***SPOILERS*** Heart warming little made for TV movie about a US Army veteran Terry Polesky, Steven Weber,suffering for PTSD syndrome coupled with mortar shell wounds from his service in Afganistan who gives up on life and becomes a homeless member of society, living in a trailer, who finds the one person, man or animal, who really cares about his pitiful plight a scroungy mutt or dog named Duke who makes him feel that life is really worth living. Up until then Terry was a lost soul leaving his family and friends in the dust as well as giving up on life by becoming a more or less bum going through life doing simple handy work, like raking leaves and screwing in light bulbs, whenever he could find it. It was Duke who gave Terry a reason for living by showing him the friendship that he lacked even from his family members, whom he had since deserted, who thought of him as being some kind of odd ball who didn't care if he, as well as them, lived or died.
It's Duke who stayed with Terry after he checked out from life as well as his family who gave Terry a real reason for getting back on his feet and looking after himself as well as Duke. It was when Duke suddenly become ill that Terry decided to have him put to sleep at a local animal shelter only to have him miraculous survive with the kind and professional help from the caring Dr. Angela, Allison Hossack, who paid for Duke's medical expenses out of her own pocket. Terry meanwhile who had checked out on Duke, like he did to his family ten years earlier,thinking that he had passed away and become history. It was Terry's teenage daughter Alice,Sarah (A strange way to spell Smith)Smyth, who he hadn't seen in ten years after reuniting with Duke who tracked down her father to tell him the good news. First that Duke was alive and well and second that her mom and Terry's wife Bethany,Kendall Cross, passed away two years ago from cancer.
It was Duke together with Alice who gave Terry the push that he so badly needed to clean up his act and stop feeling sorry for himself by seeing that there are people as well as animals-like Duke-who really care about him and to pick himself up and make something of himself despite all the ills and sufferings that he went through in life. We see Terry later having shaved off his scrubby and unkempt beard and nicely dressed working as a building contractor contributing to society instead of taking, by leaching off it, from it. But if it wasn't for Duke and Alice as well as Dr. Angela helping him he may have well have ended up either a broken man on skid row or in an early grave.
