Cujo -Stephen King’s phsycological thriller

Cujo (1981) is a psychological horror book by Stephen King about a rabid dog.  Coincidentally the

same year that a Saint Bernard got an entry into the Guinness book of records for the heaviest

dog up to date. The novel won the British Fantasy Award in 1982, and was made into in 1983.

The principal characters are the Trenton and the Camber families.  The blue-collar Camber family

are longtime residents; Joe is a shade-tree mechanic who dominates and abuses his wife Charity

and their ten-year-old son Brett. Charity wins the state lottery, and uses the proceeds to inveigle

Joe into allowing her to take Brett on a trip to visit Charity's sister, Holly, in Connecticut. Joe

secretly plans to use the time to take a pleasure trip to Boston.

His large, good-natured St Bernard, Cujo chases a rabbit in the fields

around the Cambers' house  and gets his head stuck in the entrance to

a small limestone cave where a crazed bat bites him on the nose and

infects him with an especially virulent strain of  rabies, the disease

which makes  Cujo mad in one day. Soon after Charity and Brett

leave town, Cujo attacks and kills their neighbour  Gary Pervier at his

home and Joe from calling authorities for help.