Will I love The Plague Dogs?

This is one of those books that stayed with me long after I finished the last page. I think the author’s choice to tell the story from the point of view of the two dogs and the other animals they meet is powerful. We get to feel their fear, sadness, mistrust, and hope for a better life. 

This story can pose quite a dilemma for a reader because on one hand, we know that we’d never hurt animals, but we also realize that when we purchase products that are tested on animals, we are the villains in the story.

Richard Adams himself signed my copy of this book when he visited New Zealand long ago. If he hadn’t looked deep into my eyes at the time and promised me it had a happy ending I might never have made it to the end, so harrowing was the story. But I finished it and he was right. The story questions the ethics of human exploitation of animals. To me, Plague Dogs was his greatest work, far more important than Watership Down, and certainly no children’s book. Adams is a true master at presenting the animal's point of view. This… show more.

Richard Adams wrote The Plague Dogs in the 1970s, which plops it into “historical” for me. Set in England, it’s the story of two dogs—Rowf, a mutt, and Snitter, a fox terrier—who escape an animal testing facility. They are believed (incorrectly) to carry the Bubonic Plague and, thus, are the subjects of a frantic and vicious search. I couldn’t help but see the story through the eyes of my childhood friend, Sniffer, a mutt like Rowf, and my mother’s dog, Peter Pup, a rat terrier. The Tod, a red fox who helps the plague dogs escape, reminded me of the… show more.