A Triumph of Surgery Class 10: Chapter 1 of Footprints Without Feet

This chapter — A Triumph of Surgery, the opening story of the NCERT Class 10 English reader Footprints Without Feet — is a seven-page tale by James Herriot. The official PDF is right below; the rest of this page explains the story, its characters and why the title is ironic.

Download the Official Chapter PDF

The official A Triumph of Surgery Class 10 chapter PDF contains the full seven-page chapter exactly as printed in the NCERT reader — the story, both READ AND FIND OUT question sets, the glossary and the discussion sections — so you can read it on any device or print it for revision.

If you want the whole book rather than one story, the full Footprints Without Feet textbook is hosted on the official ncert.nic.in textbook page for Class 10 English.

A Triumph of Surgery at a Glance: What’s Inside the Chapter

The table on this page gives the chapter’s contents at a glance — its sections, figures, worked examples and exercise questions — so you can see the shape of the file before you open it.

This is a short story rather than a set of problems: James Herriot narrates it through the eyes of a veterinary surgeon, and the book wraps the narrative in questions and discussion prompts.

A READ AND FIND OUT set appears before the story and another halfway through it. The glossary and Think about it follow on page 6, and page 7 closes with Talk about it, a suggested reading list and a Time feature with three lines by Rabindranath Tagore.

The Story of A Triumph of Surgery, Told in Plain Words

This section retells the plot in four short parts, each with the page numbers where it happens, so you can follow along in your own copy. If you have not read the chapter yet, you will still know its whole shape before you start.

1. The vet is shocked by Tricki’s bloat

The narrator, a veterinary surgeon, pulls up his car when he sees his client Mrs Pumphrey walking her small dog Tricki, and he is shocked by the dog’s condition: enormously fat, with bloodshot eyes, a lolling tongue and no energy (NCERT, p. 1).

Mrs Pumphrey explains that she thought Tricki had malnutrition and has been giving him ‘little extras’ between meals — malt, cod-liver oil and Horlicks at night — and she cannot bear to refuse him cream cakes and chocolates.

The vet tells her plainly to cut the food and give more exercise, and to harden her heart and keep Tricki on a strict diet. She promises to try, but the narrator worries as he watches Tricki totter along in his little tweed coat, with a whole wardrobe of such coats at home.

Within days the expected call comes: Tricki refuses even his favourite dishes, has bouts of vomiting, lies panting on the rug, and Mrs Pumphrey is distraught (p. 2).

2. The collapse and the plan to hospitalise

The narrator has already decided on the only remedy: get Tricki out of the house for a fortnight and keep him under observation. Mrs Pumphrey nearly faints at the idea, sure the dog will pine away without her, but the vet takes a firm line and carries Tricki out wrapped in a blanket (p. 2).

The whole household bursts into activity: maids bring a day bed, a night bed, cushions, toys, rubber rings and three feeding bowls, and Mrs Pumphrey throws an armful of little coats through the car window.

On the road, the narrator looks at the pathetic little animal gasping on the seat beside him and tells the dog he thinks he knows a cure (p. 2).

3. The cure: hunger, water and the pack

At the surgery, the other dogs sniff Tricki and decide he is uninteresting. The narrator beds him in a warm loose box next to the dogs and for two days gives him no food, only plenty of water.

At the end of the second day Tricki begins to take interest in his surroundings, and on the third he whimpers at the sound of the dogs in the yard (p. 3).

That day he trots out, is rolled over and inspected by Joe the greyhound and the pack, and follows them around the garden. At feeding time he licks inside the empty bowls; the next day an extra bowl is put out and he jostles his way to it.

From then on his progress is rapid: he runs with the dogs, joins their friendly scrimmages, fights for his share at meals and hunts rats in the old hen-house at night. The narrator stresses that Tricki receives no medicinal treatment of any kind (p. 3).

Meanwhile, Mrs Pumphrey rings a dozen times a day for bulletins. The narrator dodges her questions about cushions and coats and tells her only that Tricki is out of danger and recovering; the word he chooses for this is ‘convalescing’, and it sets her off. She begins sending fresh eggs to build Tricki’s strength, then wine, then brandy.

The narrator’s household enjoys two eggs each at breakfast, wine at lunch and the brandy by the fire — and it becomes a real temptation to keep Tricki on as a permanent guest. But after a fortnight the narrator phones to say the dog has recovered and can be collected (p. 4).

4. The return and the ‘triumph’

Mrs Pumphrey arrives in a gleaming black car; she is trembling and asks for the truth. The narrator fetches Tricki from the garden, where he is running with the pack, a lithe, hard-muscled little dog stretching out in great bounds. Tricki leaps out of his arms and into Mrs Pumphrey’s lap (p. 5).

As the car moves off, she leans out with tears in her eyes and cries that she cannot thank him enough — ‘this is a triumph of surgery!’ Every bed, toy, cushion, coat and bowl the household sent is carried back to the car: none of them had ever been used (p. 5).

