A Great Dane attacks Herriot

During a post-whelping examination at Harold Denham’s house, a Great Dane bitch attacks James Herriot after interpreting his presence near her nine newborn puppies as a threat. The incident turns an ordinary veterinary visit into a close-quarters struggle: Herriot is bitten on the wrist and thigh, and escapes only by using a chair as a shield. Its danger comes not from a planned confrontation but from a protective animal’s sudden response in a room with almost no space to retreat.

The Examination and Its Turning Point

The visit begins as a check on a bitch that gave birth the day before. Harold reports a dark discharge, although she is eating well; the puppies are feeding at her swollen teats as Herriot takes her temperature. He finds a slight fever and confirms the discharge. He does not think another puppy remains inside, but asks Harold to fetch warm water, soap, and a towel so he can examine her internally and make certain.

When Harold leaves, Herriot waits in a cramped gun room. The room contains no guns: Harold never kills anything, and the glass cases hold old, musty issues of Blackwood’s Magazine and Country Life. A hunting print hangs on the wall. The delay stretches to roughly ten minutes, long enough for Herriot to look around and wonder why Harold has not returned with the requested water. The ordinary pause in the examination becomes the point at which the situation changes: the owner is absent, the mother is with her litter, and Herriot is a stranger left inside the room.

The Bitch’s Warning and Attack

A faint, low growl makes Herriot turn. The bitch is rising from her bed with deliberate slowness, her body rigid and every hair bristling. She fixes him with an unblinking stare. Herriot understands that she thinks he is after her puppies: Harold has gone, and the stranger remains in the room. Her response is not presented as inexplicable aggression but as maternal defence intensified by the circumstances of the examination.

Herriot is standing near the door and inches his left hand towards its handle, trying not to provoke her. When he makes a quick grab for it, she launches herself from the bed and bites his wrist. He strikes her over the head with his right fist to make her release him; she then seizes the inside of his left thigh. The encounter has moved from warning to physical attack in moments, and Herriot has no clear route out while the dog is between him and safety.

A flimsy chair becomes his only effective barrier. When the bitch leaps towards his face, he snatches it up and fends her off. The confined room turns the exchange into a dangerous circuit: he moves around its few yards of space while she stalks him, and he jabs at her with the chair when she springs. The puppies, displaced from their warm source of milk, crawl across the bed and bawl; their noise further spurs the bitch to press her attack. At one point she drives Herriot back against the wall, rising on her hind legs until she is nearly his height, with her jaws close to him.

Escape and Aftermath

The chair begins to fail under the struggle. The bitch has crunched two of its spars, leaving Herriot to reckon with what might happen if the remaining frame gives way. As he works his way back to the door, he makes one final shout, throws what remains of the chair at the dog, and dives into the corridor. He slams the door behind him and leans against it; the panels quiver as the bitch throws herself against the other side.

Only after escaping does Herriot have time to examine his wounds. He sits on the passage floor with his trousers down, looking at the injuries, when Harold finally passes at the far end carrying the basin of steaming water and a towel. The delay that had left Herriot alone with the bitch is explained by Harold’s wandering about his own house; Herriot also considers that he may have been preoccupied with his Four Aways. The requested supplies have arrived, but only after the examination has become an attack and the veterinarian has had to fight his way out.

Back at Skeldale House, Herriot endures remarks about his awkward, straddling gait. The humour falls away when Siegfried examines his leg: the bite is high on the thigh, and Siegfried recognizes how close Herriot came to a much worse outcome. The change from comic aftermath to sober appraisal preserves both sides of the episode. In retrospect, the chair and Herriot’s ungainly escape invite laughter; the wounds and Siegfried’s reaction confirm that the danger was real.

Significance of the Incident

The attack exposes a risk built into ordinary veterinary work: the animal being examined may be calm while circumstances remain stable, yet a change in who is present or where the puppies are can transform the room. Herriot’s task had required him to assess the bitch after whelping and consider whether another puppy remained; once Harold leaves, that clinical purpose cannot protect him from her reading of the scene. Her attention is fixed not on his professional intention but on the stranger beside her litter.

The room’s physical details determine the outcome. Its cramped dimensions leave little space to withdraw, its door becomes Herriot’s objective, and the breakable chair shifts from furniture into improvised protection. Meanwhile, the puppies’ cries reinforce the mother’s attack rather than settle her. The episode thus joins clinical routine to sudden bodily danger: a request for water and a towel leads to an examination interrupted before it can proceed, and escape depends on timing, the door, and a chair that is already breaking apart. Herriot’s survival is followed not by triumph but by the ordinary indignities of returning to the practice wounded—and by Siegfried’s warning that the jokes about savage dogs had nearly become something far more serious.