Two dogs manage to escape from an animal testing facility, and from that moment on, the situation takes a downward turn.

The animated version of this story is truly one of the most heart-wrenchingly grim films I have ever had the misfortune to witness. However, I offer this description as the highest form of praise.

The original book, on the other hand, reads more like a meandering polemic, and it differs in some plot points. In my opinion, the movie's much tighter narrative has significantly improved upon these aspects. The filmmakers have managed to take a complex and often disturbing story and distill it into a powerful and engaging film that leaves a lasting impression on the viewer.

Overall, both the book and the movie offer unique perspectives on this important issue, and I would highly recommend them to anyone interested in exploring the topic of animal testing and its consequences.

I'm awarding this a 3.5-star rating. The reason being that I'm truly uncertain about what Adams intends to convey here.

This is an极其悲惨的故事，讲述了两只狗从一个动物实验机构逃脱，却被指责可能传播黑死病。这相当令人毛骨悚然和奇怪，其中一只狗在书中一半的篇幅里胡言乱语，而且死亡和怪异的情节比我预期的要多。

它还感觉有一种奇怪的讽刺意味，并且在结尾有点打破第四面墙，而我不确定这是为什么。这对于故事的其余部分来说肯定感觉不太合适。

不过，亚当斯是个天才，这个故事的许多方面都证明了这一点。我很高兴这本非常悲伤的书结束了。

I listened to the audio of this book, and unfortunately, I lost a point because I couldn't understand the fox. This novel, which was originally published in 1977, is both fantastical and grimly realistic. It was written, in part, to counteract the horrible animal experiments that were being done in the name of progress at an infamous laboratory in England. The lab in the book is based on a real lab called Lawsen Park, which was a converted farm also known by the acronym ARSE (Animal Research, Scientific and Experimental), or affectionately as "Buttocks" (haha). I suspect that this book played a role in bringing about the laws that now prohibit abusive animal research, which were not in place in the UK in 1977.

The story is good, but not great. It can be quite grim and sad at times, with tortured animals and mauled sheep. There is only one decent human character, but the ending is fairly promising (although the movie ends differently). Essentially, the story follows two dogs, Rowf and Snitter, who escape from the torturous laboratory and flee across the country. Starving and terrified of "the white coats," they go feral and become cynical and bitter. A sly red fox joins them for a while, and a journalist named Digby Diver exploits their suffering for a headline, writing that they are carrying bubonic plague. This causes everyone to hunt them, while Snitter's kind owner looks for him.

The character development in the book is good. After their experience at the lab, the two escapees fear every human dressed in white. The "white coats" pushed metal and glass into their bodies, cut them, drowned them, and tormented them. When they see a white coat, they almost panic, which is an example of stimulus-response conditioning. The exhausted, terrified, and starving dogs decide to go feral at Rowf's suggestion, and the description of their change from domesticated and trusting to "cold, cunning, ruthless, with overwhelming ferocity. Cruel, furtive, and slouching. Understanding the only law in the world, the law of kill or be killed" is very well done.

As for the audible version, while Cosham's narration is flawless, it can be difficult to understand at times because the fox speaks in a dialect like cockney. Additionally, I didn't care for the rhyming passages. For me, this book is best read rather than heard. However, I do love Richard Adams, and Watership Down is a big favorite of mine, superbly narrated by Ralph Cosham.

I was informed that this particular book was a retelling of the King Lear narrative. However, I am not entirely convinced of that claim. Nevertheless, there was an abundance of Shakespearean elements within it.

It is indeed a challenging book, yet it is extremely well-written. Especially as it approaches the end, it leans towards being overly polemical. But that precisely is its intention - to construct a literary argument in favor of animal rights. At numerous junctures, it reads quite similar to Cry, the Beloved Country.

The author has managed to create a complex and thought-provoking work that combines elements of classic literature with a modern-day cause. The use of Shakespearean references adds an interesting layer to the story, making it both accessible and engaging for those with an interest in literature.

Despite its polemical nature towards the end, the book as a whole offers a unique perspective on animal rights and is well worth the read for anyone looking for a challenging and intellectually stimulating read.

I rarely have the inclination to re-visit books that I begin but fail to complete in a single attempt. However, I am truly overjoyed that I received this particular book in a book exchange and was able to return to the captivating adventures of Snitter and Rowf.

These two dogs unfortunately find themselves confined within a facility that conducts a plethora of experiments on a wide variety of animals. I shall refrain from delving into the specific details here, but for those who are sensitive to this particular issue, I would suggest skimming certain sections of the book.