How Tricki was cured, day by day

Follow the treatment as the narrator gives it: the first two days are the hard part, and the end of the fortnight is the payoff.

Key Ideas in the Story: Why the Title Is Ironic

The title is the most misread thing in this chapter, so this section sets out the ideas you need to explain it correctly. What Mrs Pumphrey calls a triumph is the opposite of what the word seems to promise.

1. The irony of the title. The story performs no operation at all. Tricki recovers through ordinary care — diet, exercise and the company of other dogs — and the narrator never reaches for a scalpel or a medicine bottle (NCERT, pp. 3–5). Mrs Pumphrey’s cry of ‘a triumph of surgery’ is therefore a grateful misjudgment: the real triumph belongs to common sense. The glossary even defines ‘surgery’ as the place where a doctor treats patients, not the act of operating (p. 6), which sharpens the joke.
2. Overindulgence is the harm. Mrs Pumphrey’s love expresses itself as food. Her ‘little extras’ — malt, cod-liver oil, Horlicks, cream cakes and chocolates — are exactly what makes Tricki ill, and her inability to refuse him sweets undoes the strict diet the vet prescribes (p. 1).
3. The cure is natural living. The narrator’s treatment is to remove food for two days, give plenty of water, and then hand Tricki back to hunger, exercise and the pack (pp. 3–5). No medicine, no operation — just the conditions a dog is built for.
4. The narrator’s tact. He never lectures Mrs Pumphrey. He lets her believe what she needs to believe and chooses the word ‘convalescing’ deliberately to keep her calm and out of the way (p. 4).

Three Word Pictures of Tricki in the Story

This story chapter has no numbered figures or diagrams to study. The pictures that carry its argument are verbal — three memorable comparisons the narrator draws — so these are the images to learn.

Read the three in order and they tell the whole story: bloat, collapse, transformation. The first picture is comic and alarming, the second is pitiful, and the third is triumphant — which is why Mrs Pumphrey’s cry at the end carries such weight.

Glossary of A Triumph of Surgery: Words in Context

In a story answer, using the right word in the right place shows you have understood the text. These ten glossary words from page 6 are explained below with the meaning each carries inside the story, so you can use them correctly in any answer.

Common Mistakes Students Make in A Triumph of Surgery

These are the claims students write about this story that the text does not support. Each row names the mistake, the rule the story actually follows, and a quick way to check yourself against the book.

Answering the Key Question: Why Mrs Pumphrey Calls It a Triumph of Surgery

This section maps the textbook’s own READ AND FIND OUT questions to the parts of the story that answer them, then builds a step-by-step answer to the central question, so you revise exactly what the book asks about.

The first READ AND FIND OUT set (p. 1) asks three questions.

• Why is Mrs Pumphrey worried about Tricki? Because he has become listless, with no energy; she believes he is suffering from malnutrition (p. 1). The real problem — that he is dangerously overweight — is hidden until the vet examines him.
• What does she do to help him? Is she wise in this? She adds ‘little extras’ — malt, cod-liver oil and Horlicks — and keeps the sweets coming. She is not wise: the vet’s warning shows these extras are the cause of the illness, not its cure (p. 1).
• Who does ‘I’ refer to in this story? The narrator, Mr Herriot, the veterinary surgeon who treats Tricki (p. 1).

The second READ AND FIND OUT set (p. 3) asks four questions.

• Is the narrator as rich as Tricki’s mistress? No. He is a working vet — the dogs at his surgery sleep in loose boxes (p. 3) — and the daily eggs, wine and brandy are a temptation precisely because he is not wealthy (p. 4).
• How does he treat the dog? With two days of no food and plenty of water, then exercise and the company of the pack; no medicine of any kind (p. 3).
• Why is he tempted to keep Tricki on as a permanent guest? Because of Mrs Pumphrey’s steady supply of eggs, wine and brandy, which his household has come to enjoy (p. 4).
• Why does Mrs Pumphrey think the dog’s recovery is ‘a triumph of surgery’? The model answer below sets this out in four steps.

Model answer, step by step: Use these four steps as the skeleton of a full answer to the central question.

1. What she saw. Tricki was taken away gravely ill — refusing food, vomiting, wrapped in a blanket — and came back two weeks later leaping into her lap (NCERT, pp. 2, 5). From the outside, that looks like a medical miracle.
2. What she did not see. Inside the surgery there was no operation and no medicine: only two days without food, plenty of water, then the company of the other dogs (pp. 3–4).
3. The real cure. The narrator removes the cause — overfeeding — and lets hunger, exercise and companionship rebuild Tricki, while his tact, such as choosing the word ‘convalescing’, keeps Mrs Pumphrey from interfering (p. 4).
4. The irony. ‘A triumph of surgery’ is her grateful misreading. The true triumph is the vet’s common sense, and the story leaves the real cure invisible to her.

The book then hands the discussion to you. Think about it (p. 6) asks whether the narrator is tactful and full of common sense, whether Tricki was happy to go home, and whether the episode reads as real life or fiction.

