James Herriot and Mr. Sidlow

James Herriot and Mr. Sidlow have a recurring, antagonistic veterinary relationship in which professional judgment meets a farmer’s deep confidence in home remedies and his settled distrust of vets. Their encounters repeatedly leave Herriot responsible for difficult cases after treatment has been delayed, while each poor outcome confirms the Sidlows’ view that veterinary help is of little use. The relationship becomes a comic jinx for Herriot, but its comedy rests on real clinical and ethical pressure: he must recommend what he believes is best for an animal even when the family is unlikely to accept his authority.

A Relationship Already Under Strain

Before Herriot attends the farm, the Sidlow family has built its own account of who can treat sick animals. Mr. Sidlow is regarded at home as an authority, drawing on remedies learned from his long-dead grandfather. He may spend five or six days nursing an animal with such measures as lard and raisins, turpentine, or cutting the end of a tail, and only then call a veterinarian. By that point, Herriot observes, the animal is often gravely ill; when it dies, the outcome reinforces the family’s conclusion that the vets have failed. The family’s distrust is therefore not formed in one consultation. It is a settled interpretation of repeated cases, though the delay before veterinary attendance is part of the pattern that produces those cases.

The farm lies outside the normal area of the Darrowby practice, and Mr. Sidlow has already moved between other veterinary firms. He had first used Angus Grier of Brawton, then Wallace, before turning to Darrowby; by the time Herriot writes, the family has been with the practice for more than a year. The relationship began badly on Siegfried Farnon’s first visit, to a horse already in poor condition. When Mr. Sidlow explained that he had put raw onions into the horse, Siegfried answered with a deliberately pointed comparison about the discomfort this would cause the farmer himself. Herriot describes the exchange as a bad start, but also notes that there were no other available vets left. The Sidlows were, in effect, stuck with the practice even as mutual confidence remained low.

Herriot’s First Visit: Judgment Under Suspicion

Herriot had escaped the Sidlow farm for more than a year. Calls from the family tended to come late, after Mr. Sidlow had spent several days trying his own treatments, and had usually fallen on Siegfried Farnon’s duty nights. Herriot recalls Siegfried returning from these visits in the early hours. When the call finally came to Herriot, it was for what appeared to be a straightforward choking case in a bullock, and it arrived at four in the afternoon rather than at night.

The signs made the case more serious than an ordinary obstruction. Herriot could feel the potato lodged in the animal’s gullet, but also found swelling along the neck and blood-tinged fluid at the mouth. Asked what had been used, Mr. Sidlow said a broom handle and a piece of hose. Herriot concluded that the gullet had been ruptured. He told the farmer that the injury had a poor outlook and that the animal should be slaughtered promptly: even shifting the potato would leave the wound vulnerable to contamination when the bullock tried to eat. He also offered a certificate so the meat could be assessed for the butcher.

The recommendation put Herriot in an exposed position. The family had already seen vets as ineffective, and he expected his advice to sound like another instance of a veterinarian giving up. Mr. Sidlow replied that the bullock was not ready for slaughter. Herriot believed the farmer might wait to see what happened, leaving the animal in distress as hunger and thirst increased. Rather than rely on the family to act immediately, he telephoned the abattoir and arranged for Harry Norman to come within half an hour. The decision was an attempt to carry his clinical judgment through to a practical outcome, not merely to offer advice and leave.

As Herriot departed, Siegfried Farnon’s advice about arranging the car for a quick exit returned to him. The awkward retreat, under the family’s silent disapproval, marks how little trust had been established. Herriot hoped it would be his last visit, but this case instead became the start of a much more frequent association.

A Pattern of Failure and Avoidance

After that first call, Herriot found himself attending the farm whenever the Sidlows summoned the practice and he was on duty. In his account, something went wrong on each occasion. He does not describe every case, but records the cumulative effect: the family came to regard him as the worst veterinarian they had encountered, while Herriot began to treat the very name Sidlow as a jinx. The relationship thus hardened through repetition. Their prior opinion of vets shaped how they received his work; the poor run of outcomes, as he remembers it, then made his standing with them still worse.

The hostility followed him outside the consulting room. If he saw a member of the family in town, he would sometimes slip down an alley to avoid them. On one market day, the entire family passed close by in a large old car. Though their faces were directed ahead, Herriot was convinced that their eyes were fixed on him. He was near the Drovers' Arms and went inside to steady himself with a half-pint of Younger’s Special Heavy. The encounter is comic in its exaggerated sense of being watched, but it also shows that the professional relationship had become a source of personal apprehension: even a chance sighting could revive the expectation of blame.

The Missed Race and the Unresolved Jinx

The most consequential interruption came on a Saturday when Herriot planned to attend the races at Brawton. He had withdrawn five pounds, about half the money he had available, and intended to bet on Kemal before the first race at 2:30. Just as he was about to leave, Mr. Sidlow telephoned about a cow with diarrhoea that needed immediate attention. Herriot initially thought the farm call might still leave him time to reach the course, but the Sidlow summons once again took precedence over his plans.

At the farm, his best suit prompted the family’s familiar sideways glances. Mr. Sidlow described months of recurring illness and a progression from ground eggshells in gruel to blue vitriol and dandelion tea. Herriot recognized the cow’s advanced emaciation and symptoms as strongly indicating Johne’s disease. He took a faeces sample in the hope of confirming the diagnosis and told Mr. Sidlow that the disease was incurable. The visit offered no hopeful turn in the relationship: Herriot left feeling disgraced, with no prospect of changing the family’s view through a successful treatment.

He drove to Brawton and learned that the first race had just finished. Kemal had won at ten to one. Herriot had not placed his intended bet, and he reckoned that the lost opportunity would have brought him fifty pounds. In his rueful accounting, he could forgive Mr. Sidlow for the late calls, the hopeless cases, and the farmer’s conviction that he was an incompetent veterinarian. The lost money was the injury he could not forgive. The episode crystallizes the relationship’s comic form: Mr. Sidlow’s call is not merely another professional demand but the latest turn in a run of misfortune Herriot associates with the farm.

Professional Duty and the Limits of Reconciliation

The contrast between the Sidlows’ delayed calls and Herriot’s obligations gives the relationship a wider professional dimension. Siegfried Farnon’s You Must Attend rule insists that a veterinarian cannot judge urgency solely from an owner’s description: a case may have worsened, and an animal may die. Herriot’s visits to the Sidlow farm put that principle into practice. Even when the family’s remedies have already shaped the case, and even when he expects his advice to be discounted, he attends, assesses the animal, and makes a recommendation.

The evidence does not record a reconciliation between Herriot and Mr. Sidlow. Instead, it shows a relationship maintained by necessity and repeatedly aggravated by mistrust, difficult cases, and Herriot’s growing expectation that matters will go wrong. The resulting humor never wholly erases the stakes. Herriot’s first decisive recommendation concerns a bullock whose condition leaves little prospect of recovery; the later call involves an incurable disease and a lost chance to bet. Between those visits, professional responsibility keeps bringing him back to a farm where his expertise is least likely to earn him confidence.