The Plague Dogs is a novel by English author Richard Adams, first published in 1977 by Allen Lane. The book centres on the friendship of two dogs that escape an animal testing facility and are subsequently pursued by both the government and the media. As in Adams' debut novel, Watership Down (1972), the animal characters in The Plague Dogs are anthropomorphised.
The Plague Dogs features location maps drawn by Alfred Wainwright, a fellwalker and author. The conclusion of the book involves two real-life characters, Adams' long-time friend Ronald Lockley, and the world-famous naturalist Sir Peter Scott. Having seen a manuscript, both men readily agreed to be identified with the characters and opinions that Adams had attributed to them, as is shown in Adams' preface to the book.
In 1982, The Plague Dogs was adapted into an animated feature film of the same name.
Plot
In the Lake District of England, Animal Research: Scientific and Experimental (or A.R.S.E.) conducts cruel and unusual experiments on animals, including two dogs named Rowf and Snitter. Rowf, a mongrel who was born in the lab, is made to swim in a large water tank for extended periods. Snitter, a terrier who was domesticated until his owner's supposed death, is given brain surgery which impairs his sense of reality. He often presents as disoriented or delusional, with limited periods of lucidity.
One night, Snitter squeezes out of his cage and into Rowf's, where they notice his door is unlatched. The dogs escape from the research station and roam the countryside. While the dogs are afraid of being caught by the "whitecoats" (doctors), Snitter is hopeful they will find a human who will give them food. Rowf, who has never experienced human kindness, is less sure. The next day, the people of a nearby village are indifferent towards the dogs. By nightfall, they resort to killing a sheep, embracing their new role as wild animals. However, the physical toll of killing sheep, and the angry farmers, present problems for the dogs.
They are approached by the Tod, a red fox with a Geordie accent, who offers to join them and help them kill sheep, while keeping them out of the way of angry farmers, to which the dogs accept.
Local farmers become outraged as more of their sheep are killed, and local businessman David Ephraim organizes a hunt. Before Mr. Ephraim sets off, Snitter approaches his truck. Struck by a sudden empathy for the dog, Mr. Ephraim calls him over. Snitter gets into his truck with him, but as he climbs in, he accidentally steps on the trigger of Mr. Ephraim’s gun, killing him. Snitter escapes, but enters a particularly bad mental state, and is found later by Rowf and the Tod.
Mr. Ephraim’s death prompts the arrival of Digby Driver, a sensationalist reporter from London who writes human interest pieces. Driver interviews several locals, including Stephen Powell, who works at A.R.S.E. Not knowing that Driver is a reporter, Powell confirms that two dogs did recently escape from the lab. He also points Driver in the direction of Dr. Goodner, a German scientist who had been conducting experiments into the bubonic plague at the research station.
Driver also meets with Ann Moss, the sister of Snitter’s old owner Alan Wood. One day, Snitter ran into the street, and Alan was struck while pushing him out of the way of a truck. Ann inherited Snitter, but quickly sold him to A.R.S.E. When asked whether she blamed Snitter for her brother’s death, she confirms that she does. Snitter also recounts the loss of his master to Rowf, describing seeing him lying in the street, and people watching in horror. He thought Ann Moss (whom his master jokingly called "Annie Mossity", a play on "animosity") blamed him for her brother never having married, preferring to spend his time with his dog.
The dogs end their partnership with the Tod after he takes a nest of eggs for himself. Driver publishes an article claiming that the dogs could have been exposed to the plague as they escaped the research station. The public's view of them shifts from anger to fear. Growing desperate for food, the dogs steal groceries from a car belonging to a bank clerk named Geoffrey Westcott, who had stopped at the side of a road. An embarrassed Westcott sets out to kill the dogs himself.
Rowf and Snitter argue and separate. Snitter runs into the Tod, who is being hunted in a fox hunt. The Tod thanks Snitter for his friendship, and asks him to pass a similar message to Rowf. Later, Westcott spots Rowf from atop Dow Crag. Westcott leans over the edge to get a better shot, but a confused Snitter sees and approaches him. Startled by the other dog, Westcott slips and falls to his death, though not before he shoots off Rowf's collar in the process. On the verge of starvation, Rowf and Snitter consume his corpse. The discovery of the mutilated body leads to more media frenzy and public outcry over the dogs.
A battalion of the Parachute Regiment is deployed to kill Rowf and Snitter, who are chased to a beach. Despite his fear of water, Rowf gets into the sea with Snitter. While swimming, the two wonder whether they will make it to the Isle of Dog, a place where dogs are free from experiments and are only shown kindness. The dogs are on the verge of losing consciousness, when they are spotted by naturalists Sir Peter Scott and Ronald Lockley who are out for a sail. The men get the dogs aboard and head for the shore.
