'll need to do is open it.

The end of this is right on it now.

Open it up now.

Right if I pull my tube out.

Nothing's coming is it?

We've got it, we've got it.

Right keep hold, like that.

It's just losing its grip.

I think it's just lodged to the side of the esophagus.

- We're just struggling at the moment because this foreign body's been in place for about a week, we think it's got embedded into the gullet wall.

- [Christopher] If they can't remove it, Floss won't survive.

- I'm aiming right at it, but...

Right you're on it, you're right on it.

So if you open your... - [Peter] Grabber.

- [Julian] Yeah.

- There?

- [Julian] Yes, have we got it?

You've got it.

Yeah you're moving the bone.

- [Peter] Am I?

- [Julian] Yeah, so if you pull that back.

- [Peter] No.

- [Julian] Oh, no, I'm wrong.

- [Christopher] It's frustrating for everyone.

- I'm just worried that we've had a few good grabs of it now, and I think it's too firm to come out of the mouth way.

- [Christopher] There is another option, but it's risky.

- Shall we try and push it in?

- I'm not sure.

- I think that's all we can do, yeah.

- Sometimes we've got to advance a foreign body, push the foreign body into the stomach.

Looking at the x-ray, that's risky because it's got a sharp end to it.

We could risk perforating the esophagus, the gullet, if we do that.

- I can feel it.

So we're in a pretty precarious stage at this moment in time.

- So this is just a flexible long plastic tube that will hopefully be able to push the bone down.

We'll do another x-ray to make sure it's moved.

It's further down.

- Just concerned that this esophagus is in such a poor state.

- Well, let's try gently just to see if we can push it a bit further down.

- Yeah.

- There's just a big bleeding piece of esophagus right nearby.

That's where all that's coming from.

- It's so deeply embedded in the wall of the gullet, which is going rotten, we daren't get any more forceful.

I think it's make out mind up time, isn't it?

So it sounds a case of open her up or put her to sleep.

- Well, let's open her up.

- [Christopher] It's emergency surgery for Floss.

(melodic music) In a small community like Thirsk, it's not just the furry faces that become familiar to the staff at Skeldale.

- Hello, beauty.

- We are part of this community, so when you see clients, they aren't just clients, a lot of them, they're friends as well.

(Jeanie whistles) - [Jeanie] Come on, boys.

- [Christopher] Two of Peter's oldest and most colorful friends are retired dairy farmers Jeanie and Steve Green.

- This is me mate, liquorice balls.

Aren't you old liquorice balls?

I'll give you some warm water.

- [Christopher] Like Peter, they've lived and worked here all their lives.

- The farthest we've ever been is Whitby, but I'd rather stay at home.

I'm an home bird and you aint gonna move me.

- We just like traveling around here like.

- Having people like Steve and Jeanie about just really embody what looking after animals is all about.

- [Christopher] They may have given up their dairy herd, but animals are their lives.

- Hello, me old, baby.

- [Peter] They have young calves, which they rear.

They have their dogs, and Jeanie has a house full of cats.

There's Horace the donkey.

- [Christopher] Today, Horace needs a checkup.

Peter's taken the call because he's also got a personal reason for popping over.

- It's not a typical visit because today it's Steve's 87th birthday.

So I feel as if I should take him round a little bit of something just to see what's happening at the Green household.

- [Christopher] And Peter's pushed the boat out.

- How are ya?

Congratulations young, man.

- Oh thanks, Peter.

- What's all this?

- Well, I don't normally, as you know, I'm not normally a balloon fan, but I thought it was such a special event so I couldn't resist.

Are you going out anywhere?

- No I'm doing steak, mash, cauliflower, onion rings with strawberries and ice cream.

- [Peter] Lovely, lovely.

- That's his meal tonight.

- Oh well, that'll turn the cold then, won't it?

- [Christopher] The birthday boy is sorted.

- Thank you very much, Peter.

- [Christopher] So Peter can get back to business.

- Let's go and have a look at this big eared fella out here.

- Hey, walls have ears you know.

That's hungry Horace.

'Cause he was that hungry when he come, you couldn't fill him.

- [Christopher] Horace was rescued by Jean from appalling conditions.

- Had the nerve put him in a field with nout to eat, no drink.

He fetched him down and said, "Did you wanna buy him?"

I said, "Yeah."

He says, "How much?"

He said, "500?"

I says, "I'll give you 200 or I'll call the RSPCA."

And I got him for 200 quid.

And he's been micro chipped, he has his own little passport and everything, so he's ticketyboo.

- [Christopher] Except he seems to have lost his appetite.

- [Jeanie] An old scone for you Horace.

- [Peter] A scone?

- Yeah you call 'em scones and we call 'em scones.

- Is that one of his favorites?

- Yeah.

Come on, Horace!

Horace!

(whistles) Come on, come for a scone lad.

