Getting distracted, John. Don’t get distracted.

What was it? Stay the course!My curiosity was

getting the better of me. Let it go, guy. Let it go!

I began sniffing the air. A food; yes, that was it.

But what food? Not crackers. Not chips. Not tuna

fish. I almost had it. It was . . . Milk-Bones?

Milk-Bones! That was it! She had Milk-Bone

breath. But why?I wondered—and I actually

heard a little voice ask the question in my head—

Why has Jenny been eating Milk-Bones?And

besides, I could feel her lips on my neck . . . How

John Grogan

could she be kissing my neck and breathing in my

face all at once? It didn’t make any—

Oh . . . my . . . God.

I opened my eyes. There, inches from my face,

filling my entire frame of vision, loomed Marley’s

huge head. His chin rested on the mattress, and he

was panting up a storm, drool soaking into the

sheets. His eyes were half closed—and he looked

entirely too in love. “Bad dog!” I shrieked, recoil-

ing across the bed. “No! No! Go to bed!” I franti-

cally ordered. “Go to bed! Go lie down!” But it

was too late. The magic was gone. The monastery

was back.

At ease, soldier.

The next morning I made an appointment to take

Marley in to have his balls cut off. I figured if I

wasn’t going to have sex for the rest of my life, he

wasn’t either. Dr. Jay said we could drop Marley

off before we went to work and pick him up on our

way home. A week later, that’s just what we did.

As Jenny and I got ready, Marley caromed hap-

pily off the walls, sensing an impending outing.

For Marley, any trip was a good trip; it didn’t

matter where we were going or for how long. Take

out the trash? No problem!Walk to the corner for

a gallon of milk? Count me in!I began to feel

Marley & Me

pangs of guilt. The poor guy had no idea what lay

in store for him. He trusted us to do the right

thing, and here we were secretly plotting to emas-

culate him. Did betrayal get any more treacherous

than this?

“Come here,” I said, and wrestled him to the

floor where I gave him a vigorous belly scratch. “It

won’t be so bad. You’ll see. Sex is highly over-

rated.” Not even I, still rebounding from my bad

run of luck the last couple of weeks, believed

that. Who was I fooling? Sex was great. Sex was

incredible. The poor dog was going to miss out on

life’s single greatest pleasure. The poor bastard. I

felt horrible.

And I felt even worse when I whistled for him

and he bounded out the door and into the car with

utter blind faith that I would not steer him wrong.

He was revved up and ready to go on whatever ex-

cellent adventure I saw fit. Jenny drove and I sat in

the passenger seat. As was his habit, Marley bal-

anced his front paws on the center console, his

nose touching the rearview mirror. Every time

Jenny touched the brakes, he went crashing into

the windshield, but Marley didn’t care. He was

riding shotgun with his two best friends. Did life

get any better than this?

I cracked my window, and Marley began listing

to starboard, leaning against me, trying to catch a

John Grogan

whiff of the outdoor smells. Soon he had

squirmed his way fully onto my lap and pressed

his nose so firmly into the narrow crack of the

window that he snorted each time he tried to in-

hale. Oh, why not?I thought. This was his last

ride as a fully equipped member of the male gen-

der; the least I could do was give him a little fresh

air. I opened the window wide enough for him to

stick his snout out. He was enjoying the sensation

so much, I opened it farther, and soon his entire

head was out the window. His ears flapped behind

him in the wind, and his tongue hung out like he

was drunk on the ether of the city. God, was he

happy.

As we drove down Dixie Highway, I told Jenny

how bad I felt about what we were about to put him

through. She was beginning to say something no

doubt totally dismissive of my qualms when I no-

ticed, more with curiosity than alarm, that Marley

had hooked both of his front paws over the edge of

the half-open window. And now his neck and up-

per shoulders were hanging out of the car, too. He

just needed a pair of goggles and a silk scarf to

look like one of those World War I flying aces.

“John, he’s making me nervous,” Jenny said.

“He’s fine,” I answered. “He just wants a little

fresh—”

At that instant he slid his front legs out the win-

Marley & Me

dow until his armpits were resting on the edge of

the glass.

“John, grab him! Grab him!”

