A young man comes home to his Kazakh village after finishing up his stint in the Soviet Army. All that he finds are his old friends drinking, senselessly carousing, tumbling into one violent brawl after another.

Turan is a young botanist who dreams of creating a greenhouse in his attic. Aware of the potential cost of this endeavor, he decides to earn extra money and accepts a friend's offer to start a "dog business": he will catch pet dogs and return them to their owners for a cash reward.