Snitter, prior to his incarceration in the facility, had an owner and deeply longs to return to that affectionate environment. He holds dear the memories and stories of his beloved man as he and Rowf make their way across the countryside. Once the dogs manage to escape, a numerous cast of characters emerge, all of whom desire to see their downfall. Among these are government officials and the doctors who work at the facility.

What Adams accomplishes here is not only giving a voice to the dogs in the story but also to every individual involved in the events that unfold as a result of the two dogs' escape. We hear from a journalist covering the story, a scientist who leaks crucial information to the press, the sister of Snitter's owner, and even the military that is called upon to assist in ridding the countryside of the dogs.

Throughout the book, Adams employs the use of verse and an engaging narrative, which adds an extra layer of depth and interest.

I am truly glad that I embarked on this journey with Snitter and Rowf. It has been a remarkable and thought-provoking experience.

There are numerous aspects of this book that one might not appreciate. It appears to oppose everything that the average English Literature graduate would regard as 'good' writing. It is meandering, overly written, loosely edited, and deliberately biased. It is filled with gratuitous literary references, burdened by lengthy passages of dull political satire, and the entire work has the somewhat ponderous atmosphere of the kind of book a retired civil servant would pen. (Which is perhaps fitting as that is precisely what Adams was when he wrote it.)

If one objective of a novel is to offer a balanced and empathetic perspective of a society or culture, then The Plague Dogs also falls short in that regard. The central theme - vivisection - is something about which the author has absolutely no positive remarks. He also has very little sympathy for the individuals who perpetuate it. Recklessly veering into Godwin's Law, Adams goes as far as to draw a comparison between the state of animal testing in the 1970s and the experiments conducted by Mengele under the Nazis. Thousands of words are dedicated to descriptions of unpleasant experiments (all of which are based on true accounts) performed on dogs, birds, rabbits, and monkeys. Very little of this is directly relevant to the central plot, in which a pair of dogs escape from a testing lab and roam wild in the Lake District, but then there is quite a bit else in this book that is not really relevant to that either. After a while, one gets accustomed to it.

And yet, I thoroughly enjoyed the book for all the reasons stated above. I may not concur with everything Adams wrote, but I liked the manner in which he wrote it. This isn't even about kitsch value: I liked The Plague Dogs because it is so absurdly digressive, so completely unconcerned about adhering rigidly to conventional ideas of what constitutes fine literature. I liked it because one of the main characters is a post-operative dog who spends most of the book wandering around with a crack in his skull exposing his brain to the open air.

I liked it because it is permeated with a vein of angry misanthropy, being firmly set in a world where, for the most part, terrible and incomprehensible things happen to the best of people (and animals). I liked that reading it is like listening to a tall tale told by an angry old man in a pub who is a bit drunk and keeps forgetting what he was talking about only to corner you about the state of the nation. And I liked it because there is some nature writing here that is undoubtedly very beautiful.

DNFing at 38 pages in.

I initially gave it 2 stars instead of 1, simply because the writing itself isn't bad. However, I quickly came to the realization that this particular book wasn't going to be to my liking.

To be completely honest, I'm not even sure why I added it to my reading list in the first place. The amount of animal abuse and despair described in the story is just overwhelming, and I've only just begun reading.

Therefore, I've decided to save myself a great deal of heartache and move on to another book.

I believe it's important to know when a book isn't right for you and not force yourself to continue reading something that makes you uncomfortable or unhappy.

There are so many other wonderful books out there waiting to be discovered, and I'm looking forward to finding one that will truly engage and delight me.

Prepare your tissues just in case... I always get very emotional when it comes to animals. So, when something happens in a lab that conducts tests on them and the two main canine characters remind me of my own dogs, my eyes get very misty.

Let's first talk about the structure. The book follows multiple participants in the plot. There are moments when we follow the two main characters, who are dogs, and experience their inner life. (I wish my dogs could hold meaningful conversations like that, but this is where the plot gets a bit fairy tale-ish.) We also follow all the people involved. While the dogs struggle to survive, the people take a stand either on the political life of the county or on animal testing and the portrait the media paint of it.

It's very interesting to hear so many voices (though I had a problem with the tod... it was just way too far from English) and opinions. (There were almost philosophical musings, so it kind of clashed with the dogs having voices. I'm not sure how old one can be to read this.) However, it was all pretty well tied together, so that it read very nicely.

The only drawback I see are the overly descriptive paragraphs. I believe if one is from the area where the book is set, then surely their hearts will sing. But if you've never been there, you can imagine a hill, a valley, etc. with fewer words, and everything else is just a waste of time. But it didn't spoil the book that much. It's just something I noticed while both wanting and dreading to read further.

This is perhaps the bleakest book I have read throughout the entire year.