Before I could do anything, Marley was off my

lap and scrambling out the window of our moving

car. His butt was up in the air, his hind legs claw-

ing for a foothold. He was making his break. As

his body slithered past me, I lunged for him and

managed to grab the end of his tail with my left

hand. Jenny was braking hard in heavy traffic.

Marley dangled fully outside the moving car, sus-

pended upside down by his tail, which I had by the

most tenuous of grips. My body was twisted

around in a position that didn’t allow me to get my

other hand on him. Marley was frantically trotting

along with his front paws on the pavement.

Jenny got the car stopped in the outside lane

with cars lining up behind us, horns blaring.

“Now what?” I yelled. I was stuck. I couldn’t pull

him back in the window. I couldn’t open the door.

I couldn’t get my other arm out. And I didn’t dare

let go of him or he would surely dash in the path

of one of the angry drivers swerving around us. I

held on for dear life, my face, as it were, scrunched

against the glass just inches from his giant flapping

scrotum.

Jenny put the flashers on and ran around to my

side, where she grabbed him and held him by the

John Grogan

collar until I could get out and help her wrestle

him back into the car. Our little drama had un-

folded directly in front of a gas station, and as

Jenny got the car back into gear I looked over to

see that all the mechanics had come out to take in

the show. I thought they were going to wet them-

selves, they were laughing so hard. “Thanks,

guys!” I called out. “Glad we could brighten your

morning.”

When we got to the clinic, I walked Marley in

on a tight leash just in case he tried any more

smart moves. My guilt was gone, my resolve hard-

ened. “You’re not getting out of this one, Eunuch

Boy,” I told him. He was huffing and puffing,

straining against his leash to sniff all the other an-

imal smells. In the waiting area he was able to ter-

rorize a couple of cats and tip over a stand filled

with pamphlets. I turned him over to Dr. Jay’s as-

sistant and said, “Give him the works.”

That night when I picked him up, Marley was a

changed dog. He was sore from the surgery and

moved gingerly. His eyes were bloodshot and

droopy from the anesthesia, and he was still

groggy. And where those magnificent crown jew-

els of his had swung so proudly, there was . . .

nothing. Just a small, shriveled flap of skin. The

irrepressible Marley bloodline had officially and

forever come to an end.

C H A P T E R 1 0

The Luck of the Irish

❉

Our lives increasingly were being defined by

work. Work at the newspapers. Work on the

house. Work around the yard. Work trying to get

pregnant. And, nearly a full-time vocation in it-

self, work raising Marley. In many ways, he was

like a child, requiring the time and attention a

child requires, and we were getting a taste of the

responsibility that lay ahead of us if we ever did

have a family. But only to a degree. Even as clue-

less as we were about parenting, we were pretty

sure we couldn’t lock the kids in the garage with a

bowl of water when we went out for the day.

We hadn’t even reached our second wedding an-

niversary and already we were feeling the grind of

responsible, grown-up, married life. We needed to

get away. We needed a vacation, just the two of us,

far from the obligations of our daily lives. I sur-

John Grogan

prised Jenny one evening with two tickets to Ire-

land. We would be gone for three weeks. There

would be no itineraries, no guided tours, no must-

see destinations. Only a rental car, a road map, and

a guide to bed-and-breakfast inns along the way.

Just having the tickets in hand lifted a yoke from

our shoulders.

First we had a few duties to dole out, and at the

top of the list was Marley. We quickly ruled out a

boarding kennel. He was too young, too wired, too

rambunctious to be cooped up in a pen twenty-

three hours a day. As Dr. Jay had predicted, neu-

tering had not diminished Marley’s exuberance

one bit. It did not affect his energy level or loony

behavior, either. Except for the fact that he no

longer showed an interest in mounting inanimate

objects, he was the same crazed beast. He was way

too wild—and too unpredictably destructive when

panic set in—to pawn off at a friend’s house. Or

even at an enemy’s house, for that matter. What

we needed was a live-in dog-sitter. Obviously, not

just anyone would do, especially given the chal-

lenges Marley presented. We needed someone

who was responsible, trustworthy, verypatient,

and strong enough to reel in seventy pounds of

runaway Labrador retriever.

We made a list of every friend, neighbor, and

coworker we could think of, then one by one

Marley & Me

crossed off names. Total party boy. Scratch. Too

absentminded. Scratch.Averse to dog drool.

