Snitter escapes with Rowf, only to find that living in the great outdoors is quite challenging. Rowf: A shaggy, large black mongrel, born in the laboratory where inhumane experiments were performed on him and his companion, Snitter.The actual 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. However, every 'experiment' described is one which has actually been carried out on animals somewhere.' In reality, no single testing or experimental station would cover so wide a range of work as Animal Research. A great dog hunt follows, which is later intensified with the fear that the dogs could be carriers of a dangerous bioweapon, such as the bubonic plague.Īdams stated in the book's introduction that 'There is no such place in the Lake District as Animal Research (Scientific and Experimental). After the starving dogs attack some sheep on the fells, they are reported as ferocious man-eating monsters by an opportunistic journalist. They live on their own with help from a red fox, or 'tod', who speaks to them in a Geordie dialect. This book tells of the escape of two dogs, Rowf and Snitter, from a government research station in the Lake District in England, where they had been horribly mistreated. 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.

The conclusion of the book involves two real-life characters, Adams' long-time friend Ronald Lockley, and the world-famous naturalist Sir Peter Scott. It was first published in 1977, and features a few location maps drawn by Alfred Wainwright, a fellwalker and author.

The Plague Dogs is the third novel by Richard Adams, author of Watership Down, about the friendship of two dogs that escape an animal testing facility and are subsequently pursued by both the government and the media.

The plague dogs novel