The Plague Dogs by Richard Adams

[The Comedian]

Famous for authoring Watership Down, Richard Adams' The Plague Dogs rivals its more widely-read big brother in storytelling, thematic development, and playful sophistication.

Just as mythology (and the telling of stories) supports the narrative of Watership Down, linguistic dialect (that of the English lake country) structures the confusion and flight of the dogs Rowf and Snitter from an animal experimentation center.

In their journey they face multiple adjustments, a variety of captivities, and the reality that the greatest prison is undirected freedom.

The story is primarily Snitter's (a fox terrier) whose brain has been surgically altered so that he mingles reality and fantasy and Rowf's (a mutt) who has lived as stray. The secondary character is "the tod", a fox who helps the dogs by having them help himself.

The novel playfully investigates our ideas of captive and wild. And it is outright didactic in its distaste for animal cruelty. But, should you be skeptical of this theme, the novel is not PETA porn. Shepherds, sheep dogs, domestic animals, meat, and hunting are all treated with sympathy and understanding of their right and proper order in our life and society. Adams just takes aim at those practices that need to be good and dead.

But the novel can be enjoyed an many more levels than this single political issue. The Plague Dogs is a poignant, harrowing, and honest story about those who inhabit the intersections of the lake country landscape (lots of hand-drawn maps!) and its language.

9/10 howls at the moon

[neilgee]

Thankyou for the review, Comedian, you make some interesting points.

I remember finding the dialect quite hard going, at least (I'm assuming you know more about this than I do) that's what I now assume Snitter and Rowf were talking in. At the time I just thought it was an attempt by Adams to imitate the way he thought the English language might sound in the mouth of a dog.

I read this book in 1978 on the recommendation of my English Lit teacher at college so my memory of it although strong in the impressions it left is rusty in the details.

[Paulclem]

Good review Comedian. I too read it in the 70s, and your review picks out the deeper stuff I missed as a lad. I remember reading it fondly after reading Watership Down. I really looked forward to reading them both.

I also read Shardik by Richard Adams, which was a great book recommended to us by a teacher when we were 12.

[The Comedian]

Hey! Thanks Paulclem and neilgee for commenting on my review. It's funny, but the animated film of the Plague Dogs was recommend to me a long time ago by my Latin professor in college. I never watched it until a couple year ago.

I liked it. And then I thought I'd read the book and I liked that a lot as well.

So long!

[River Boy]

Wonderful novel, wonderful film - though I still don't know which interpretation of the film's ending to support.

Just got hold of a copy of Shardik so hope it's half as good.

[Wilde woman]

I read this before when I was quite young (preteens?) and before I'd ever heard of Watership Down.

Just as mythology (and the telling of stories) supports the narrative of Watership Down, linguistic dialect (that of the English lake country) structures the confusion and flight of the dogs Rowf and Snitter from an animal experimentation center.

I like your description here, and reading it brings back a little of the unique dialect. I remember being fascinated that dogs could have accents! But the one scene that really stuck with me was the (opening?) scene in which Rowf is forced to swim in a body-length tank for hours on end, just to test how long he can hold his head above water.

Coincidentally, I just started Tales from Watership Down, a series of vignettes about the further adventures of the rabbits from Watership Down.

[The Comedian]

Thanks for the reply Wilde woman. Yeah, that scene with Rowf swimming in the tank is really powerful -- the whole first 1/4 of the book, which details the dogs' escape from the research center via the incinerator hearkens to a lot religious and historical parallels.

Oh, and just a fine point -- the two dogs don't speak in dialect: the tod (fox) & the sheep dogs (in the neighboring ranches) do. The two escapees have to struggle to understand the language of the tod (and the language of wild animals as an extension) and the sheep dogs, whose domesticated role is much different than either of the two primary dogs who were house pets.

How's Tales from Watership Down, by the way?

[Jassy Melson]

I've read most of Adams' works and have enjoyed every one of them. My personal favorite among his books is not Watership Down or The Plague Dogs, but Traveler, which is a fascinating narrative of events in the American Civil War as seen by Lee's horse Traveler. This book is one of the most unique works of literature I've ever read.