- [Christopher] Peter wants to take a look at him, but he'll have to catch him first.

- He's not daft.

- He's not daft, is he?

Come on.

Come on.

Horace.

Come on.

Come on.

(Peter laughs) Come on.

Come on.

I think he's fit enough, Jean.

- Yeah.

- Is he going to go through?

- He's going to go through to his own pen.

- Right.

- [Steve] It's a big calf as well, Peter.

- [Peter] It is, isn't it?

- Go on Steve, see if you can get him.

- He should go in on his own.

- [Christopher] A helping hand from Steve.

- [Peter] Come on, you're all right.

Come on.

- [Christopher] And Peter finally collars him.

- It's all right, it's all right.

- [Christopher] And after a quick look, it's good news.

- A bit thin, I don't think so.

He's in really good condition.

Perfect condition.

First and foremost I think your husband's on very good form.

I think Horace is on very good form.

Carry on the good work, Mrs. Green.

- I will.

- Jeanie tends to worry about her animals and the slightest thing she is straight on the phone to Skeldale.

And she's concerned that Horace might be a little bit thin.

I think there may have been a bit of a concern that he didn't want to eat his scone.

Pretty sure having had a good look at Horace that there's nothing to worry about there.

I think it's Jean being a worrier, as I am, and I've no concerns about him at all.

Right, anyway, see you soon.

- See you soon, Peter, thanks for coming son.

- [Peter] Nice to see you.

- Yeah, you take care, lad.

- [Christopher] Back at the practice, Floss is being prepared for emergency surgery.

Julian knows it's her last hope.

- We've completely failed to manage to relieve the foreign body by our endoscope method.

It's really well and truly jammed in the esophagus, just behind where the heart is.

So our next plan is to go into the abdomen, into the stomach, and then if you like reach up from the stomach into the bottom part of the esophagus and hopefully grab the bone.

But it won't be very easy.

I'm less hopeful now than I was before, but we have to get it out some way or another.

Yeah.

A-ha.

I can feel it.

It's ever so sharp.

Ever so sharp, yeah.

Not gonna be very easy to get out of that.

I'm gonna grab it with some forceps and then I think we can be manipulating it a bit more sympathetically this way.

- [Christopher] The bone's already caused internal damage.

Julian must be careful.

If the bone's left in, she won't survive.

- You feel a lot happier though when you can actually get your fingers on something rather than operating at the end of a scope, don't you?

- [Christopher] Freeing it is not easy.

- Oh, bollocks.

Even when I've got a good hold, it's just still really...

It's really jammed, yeah.

A-ha.

- Oh my God.

- That... - It were never coming out the front, were it?

- Horrible.

- I would say that's about the hardest foreign body that I've had to take out of a dog, ever.

It's certainly not something that we see every day.

It's once a year or once every two years kinda moment this.

So it's been a major ordeal for poor old Floss today.

So I'm very glad to be putting the last stitch in, that's a great relief.

Good.

Right shall we pop her down?

Had we not taken that bone out when we did, I think it would have been curtains, yeah.

I mean it was so serious.

The bone is here, and look at it, all that funny gray stuff is the lining of the esophagus.

And that was about, I would have said, about 12 hours away from making a hole in the esophagus, and then she would have died horribly.

So she was literally, I would have said, 12 hours away from being dead.

(uplifting music) - [Christopher] But what a difference two days make.

- Right then Floss, how you doing?

There we are.

Out you come, it's home time.

Good girl.

Come on, out we get.

It's hugely satisfying.

I'm really pleased that she's done as well as she has.

And considering what really could have happened, I think Floss is a very lucky dog.

She's just got eyes that are so appreciative.

They're saying, you know, thank you for getting me right.

Hey?

Anyway, it's home time for you now.

- [Christopher] And owner Kim.

- Oh I can't wait to see her.

It sounds like it's all gone really well.

- This way, avoiding all the obstacles.

Looks a bit better than she did on Friday, doesn't she?

- [Kim] She looks a lot happier.

- [Julian] There's a fairly big wound, I'm afraid, under the stomach.

- [Kim] Yeah.

- It's about so big.

So yeah, just steady amounts of food, and then she should be well away from here.

She's been a very lucky dog I think.

- I think she has, yeah.

- Okay.

- Thank you very much.

Thank you.

We're very pleased that she'll carry on 'cause she's only a young dog, and she deserves to have a nice life.

It's great what the vets do, isn't it?

- [Christopher] Still to come, Julian visits Skeldale's most remote farm to see an over amorous ram.

- Whether he's just overdone it or... (laughs) I just don't know.

- [Christopher] And after narrowly cheating death, can Floss get back to work?

It's a wet and misty morning.

Julian's out and about on his rounds.

He's been called to a local farm.

Well, sort of local.

- It's actually the furthest away farm that we go to.

It's right in the middle of the Moors.

It's a long way from civilization.

They usually get cut off in wintertime.