Scratch. Too mousy to control a dachshund let

alone a Lab. Scratch.Allergic. Scratch.Unwill-

ing to pick up dog droppings. Scratch.Eventu-

ally, we were left with just one name. Kathy

worked in my office and was single and unat-

tached. She grew up in the rural Midwest, loved

animals, and longed to someday trade in her small

apartment for a house with a yard. She was ath-

letic and liked to walk. True, she was shy and a lit-

tle on the meek side, which could make it hard for

her to impose her will on alpha Marley, but other-

wise she would be perfect. Best of all, she said yes.

The list of instructions I prepared for her

couldn’t have been more painstakingly detailed

were we leaving a critically ill infant in her care.

The Marley Memo ran six full pages single-spaced

and read in part:

FEEDING:Marley eats three times a day, one

two-cup measure at each meal. The measuring

cup is inside the bag. Please feed him when

you get up in the morning and when you get

home from work. The neighbors will come in

to feed him mid-afternoon. This totals six

cups of food a day, but if he’s acting famished

please give him an extra cup or so. As you’re

John Grogan

aware, all that food has to go somewhere. See

POOP PATROL below.

VITAMINS:Each morning, we give Marley

one Pet Tab vitamin. The best way to give it

to him is to simply drop it on the floor and

pretend he’s not supposed to have it. If he

thinks it’s forbidden, he will wolf it down. If

for some reason that doesn’t work, you can try

disguising it in a snack.

WATER:In hot weather, it’s important to

keep plenty of fresh water on hand. We

change the water next to his food bowl once a

day and top it off if it’s running low. A word

of caution: Marley likes to submerge his snout

in the water bowl and play submarine. This

makes quite a mess. Also his jowls hold a

surprising amount of water, which runs out as

he walks away from the bowl. If you let him,

he’ll wipe his mouth on your clothes and the

couches. One last thing: He usually shakes

after taking a big drink, and his saliva will fly

onto walls, lampshades, etc. We try to wipe

this up before it dries, at which time it

becomes almost impossible to remove.

FLEAS AND TICKS:If you notice these on

him, you can spray him with the flea and tick

sprays we have left. We’ve also left an

insecticide that you can spray on the rugs,

Marley & Me

etc., if you think a problem is starting. Fleas

are tiny and fast, and hard to catch, but they

seldom bite humans, we’ve found, so I

wouldn’t be too concerned. Ticks are larger

and slow and we do occasionally see these on

him. If you spot one on him and have the

stomach for it, just pick it off and either crush

it in a tissue (you may need to use your

fingernails; they’re amazingly tough) or wash

it down the sink or toilet (the best option if

the tick is engorged with blood). You’ve

probably read about ticks spreading Lyme

disease to humans and all the long-term

health problems that can cause, but several

vets have assured us that there is very little

danger of contracting Lyme disease here in

Florida. Just to make sure, wash your hands

well after removing a tick. The best way to

pick a tick off Marley is to give him a toy to

hold in his mouth to keep him occupied, and

then pinch his skin together with one hand

while you use your fingernails of the other

hand as pincers to pull the tick off. Speaking

of which, if he gets too smelly, and you’re

feeling brave, you can give him a bath in the

kiddie pool we have in the backyard (for just

that purpose), but wear a bathing suit. You’ll

get wet!

John Grogan

EARS:Marley tends to get a lot of wax

buildup in his ears, which if left untreated can

lead to infections. Once or twice while we’re

gone, please use cotton balls and the blue ear-

cleaning solution to clean as much gunk out of

his ears as you can. It’s pretty nasty stuff so

make sure you’re wearing old clothes.

WALKS:Without his morning walk, Marley

tends to get into mischief in the garage. For

your own sanity, you may also want to give

him a quick jaunt before bed, but that’s

optional. You will want to use the choker

chain to walk him, but never leave it on him

when he’s unattended. He could strangle

himself, and knowing Marley he probably

would.

BASIC COMMANDS:Walking him is much

easier if you can get him to heel. Always

begin with him in a sitting position at your

left, then give the command “Marley, heel!”

and step off on your left foot. If he tries to

lunge ahead, give him a sharp jerk on the

leash. That usually works for us. (He’s been

to obedience school!) If he’s off the leash, he

usually is pretty good about coming to you

with the command “Marley, come!” Note: It’s

best if you’re standing and not crouched

down when you call him.

