DOG KILL

Coming as it does on the heels of Robert Calder's The Dogs (p. 21), this is just another runt-of-the-mill canine crisis. The pooch protagonist is a Doberman guard dog, Jake, who escapes to form a pack and take refuge in the Brown County State Park in southern Indiana--the stomping grounds of Mel Ryan, a former forest ranger who was unjustly fired for shooting a VIP's elk-attacking Saint Bernard. The motley assortment of mutts includes a Labrador retriever, a pointer, a harder, a collie, a beagle bitch in heat, and a boxer named Duke. The erstwhile pets kill some chickens, rabbits and deer before they become real pests and sic a group of fifth-graders on the playground. . . . Awfully expendable.