At a sidewalk café in Boca Raton, Florida?

Woodhouse had nailed our dog and our pa-

thetic, codependent existence. We had it all: the

hapless, weak-willed masters; the mentally unsta-

ble, out-of-control dog; the trail of destroyed

property; the annoyed and inconvenienced

strangers and neighbors. We were a textbook case.

“Congratulations, Marley,” I said to him. “You

qualify as subnormal.” He opened his eyes at the

sound of his name, stretched, and rolled onto his

back, paws in the air.

I was expecting Woodhouse to offer a cheery so-

lution for the owners of such defective merchan-

John Grogan

dise, a few helpful tips that, when properly exe-

cuted, could turn even the most manic of pets into

Westminster-worthy show dogs. But she ended

her book on a much darker note: “Only the own-

ers of unbalanced dogs can really know where the

line can be drawn between a dog that is sane and

one that is mentally unsound. No one can make up

the owner’s mind as to what to do with the last

kind. I, as a great dog lover, feel it is kinder to put

them to sleep.”

Put them to sleep?Gulp. In case she wasn’t

making herself clear, she added, “Surely, when all

training and veterinary help has been exhausted

and there is no hope that the dog will ever live a

reasonably normal existence, it is kinder to pet

and owner to put the dog to sleep.”

Even Barbara Woodhouse, lover of animals,

successful trainer of thousands of dogs their own-

ers had deemed hopeless, was conceding that

some dogs were simply beyond help. If it were up

to her, they would be humanely dispatched to that

great canine insane asylum in the sky.

“Don’t worry, big guy,” I said, leaning down to

scratch Marley’s belly. “The only sleep we’re go-

ing to be doing around this house is the kind you

get to wake up from.”

He sighed dramatically and drifted back to his

dreams of French poodles in heat.

Marley & Me

❉ ❉ ❉

It was around this same time that we also learned

not all Labs are created equal. The breed actually

has two distinct subgroups: English and Ameri-

can. The English line tends to be smaller and

stockier than the American line, with blockier

heads and gentle, calm dispositions. They are the

favored line for showing. Labs belonging to the

American line are noticeably larger and stronger,

with sleeker, less squat features. They are known

for their endless energy and high spirits and fa-

vored for use in the field as hunting and sports

dogs. The same qualities that make the American

line of Labs so unstoppably superb in the woods

makes them challenges in the family home. Their

exuberant energy level, the literature warned,

should not be underestimated.

As the brochure for a Pennsylvania retriever

breeder, Endless Mountain Labradors, explains it:

“So many people ask us, ‘What’s the difference

between the English and the American (field)

Labs?’ There is such a big difference that the AKC

is considering splitting the breed. There is a dif-

ference in build, as well as temperament. If you

are looking for strictly a field dog for field trial

competition, go for the American field dog. They

are athletic, tall, lanky, thin, but have VERY hy-

John Grogan

per, high-strung personalities, which do not lend

themselves to being the best ‘family dogs.’ On the

other hand, the English Labs are very blocky,

stocky, shorter in their build. Very sweet, quiet,

mellow, lovely dogs.”

It didn’t take me long to figure out which line

Marley belonged to. It was all beginning to make

sense. We had blindly picked out a type of Lab

best suited to stampeding across the open wilder-

ness all day. If that weren’t enough, our specific

choice just happened to be mentally unbalanced,

unwound, and beyond the reach of training, tran-

quilizers, or canine psychiatry. The kind of sub-

normal specimen an experienced dog trainer like

Barbara Woodhouse might just consider better off

dead. Great,I thought. Now we find out.

