Funny satire in the spirit of Chekhov about bureaucratic stupidity / Bolshevism. The book is narrated mainly from the perspective of a stray dog who wonders about Moscow in 1924. He's somewhat aristocratic sounding, despite being a cur and gets lured back to the home of one Dr. Filipp Filippovich Preobrazhensky who dubs him Sharik.

The doctor is a stalwart against the communist party, but his care for said clientele more or less protects him from getting disappeared. Nevertheless, he has frequent run-ins with the Housing Committee who seek to downsize his 7-room flat into something more suitable. This leads to hilarious arguments about "having to eat in the study and do surgery in the bedroom? I think not 'good' sirs."

Sharik grows into his role of being a gentleman's dog and leers at the other strays when he is taken for walks by one of Filippovich's servants. One day, however, he is locked in the bathroom and only taken for the lab experiment that Filippovich procured him for in the first place.

Sharik is sedated and his brain and balls are replaced with those of a human who was killed in a bar fight. Sharik nearly dies several times over in this somewhat gruesome scene which ends with Filippovich and his assistant Dr. Bormenthal absolutely smoked after their little Frankenstein larp. After the surgery completes, the story is narrated from the POV/diary entries of Bormenthal who reports on Sharik's recovery as he begins to transform from a dog into a neanderthalic human.

While still prone to chasing cats, human-Sharik grows up over the span of a month and ultimately seeks to enfranchise himself as the human he now presents as. He desires papers so that he can legally exist under the Bolshevik system, and works with the housing committee to try to strong arm Filippovich into granting him the name Poligraf Poligrafovich Sharikov.

As Bormenthal and Filippovich attempt to grow their dog-man into just a man-man, he continues to evince patently dog-headed behaviors like running around the living room, humping (the servants), chasing cats, and generally refusing to be well-behaved for he believes etiquette to be an artifact of tsarism. He is ultimately kicked out of the apartment during which time Bormenthal tries to convince Filippovich to either destroy the man with the heart of a dog, or redo the operation with the organs not of some homeless drunkard bum, but instead of a genius. Filippovich all of the sudden has ethics about eugenics that would stay his hand from any such operation.

When Poligraf returns, he states that he has found a job catching stray cats for the government and has even acquired a wife. Bormenthal blanches at this and informs the dog's wife that he's really just a lab experiment. She leaves him, causing Poligraf to vow to get her fired, which earns him a beating from Bormenthal. The next day, a member of the OGPU arrives at the flat to inform Bormenthal and Filippovich that Poligraf had reported them but that they weren't taking it seriously. Rebuffed, Poligraf arrives later that night with a revolver. Bormenthal and Filippovich beat him up again.

The next day, after the first relaxing night of sleep either man has attained since Sharikov's adoption, the Housing Committee arrives with the police demanding to see Sharikov who they do produce, but by now he has begun his transformation back into a dog. They claim it to be a natural part of their process (no part of which could be construed as natural. Something something it will be impossible to reform the communist government, that's like turning a dog into a man. Better to just destroy it...)

Back to the life of an aristocratic dog, Sharik still observes Bormenthal's and Filippovich's further acquisition of human organs, indicating he's still got some of his previous memories, and that the two men will continue their desperate attempts to "improve the human race."

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