The Tod

The Tod is the deuteragonist of Richard Adams' 1977 book The Plague Dogs, and its 1982 animated film adaptation. He is a Geordie-accented fox who befriends the two protagonists, Rowf and Snitter, and becomes their guide to survive in the wild.

He was voiced by James Bolam.

Personality
The Tod is a crafty, wily, good-natured, sly, cunning and devious fox who loves to hunt livestock. Being a wild animal, he can come across as very selfish and manipulative. When he meets Rowf and Snitter, he agrees to help them survive in the wild in return for food. He merely uses the dogs to help him get an easy meal and Rowf despises him. He often made fun of the dogs and laughed when they failed, showing that he didn't truly care for them. He was straightforward in his insults and often left the dogs to fend for themselves. However, despite his greedy behavior, he is shown to protect them from the humans who were hunting them and even risked his life on occasion to save them, showing that he developed a strong relationship with them, even sacrificing himself to the hunters to give Rowf and Snitter time to escape.

Biography
He is a fox who encounters Rowf and Snitter after escaping from a cosmetic research facility and becomes their guide. While his relationship with Snitter becomes stronger, Rowf despises him, thinking that he's purely using them to hunt for food. The trio survive reasonably comfortably, the dogs killing sheep and fowls under the Tod's guidance, but eventually the dogs' indiscreet ways drive him away, which together with the onset of winter marks the start of a much tougher phase of the dogs' fight for survival. In the book, when Rowf drives him away, the Tod meets Snitter whilst being pursued by a local foxhunt. As the pack of foxhounds closes in on the Tod, he tells Snitter to run, giving him a final positive message for Rowf. The Tod is overtaken and killed by the hounds. The Tod's death is not explicitly depicted, although one of the huntsmen is described as holding up his body and tossing it to the hounds. However, in the film, he was still alive at the time as he saved the dogs from a bounty hunter hired by the whitecoats and tried to distract the army. However, he was chased by a pack of army dogs when the humans set out to kill Rowf and Snitter for the risk of carrying the bubonic plague. The Tod tries to distract the dogs while the two dogs make a run for the train, but one of the hunting dogs manages to wound him and he eventually gets killed. Fortunately though, the fox's distraction was long enough for the two dogs to escape to the sea onto a train.

Trivia
His gender was never revealed in the book.
 * He is unrelated to Tod from The Fox and the Hound.
 * "Tod" is a Scottish term for "fox". It is also an English term for male foxes.
 * In the book, he introduces himself as "Tod" rather than "The Tod". Yet, he's still refered to as "The Tod" by the author.
 * It is stated by Richard Adams that his accent was done with the help of a writer named Scott Dobson.