Not long after Woodhouse’s book opened our eyes

to Marley’s crazed mind, a neighbor asked us to

take in their cat for a week while they were on va-

cation. Sure, we said, bring him over. Compared

with a dog, cats were easy. Cats ran on autopilot,

and this cat in particular was shy and elusive, es-

pecially around Marley. He could be counted on to

hide beneath the couch all day and only come out

after we were asleep to eat his food, kept high out

Marley & Me

of Marley’s reach, and use the kitty-litter box,

which we tucked away in a discreet corner of the

screened patio that enclosed the pool. There was

nothing to it, really. Marley was totally unaware

the cat was even in the house.

Midway through the cat’s stay with us, I awoke

at dawn to a loud, driving beat resonating through

the mattress. It was Marley, quivering with excite-

ment beside the bed, his tail slapping the mattress

at a furious rate. Whomp! Whomp! Whomp!I

reached out to pet him, and that sent him into eva-

sive maneuvers. He was prancing and dancing be-

side the bed. The Marley Mambo. “Okay, what do

you have?” I asked him, eyes still shut. As if to an-

swer, Marley proudly plopped his prize onto the

crisp sheets, just inches from my face. In my

groggy state, it took me a minute to process what

exactly it was. The object was small, dark, of inde-

finable shape, and coated in a coarse, gritty sand.

Then the smell reached my nostrils. An acrid, pun-

gent, putrid smell. I bolted upright and pushed

backward against Jenny, waking her up. I pointed

at Marley’s gift to us, glistening on the sheets.

“That’s not . . .” Jenny began, revulsion in her

voice.

“Yes, it is,” I said. “He raided the kitty-litter

box.”

John Grogan

Marley couldn’t have looked more proud had he

just presented us with the Hope diamond. As Bar-

bara Woodhouse had so sagely predicted, our

mentally unstable, abnormal mutt had entered the

feces-eating stage of his life.

C H A P T E R 1 9

Lightning Strikes

❉

After Conor’s arrival, everyone we knew—

with the exception of my very Catholic par-

ents who were praying for dozens of little

Grogans—assumed we were done having children.

In the two-income, professional crowd in which

we ran, one child was the norm, two were consid-

ered a bit of an extravagance, and three were sim-

ply unheard-of. Especially given the difficult

pregnancy we had gone through with Conor, no

one could understand why we might want to sub-

ject ourselves to the messy process all over again.

But we had come a long way since our newlywed

days of killing houseplants. Parenthood became

us. Our two boys brought us more joy than we

ever thought anyone or anything possibly could.

They defined our life now, and while parts of us

missed the leisurely vacations, lazy Saturdays

John Grogan

reading novels, and romantic dinners that lingered

late into the night, we had come to find our pleas-

ures in new ways—in spilled applesauce and tiny

nose prints on windowpanes and the soft sym-

phony of bare feet padding down the hallway at

dawn. Even on the worst days, we usually man-

aged to find something to smile over, knowing by

now what every parent sooner or later figures out,

that these wondrous days of early parenthood—of

diapered bottoms and first teeth and incompre-

hensible jabber—are but a brilliant, brief flash in

the vastness of an otherwise ordinary lifetime.

We both rolled our eyes when my old-school

mother clucked at us, “Enjoy them while you can

because they’ll be grown up before you know it.”

Now, even just a few years into it, we were realiz-

ing she was right. Hers was a well-worn cliché but

one we could already see was steeped in truth. The

boys weregrowing up fast, and each week ended

another little chapter that could never again be re-

visited. One week Patrick was sucking his thumb,

the next he had weaned himself of it forever. One

week Conor was our baby in a crib; the next he

was a little boy using a toddler bed for a trampo-

line. Patrick was unable to pronounce the L

sound, and when women would coo over him, as

they often did, he would put his fists on his hips,

stick out his lip, and say, “Dos yadies are yaughing

Marley & Me

at me.” I always meant to get it on videotape, but

one day the L’s came out perfectly, and that was

that. For months we could not get Conor out of

his Superman pajamas. He would race through the

house, cape flapping behind him, yelling, “Me

Stupe Man!” And then it was over, another missed

video moment.