Marley & Me

THUNDERSTORMS:Marley tends to get a

little freaked-out during storms or even light

showers. We keep his sedatives (the yellow

pills) in the cupboard with the vitamins. One

pill thirty minutes before the storm arrives

(you’ll be a weather forecaster before you

know it!) should do the trick. Getting Marley

to swallow pills is a bit of an art form. He

won’t eat them like he does his vitamins, even

if you drop them on the floor and pretend he

shouldn’t have them. The best technique is to

straddle him and pry his jaws open with one

hand. With the other, you push the pill as far

down his throat as you can get it. It needs to

be past the point of no return or he will

cough it back up. Then stroke his throat until

he swallows it. Obviously, you’ll want to wash

up afterward.

POOP PATROL:I have a shovel back under

the mango tree that I use for picking up

Marley’s messes. Feel free to clean up after

him as much or as little as you like, depending

on how much you plan to walk around the

backyard. Watch your step!

OFF-LIMITS:We do NOT allow Marley to:

❉ Get up on any piece of furniture.

❉ Chew on furniture, shoes, pillows, etc.

John Grogan

❉ Drink out of the toilet. (Best to keep lid

down at all times, though beware: He’s

figured out how to flip it up with his nose.)

❉ Dig in the yard or uproot plants and

flowers. He usually does this when he feels

he’s not getting enough attention.

❉ Go in any trash can. (You may have to keep

it on top of the counter.)

❉ Jump on people, sniff crotches, or indulge

in any other socially unacceptable behavior.

We’ve especially been trying to cure him of

arm chewing, which, as you can imagine,

not a lot of people appreciate. He still has a

way to go. Feel free to give him a swat on

the rump and a stern “No!”

❉ Beg at the table.

❉ Push against the front screen door or the

porch screens. (You’ll see several have

already been replaced.)

Thanks again for doing all this for us, Kathy.

This is a giant favor. I’m not quite sure how

we could have managed otherwise. Hope you

and Marley become good pals and you are as

entertained by him as we are.

I brought the instructions in to Jenny and asked

if there was anything I had forgotten. She took

Marley & Me

several minutes to read them and then looked up

and said, “What are you thinking? You can’t show

her this.” She was waving them at me. “You show

her this and you can forget about Ireland. She’s

the only person we could find willing to do this. If

she reads this, that’s it. She’ll start running and

won’t stop until she hits Key West.” Just in case I

had missed it the first time around, she repeated:

“What on earth were you thinking?”

“So you think it’s too much?” I asked.

But I’ve always believed in full disclosure, and

show it to her I did. Kathy did flinch noticeably a

few times, especially as we went over tick-removal

techniques, but she kept any misgivings to herself.

Looking daunted and just a little green, but far too

kind to renege on a promise, she held fast. “Have a

great trip,” she said. “We’ll be fine.”

Ireland was everything we dreamed it would be.

Beautiful, bucolic, lazy. The weather was glori-

ously clear and sunny most days, leading the locals

to fret darkly about the possibility of drought. As

we had promised ourselves, we kept no schedules

and set no itineraries. We simply wandered,

bumping our way along the coast, stopping to

stroll or shop or hike or quaff Guinness or simply

gaze out at the ocean. We stopped the car to talk to

John Grogan

farmers bringing in their hay and to photograph

ourselves with sheep standing in the road. If we

saw an interesting lane, we turned down it. It was

impossible to get lost because we had no place we

needed to be. All of our duties and obligations

back home were just distant memories.

As evening approached each day, we would begin

looking for a place to spend the night. Invariably,

these were rooms in private homes run by sweet

Irish widows who doted on us, served us tea, turned

down our sheets, and always seemed to ask us the

same question, “So, would you two be planning to

start a family soon?” And then they would leave us

in our room, flashing back knowing, oddly sugges-

tive smiles as they closed the door behind them.

Jenny and I became convinced there was a na-

tional law in Ireland that required all guest beds to

face a large, wall-mounted likeness of either the

pope or the Virgin Mary. Some places provided

both. One even included an oversized set of rosary

beads that dangled from the headboard. The Irish

Celibate Traveler Law also dictated that all guest

beds be extremely creaky, sounding a rousing

alarm every time one of its occupants so much as

rolled over.

