The article analyzes the symbolic valences of dogs in the context of the biological plague and the „red plague”, the latter being a propaganda phrase attributed to totalitarian communist regimes. In Romanian folklore, the Plague is personified, being perceived as an evil creature with the face of a hideous woman who sneaks into people’s homes, reaping their lives. At the same time, Plague has her phobias, being afraid of dogs that bark at her and bite her hands. According to a Catholic tradition Saint Roch (Rochus), falling ill with the plague, was miraculously saved thanks to a dog that brought him bread and licked his purulent buboes. The exponents of the „red plague” after the invasion and occupation of Bessarabia resorted to repressive policies manifested by organized starvation, mass deportations and arrests of those who opposed the regime. On the symbolic and imagological dimension, there are a number of affinities between the popular perception of the personified Plague and certain attributes of the policy of repression promoted by the Soviet security guards, ferocious promoters of the „red plague”, associated propagandistically with Bolshevism or communism. A detail relevant to the atrocities committed by the exponents of the „red plague” in Bessarabia is related to the way the Soviet executioners camped at night on the families that were to be deported: before entering the fence, they shot the dogs they were afraid of.