It vividly tells the story of two dogs, Rowf and Snitter, who miraculously manage to escape from a cruel animal research facility. The experiments being conducted at this facility are truly barbaric, and the descriptions make for extremely tough reading.

Their damaged pasts have a profound impact on their current lives. Rowf has developed a deep-rooted mistrust of mankind due to the horrors he has endured. Meanwhile, Snitter suffers from strange hallucinations or visions, some of which seem completely mad.

Eventually, they encounter 'Tod', a fox with a distinct Toon accent. The Tod offers them valuable advice in exchange for meals. While Snitter enjoys The Tod's company, Rowf is rather cautious and doesn't trust The Tod's sly ways.

The conclusion of the book is extremely heartbreaking, just like many other parts. However, it is an essential book to read as it makes us aware of how our actions have a lasting impact on the animal kingdom and prompts us to introspect on our own sense of 'humanity'.

Well, where to start?

I've had this book for about 10 years now, and yet I never got around to reading it completely until now. There are some characters that talk in their native dialect, like a heavy Scottish accent, and the author has written their speech in a way that it would sound. I think this was the very reason I had originally stopped reading so many years ago. But really, once you catch on to the words (and there's actually a glossary included), it's not so bad. There are only a few characters who speak this way, and after a while, it just makes sense.

In case you don't already know, Richard Adams is widely known for his most famous work 'Watership Down'. While that story was about rabbits, this one, obviously, is about dogs. If I didn't know who the author was, I would be very upset by some of the callous ways that animals are treated in this book. However, knowing that this is Richard Adams, you can sense the sarcasm and loathing he must have felt writing those particular incidents and the love he has for animals.

I have two dogs of my own, and they remind me almost exactly of the two dogs in this book. Snitter and Rowf, the two main canine characters, converse and think in exactly the way I would imagine a dog would think. They aren't 'Disney dogs' who understand the world exactly as people do. They understand only what they know through instinct and what they have witnessed from Man. This is effective in showing how truly innocent animals are and the responsibility the human race has to care for them.

If you're like me, you may get discouraged through some of the more 'political' sections of this book. I don't understand how the British government works, so titles and parliament meetings were mostly wasted on me. However, if you love animals at all, you will enjoy this book. This is a good look at the cruelness of humans and the love and forgiveness of animals.

It started well enough, and it ended well enough.

Indeed, the first 70 pages and the last 70 pages were great. They managed to capture my attention and draw me into the story.

But I had some issues with the 340 pages in the middle. There was a LOT of meandering around the plot line with pointless details or little snippets or just straight up fluff.

For example, it’s okay to describe a countryside, a scene, a city, or the view. Many great authors have done it successfully. Gibson did it in Neuromancer, and it made for a killer start to a killer book. King did it a ton in the Dark Tower series, and Ursula did it in LHoD. A sentence or two, a paragraph, or maybe even a full page, front and back, can enhance the setting and add depth to the story.

However, what I did NOT need was the author describing, in excruciating detail, how the landscape had changed since the Roman Empire, through WW II and onto present day. And no, that’s not an exaggeration. There were ELEVEN pages of “lemme tell you what this looked like during the Roman Empire! Oh, and here’s what it looked like later during WW II, by the way!” Dude, I just wanna read about dogs having an adventure.

Aside from that, there were some weird fourth wall breaking segments that just didn't work for me. The human parts honestly weren't that interesting either.

And to add to the already immense barrier of entry (that I felt), a very prominent character and most of the humans spoke in a north English accent. While authors use linguistic descriptors all the time, when the author actually used PHONETIC spelling for a Geordie accent, it really impeded the flow of the story. “Ai souto za paeshingu obu za sutoury wozu aa ritoru surou” See, phonetic Japanese accent in English. It might seem super immersive, but in reality, it just made it difficult to read.

Anyhoo, at that point, the flow had flown away, and I was just skimming.

TL;DR - Good start, mid for 300-ish pages, then good again.

It is time for people to start thinking of humans simply as one more in a series of species that inhabit the planet. We should no longer view ourselves as the dominant and superior beings with unrestricted power. Instead, we need to recognize that if we are the most intelligent species, it simply means that we have a greater responsibility.

We must take care to ensure that the rest of the species can lead a natural life with the least amount of control. This means respecting their habitats, protecting their natural environments, and refraining from actions that cause unnecessary harm or disruption. We have the ability to make a positive impact on the planet and all its inhabitants, and it is our moral obligation to do so.

By changing our perspective and taking on this responsibility, we can create a more sustainable and harmonious world for all species to coexist. It is not only about our own survival but also about the future of the entire ecosystem. Let us start thinking and acting differently today to ensure a better tomorrow for all.