It all conspired to create a setting that was about

as conducive to amorous relations as a convent. We

were in someone else’s home—someone else’s

Marley & Me

very Catholichome—with thin walls and a loud

bed and statues of saints and virgins, and a nosy

hostess who, for all we knew, was hovering on the

other side of the door. It was the last place you

would think to initiate sex. Which, of course,

made me crave my wife in new and powerful ways.

We would turn off the lights and crawl into bed,

the springs groaning under our weight, and im-

mediately I would slip my hand beneath Jenny’s

top and onto her stomach.

“No way!” she would whisper.

“Why not?” I would whisper back.

“Are you nuts? Mrs. O’Flaherty is right on the

other side of that wall.”

“So what?”

“We can’t!”

“Sure we can.”

“She’ll hear everything.”

“We’ll be quiet.”

“Oh, right!”

“Promise. We’ll barely move.”

“Well, go put a T-shirt or something over the

pope first,” she would finally say, relenting. “I’m

not doing anything with him staring at us.”

Suddenly, sex seemed so . . . so . . . illicit. It

was like I was in high school again, sneaking

around under my mother’s suspicious gaze. To

risk sex in these surroundings was to risk shame-

John Grogan

ful humiliation at the communal breakfast table

the next morning. It was to risk Mrs. O’Flaherty’s

raised eyebrow as she served up eggs and fried

tomatoes, asking with a leering grin, “So, was the

bed comfortable for you?”

Ireland was a coast-to-coast No Sex Zone. And

that was all the invitation I needed. We spent the

trip bopping like bunnies.

Still, Jenny couldn’t stop fretting about her big

baby back home. Every few days she would feed a

fistful of coins into a pay phone and call home for

a progress report from Kathy. I would stand out-

side the booth and listen to Jenny’s end of the

conversation.

“He did? . . . Seriously? . . . Right into traf-

fic? . . . You weren’t hurt, were you? . . . Thank

God. . . . I would have screamed, too. . . . What?

Your shoes? . . . Oh no! Andyour purse? . . .

We’ll certainly pay for repairs. . . . Nothing left

at all? . . . Of course, we insist on replacing

them. . . . And he what? . . . Wet cement, you

say? What’s the chance of that happening?”

And so it would go. Each call was a litany of

transgressions, one worse than the next, many

of which surprised even us, hardened survivors

of the puppy wars. Marley was the incorrigible

student and Kathy the hapless substitute teacher.

He was having a field day.

Marley & Me

When we arrived home, Marley raced outside to

greet us. Kathy stood in the doorway, looking

tired and strained. She had the faraway gaze of a

shell-shocked soldier after a particularly unrelent-

ing battle. Her bag was packed and sitting on the

front porch, ready to go. She held her car key in

her hand as if she could not wait to escape. We

gave her gifts, thanked her profusely, and told her

not to worry about the ripped-out screens and

other damage. She excused herself politely and

was gone.

As best as we could figure, Kathy had been un-

able to exert any authority at all over Marley, and

even less control. With each victory, he grew bolder.

He forgot all about heeling, dragging her behind

him wherever he wished to go. He refused to come

to her. He grabbed whatever suited him—shoes,

purses, pillows—and would not let go. He stole

food off her plate. He rifled through the garbage.

He even tried taking over her bed. He had decided

he was in charge while the parents were away, and

he was not going to let some mild-mannered room-

mate pull rank and put the kibosh on his fun.

“Poor Kathy,” Jenny said. “She looked kind of

broken, don’t you think?”

“Shattered is more like it.”

“We probably shouldn’t ask her to dog-sit for us

again.”

John Grogan

“No,” I answered. “That probably wouldn’t be

a good idea.”

Turning to Marley, I said, “The honeymoon’s

over, Chief. Starting tomorrow, you’re back in

training.”

The next morning Jenny and I both started back

to work. But first I slipped the choker chain

around Marley’s neck and took him for a walk. He

immediately lunged forward, not even pretending

to try to heel. “A little rusty, are we?” I asked, and

heaved with all my might on his leash, knocking

him off his paws. He righted himself, coughed,

and looked up at me with a wounded expression as

if to say, You don’t have to get rough about it.

Date: 2015-12-17; view: 826