Usually it's a lovely drive to get there, right across the heather moors.

But on a day like today when there's thick fog everywhere, we won't be able to see very much at all.

- Come on, girls.

Come on.

- [Christopher] Farmer Mike Sayer's been breeding sheep up here all his life.

Julian knows him and his flock well.

- [Julian] This chap is a very traditional unit.

It's always nice to go back to see this kind of farming, it's very much the farming from the past I suppose.

- It can be a bit rough.

Yeah.

It can be an experience.

But, you know, it's not a bad place to live at the end of the day.

- [Christopher] Today it seems one of Mike's flock, a prized Bluefaced Leicester tup, has been getting, well, a bit too frisky.

- A tup is another word for a male sheep, otherwise known as a ram.

But round these parts we refer to them as tups.

Not exactly sure what's the problem but he's been out with the yews, serving them.

He's become unwell and can't walk.

If one of his tups isn't working properly, then it means that he obviously doesn't have as many lambs as he should when it comes round to lambing time.

So it's quite important we can get this animal back to good health fairly quickly.

- He seems to be paralyzed on his back end.

- [Julian] Is he in or is he out?

- No he's in here, yeah.

- I was gonna say if he's outside, I don't think we'd find him would we in this fog.

- [Mike] No.

That's the boy in question.

- There he is.

He's a bit of a good specimen, isn't he?

Bluefaced Leicesters are amazing sheep.

They're really critical because they're used to mate with Swaledale yews to make the mule, which are really, I suppose, the cornerstone really, aren't they?

They're a really important part of the sheep industry in this country.

- [Christopher] If they can perform their duties, unlike this poor chap.

- How many yews has he been with then, altogether this time?

- [Mike] He took the 10 Bluefaced Leicesters, the pedigrees, and then he went in with 50 squales.

So on and off, you know, he will have had chance at quite a few.

- [Christopher] So he's been a busy lad.

- That's what he's here for and that's what he does, and he's been pretty good at it so far.

Whether he's just overdone it or... (laughs) I just don't know.

- And was he just down... - He was just down when we found him.

He can lift his front end up, but his back end tends to pop underneath.

- I'm just checking whether there's sensation in the lower part of his legs by squeezing his toes with these quite blunt scissors as they happen to be, but it's good because just gentle pressure there, he's feeling that and he's moving his leg.

So it's good because he's A got sensation to the bottom of this legs, and B, he's got movement in his legs as well which is important.

If that isn't the case, if there's no feeling there at all or if he can't move them, then that suggests a really bad prognosis 'cause there's something wrong with his spine in that case.

But there's good sensation there which is a good start.

- [Christopher] Now Julian needs to see if he can actually stand.

- His legs tend to come forward.

- [Julian] Yeah, I think there's some kind of trapped nerve coming from his pelvis.

He doesn't like that at all, does he?

- [Mike] No.

He does not, no.

- When you press just on this side of his pelvis there, he starts looking agitated and you can see there his skin's quivering and shaking which...

Sorry old, boy.

He says can you stop doing that please 'cause that really hurts.

- [Christopher] Having found the problem, there's a simple solution.

- Right so that's the steroid injection that I'm just giving him, and that works quite quickly, and it's a potent antiinflammatory and it's really good for nerve pain and nerve inflammation.

And that's really the best thing that we can do for him.

And it should work, I'd be fairly confident we'll be able to get him right.

- [Mike] I hope so.

- [Julian] Yeah, exactly yeah.

- [Christopher] But there'll be no funny business for a while.

- I would give him some time off to just recover.

- Oh he won't work anymore this year, no no no.

- The tup's obviously been pretty enthusiastic when he's been out with his female friends, and he's quite badly damaged his back.

He's clearly been doing a very vigorous job out there.

But we've given him some medication and with any luck he'll be back out in the field doing what he does best.

(melodic music) - [Christopher] Further down the moors, Julian's patient Floss is back on top form.

- Good girl.

Floss is doing great.

She's back to full 100% health, running around, doing what she does.

- [Christopher] But today, she's enjoying some downtime.

- This is play to them, whereas if you went down that field, they'd be all getting ready to work.

And it's just getting the right mindset.

Floss!

Floss!

Floss is a lovely little dog, she's beautiful, she's loyal, she's friendly, she's loving, and most of the time she behaves.

Good girl, Floss.

It really didn't look like we were gonna be able to save her, but luckily we did and I'm very very grateful for that.

Floss!

- [Christopher] Next time.

- [Julian] Oh dear.

Right, this is a bad thing.

- [Christopher] Julian's got piglet problems.

- I am pretty pleased with that.

- [Christopher] Peter and Julian get competitive.

- I don't need to say anything.

I'll let my work do the speaking for me.

- [Christopher] And vet Helen saves a struggling puppy.

- The best place to heat a puppy up is actually with body heat.

(bright melodic music)