It is the middle of winter at the Royal Veterinary College and the exhausted students are just weeks away from their well-earned Christmas break. They will all need to be able to perform simple surgery on day one as qualified vets - and in this episode they find out it is definitely as hard as it looks!

Charlie Tewson is at the Queen Mother Hospital caring for a king charles spaniel with a badly swollen larynx who almost dies after surgery. The team have to use all their skills to save her life.

Jo Hardy is on a farm placement and discovers the life-saving lesson that beef cattle are very difficult - and dangerous - animals to examine and treat.

Judy Puddifoot is working in equine surgery - not easy for a young vet with a horse phobia. But she learns to love horses thanks to one-eyed gentle giant Wallis, who is admitted with a serious bout of sinusitis. Judy must carry out some spectacular surgery on his head to cure him.

Matt Wilkinson has high surgical ambitions and is delighted to scrub in on complex and very delicate heart surgery on a seven-week-old jack russell puppy. Can he prove himself a capable assistant to the hospital's head surgeon, world-renowned Professor Dan Brockman? Show less