The novel starts with the birth of Fluke, a dog who soon realizes that he used to be a man. The book then follows Fluke's efforts to find out what happened to him and why he is a dog. Soon he starts to remember bits of his previous life and remembers he had a wife and daughter, and he works to reunite with his family. Along the way, he makes friends with a red dog named Rumbo who started life as a human, like Fluke. Rumbo is killed when a car in a scrap yard the dogs live in falls on him. Towards the end of
Fluke Rumbo comes back as a
red squirrel and later appears in the James Herbert novels
The Magic Cottage and
Once. == Adaptations in other media ==