After fifteen years, Dr. Cyrus Mills returns to rural Vermont to inherit the Bedside Manor for Sick Animals, the failing veterinary practice of his recently deceased and long-estranged father. Cyrus, a veterinary pathologist far more comfortable with cold clinical facts than living, breathing animals (not to mention their quirky, demanding owners), intends to sell the practice and get out of town as fast as he can. Then his first patient - a down-on-her-luck...

In a follow-up to his first two books, Nick Trout turns his lens inward and offers a memoir about the animals he's had all his life.