Last year I had to say goodbye to my dog who himself was half Smooth Fox Terrier. This book also held a special significance for me. I was sobbing by the time the book was almost finished, and my knuckles were white from gripping the book so hard. Once you make it past the horrific beginning, the tension and complexity of the novel builds into an incredible ending. His character development is brilliant, and this book will leave you as full of outrage as it will warmth. Despite his literary prowess, Adams doesn’t take himself too seriously and even at one stage uses some of his characters to poke fun at him and criticise his novel “Watership Down”. His writing is at once lyrical and honest, and his novel throws our treatment of animals in sharp relief. Once the media catches wind of the two escaped dogs, their notoriety snowballs, placing Rowf in Snitter in an impossible situation. They make an alliance with a fox who helps them bring down forbidden prey and stay on the move to avoid capture.

Finding themselves alone on wild moors, they struggle to fend for themselves. Where every other time I’ve been unable to read further than just a couple of pages in, this time I managed to persevere.ĭesperately terrified of further abuse at the hands of the scientists, big shaggy Rowf and Smooth Fox Terrier Snitter seize an opportunity to escape the animal research facility. “The Plague Dogs” is about two dogs who are being kept in an animal testing facility and the opening scenes are ones of incredible cruelty.

I knew that it was a book I should absolutely love, but every time I began reading it, I was instantly put off by the introduction. “The Plague Dogs” is in fact a book that I have started several times. I decided it was high time to do something about this. However, despite the fact that “Watership Down” is one of my favourite books (if not THE favourite), I actually have not read much else of Adams’ works. I have read that book so many times that I’ve lost count of how many replacement copies I’ve bought over the years. I’ve been a fan of Richard Adams ever since I first opened a paperback copy of “Watership Down” as a little kid.

The plague dogs novel