Meanwhile, Digby Driver receives a letter from Alan Wood. He had never been dead, just badly injured and in hospital. When Driver assumed he was dead, Ann went along with it to avoid being ostracized for selling Snitter to A.R.S.E. After seeing Snitter's picture in the paper, Wood has been desperately trying to reach Driver. After confronting Ann for her lies, Driver meets Wood and breaks him out of the hospital. The two drive to the town the dogs were last seen in, but get lost along the way, ending up at the Drigg nature reserve.
This is the place where Scott and Lockley bring in their boat. Snitter is finally reunited with his master, who quickly offers to adopt Rowf as well. The troops leave, having no reason to kill the dogs now. Rowf and Snitter look forward to their new lives, believing that they have made it to the Isle of Dog.
Basis in reality Adams stated in the book's introduction that "There is no such place in the Lake District as Animal Research (Scientific and Experimental). In reality, no single testing or experimental station would cover so wide a range of work as Animal Research. However, every 'experiment' described is one which has actually been carried out on animals somewhere." The location of "ARSE" (an acronym for Animal Research, Scientific and Experimental, and British slang for buttocks) was based on the remote hill farm of Lawson Park, now run as an artist residence by the contemporary art organisation Grizedale Arts.
Characters
Rowf: A shaggy, large black mongrel, born in the laboratory where inhumane experiments were performed on him and his companion, Snitter. Snitter escapes with Rowf, only to find that living in the great outdoors is quite challenging. Rowf is a downtrodden fellow, quite cynical and increasingly feral in his ways, since he has had a hard life and never met a decent human. As a result of the experimentation, he has gained an abnormal fear of water. Toward the end of his travels, his time with Snitter and his encounter with real-life naturalists Peter Scott and Ronald Lockley has him believing humankind may not be irredeemably bad. Snitter: A black and white Fox Terrier. Unlike his friend, Rowf, Snitter was once settled into a home. After he lost his master in a road accident with a truck, he was sold to the laboratory by his master's sister. The scientists in the lab have performed numerous brain surgeries on Snitter, merging his conscious and subconscious mind. This causes him to have nightmarish flashes and dreams at random times, whether he is asleep or awake (similar to Fiver from Watership Down). Frequently, he hallucinates the sight of his master approaching, and turns round in joyful greeting, only to find there is no one there. Once he and Rowf escape the lab, Snitter is determined to find another home for himself and his friend. Snitter is the most hopeful character in the book, and the most mysterious, since he can have several strange ramblings concerning his condition and past events. While he and Rowf are swimming out to sea, he has a horrifying vision of a man torturing and killing all the animals of the world, including some the existence of which he could not possibly know about, such as whales. The Tod: A red fox encountered by Snitter and Rowf early in the story. He speaks in the dialect of Upper Tyneside, having been born "far ahint th' Cross Fell". He forges an uneasy friendship with the dogs, teaching them hunting and survival skills in return for a share of the kill. The friendship is stronger with Snitter, who understands both the Tod's speech and his mode of thought. Rowf, by contrast, "can't understand a word he says," distrusts his "sly, sneaking" ways, and believes that the Tod is taking advantage of his strength to provide himself with easy meals in return for advice without which Rowf feels he and Snitter would be better off. For a while the trio survive reasonably comfortably, the dogs killing sheep and fowls under the Tod's guidance, but eventually the dogs' indiscreet ways drive him away, which together with the onset of winter marks the start of a much tougher phase of the dogs' fight for survival. In the book, when Rowf drives him away, the Tod meets Snitter whilst being pursued by a local foxhunt. As the pack of foxhounds closes in on the Tod, he tells Snitter to run, giving him a final positive message for Rowf. The Tod is overtaken and killed by the hounds. The Tod's death is not explicitly depicted, although one of the huntsmen is described as holding up his body and tossing it to the hounds. Digby Driver: A newspaper reporter for the fictional London Orator. He is an amoral, self-centred man, writing wildly sensationalist articles with only the sketchiest grounding in fact and using blackmail to extort background information about bio-weapon research at ARSE. The media hysteria he creates causes panic among the local populace and eventually moves the government to deploy the army to exterminate the dogs. He redeems himself when he receives a letter from Snitter's hospitalized master and brings him from the hospital to the centre of the action in the nick of time to meet the boat returning the dogs to land and assert his legal claim as Snitter's owner, thus saving the dogs from summary execution by the waiting soldiers. Dr. Boycott: A senior researcher at ARSE who was in charge of the experimental programme which involved Rowf. He is callous and unfeeling, with no sympathy for either the animals in his experiments or his subordinate, Stephen Powell. His inept handling of the situation arising from the dogs' escape serves both to antagonize the local farmers, who are losing sheep to the dogs, and to provide grist to Digby Driver's mill despite his efforts to do the opposite.