Talk about it (p. 7) asks whether indulgent people like Mrs Pumphrey can harm others, and what you would have done in the narrator’s place. Textbook contents and the examinable syllabus are not always identical — check the current official syllabus.

A Triumph of Surgery: The Whole Story in Ten Lines

One-minute recall for the night before class: ten lines that carry the whole chapter, in the order the story tells it.

• The narrator is Mr Herriot, a veterinary surgeon, and he is shocked by the look of Tricki in the street.
• Mrs Pumphrey is a rich, doting mistress, and Tricki is her small, pampered dog.
• Tricki never refuses food, and his greed has made him enormously fat (p. 1).
• Her ‘little extras’ — malt, cod-liver oil, Horlicks, cream cakes, chocolates — are the harm, and the vet warns about diet and exercise (p. 1).
• Tricki collapses — no appetite, bouts of vomiting, constant panting — and is hospitalised for a fortnight (p. 2).
• For two days he gets no food, only water; then he joins the pack at the surgery (p. 3).
• The eggs, wine and brandy Mrs Pumphrey sends for him are enjoyed by the staff, not the dog (p. 4).
• Tricki runs, scrimmages and hunts rats, with no medicine of any kind (p. 3).
• After two weeks he is lithe and hard-muscled and leaps into Mrs Pumphrey’s lap (p. 5).
• The unused beds, toys, coats and bowls go back with her, and she cries ‘a triumph of surgery’ — though no surgery ever happened (p. 5).

The chapter closes with the Time feature (p. 7): three lines by Rabindranath Tagore — ‘The butterfly counts not months but moments, and has time enough’ — reminding the reader that how time is lived matters more than how much of it there is.

Related Resources and Suggested Reading

This listing is maintained for the 2026-27 academic session using the NCERT textbook information available to us. NCERT remains the authority for confirming the latest edition.

This section points to the other notes pages on this site and to the four books the textbook itself recommends on page 7, so you can keep going after the story.

For revision across the year, start at the Class 10 hub, and for other Class 10 English chapters head to the Class 10 English notes. The CBSE notes index organises notes by class and subject, and individual chapters such as the Nelson Mandela chapter notes have their own pages.

The textbook’s suggested reading list (p. 7) picks stories of the same kind — animals, their owners and the people who treat them:

• ‘Rikki Tikki Tavi’ by Rudyard Kipling (printed as ‘Rikki Tikki Tawi’ in this edition)
• Dog Stories by James Herriot
• ‘A Zoo in My Luggage’ by Gerald Durrell
• ‘A Tiger Comes to Town’ by R.K. Narayan

Sources: This page describes the current NCERT edition of A Triumph of Surgery from the Class 10 supplementary reader Footprints Without Feet. NCERT decides textbooks, editions and official PDFs; CBSE decides the curriculum and examinations. This page is maintained for the current academic session.

Chapter-wise notes for this subject are not published yet. The unit-wise syllabus on this page is complete and verified against the official CBSE curriculum document.

Reference: NCERT Class 10 English Footprints Without Feet textbook, chapter 1, official edition on ncert.nic.in.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why is the story called A Triumph of Surgery when no operation is performed?

The words are Mrs Pumphrey’s, spoken in gratitude. No operation ever happens: Tricki recovers through two days of no food, plenty of water, and then the company of the other dogs (NCERT, pp. 3–5).

The irony is that the triumph belongs to ordinary care, not surgery — and the glossary shows ‘surgery’ here means the place where the vet works, not an operation (p. 6).

Who is the narrator in A Triumph of Surgery?

The narrator is Mr Herriot, a veterinary surgeon. Every ‘I’ in the story is his: he sees Tricki in the street, treats him at the surgery and tells the whole episode from his own point of view (p. 1).

What was the real cause of Tricki’s illness?

Greed and overfeeding. Tricki never refuses food, and Mrs Pumphrey cannot refuse him what he loves, so her ‘little extras’ become the illness itself. The narrator sees the truth at once: Tricki’s only fault is greed, and he needs less food, not more (p. 1).

How did the narrator cure Tricki without any medicine?

For the first two days he gives Tricki no food, only plenty of water, and keeps him under observation. On the third day Tricki joins the other dogs, starts eating at feeding time, and from then on runs, plays and hunts rats with the pack — the narrator records that Tricki had no medicinal treatment of any kind (p. 3).

Why did Mrs Pumphrey send eggs, wine and brandy to the surgery?

Because the narrator told her Tricki was recovering, and the word he used made her want to build the dog’s strength with gifts (p. 4). She sends two dozen fresh eggs at a time, then bottles of wine and finally brandy — and it is the narrator and his partners who enjoy them, at breakfast, lunch and by the fire.

How did Tricki look when he was finally taken home?

Transformed. Where he was once so bloated he looked like a sausage on four legs, he is now a lithe, hard-muscled animal running with the pack, stretching out in great bounds with his chest almost brushing the ground (p. 5). He leaps into Mrs Pumphrey’s lap — a different dog from the one that gasped on the car seat (p. 2).