Children serve as impossible-to-ignore, in-

your-face timepieces, marking the relentless

march of one’s life through what otherwise might

seem an infinite sea of minutes, hours, days, and

years. Our babies were growing up faster than ei-

ther of us wanted, which partially explains why,

about a year after moving to our new house in

Boca, we began trying for our third. As I said to

Jenny, “Hey, we’ve got four bedrooms now; why

not?” Two tries was all it took. Neither of us

would admit we wanted a girl, but of course we

did, desperately so, despite our many pronounce-

ments during the pregnancy that having three

boys would be just great. When a sonogram finally

confirmed our secret hope, Jenny draped her arms

over my shoulders and whispered, “I’m so happy I

could give you a little girl.” I was so happy, too.

Not all our friends shared our enthusiasm. Most

met news of our pregnancy with the same blunt

question: “Did you mean to?” They just could not

believe a third pregnancy could be anything other

John Grogan

than an accident. If indeed it was not, as we in-

sisted, then they had to question our judgment.

One acquaintance went so far as to chastise Jenny

for allowing me to knock her up again, asking, in a

tone best reserved for someone who had just

signed over all her worldly possessions to a cult in

Guyana: “What wereyou thinking?”

We didn’t care. On January 9, 1997, Jenny gave

me a belated Christmas present: a pink-cheeked,

seven-pound baby girl, whom we named Colleen.

Our family only now felt like it was complete. If

the pregnancy for Conor had been a litany of

stress and worry, this pregnancy was textbook

perfect, and delivering at Boca Raton Community

Hospital introduced us to a whole new level of

pampered customer satisfaction. Just down the

hall from our room was a lounge with a free, all-

you-can-drink cappuccino station—so very Boca.

By the time the baby finally came, I was so jacked

up on frothy caffeine, I could barely hold my

hands still to snip the umbilical cord.

When Colleen was one week old, Jenny brought

her outside for the first time. The day was crisp

and beautiful, and the boys and I were in the front

yard, planting flowers. Marley was chained to a

tree nearby, happy to lie in the shade and watch

Marley & Me

the world go by. Jenny sat in the grass beside him

and placed the sleeping Colleen in a portable

bassinet on the ground between them. After sev-

eral minutes, the boys beckoned for Mom to come

closer to see their handiwork, and they led Jenny

and me around the garden beds as Colleen napped

in the shade beside Marley. We wandered behind

some large shrubbery from where we could still

see the baby but passersby on the street could not

see us. As we turned back, I stopped and mo-

tioned for Jenny to look out through the shrubs.

Out on the street, an older couple walking by had

stopped and were gawking at the scene in our

front yard with bewildered expressions. At first, I

wasn’t sure what had made them stop and stare.

Then it hit me: from their vantage point, all they

could see was a fragile newborn alone with a large

yellow dog, who appeared to be babysitting

single-handedly.

We lingered in silence, stifling giggles. There

was Marley, looking like an Egyptian sphinx, lying

with his front paws crossed, head up, panting con-

tentedly, every few seconds pushing his snout over

to sniff the baby’s head. The poor couple must

have thought they had stumbled on a case of felony

child neglect. No doubt the parents were out

drinking at a bar somewhere, having left the infant

alone in the care of the neighborhood Labrador re-

John Grogan

triever, who just might attempt to nurse the infant

at any second. As if he were in on the ruse, Marley

without prompting shifted positions and rested his

chin across the baby’s stomach, his head bigger

than her whole body, and let out a long sigh as if he

were saying, When are those two going to get

home?He appeared to be protecting her, and

maybe he was, though I’m pretty sure he was just

drinking in the scent of her diaper.

Jenny and I stood there in the bushes and ex-

changed grins. The thought of Marley as an infant

caregiver—Doggie Day Care—was just too good

to let go. I was tempted to wait there and see how

the scene would play out, but then it occurred to

me that one scenario might involve a 911 call to

the police. We had gotten away with storing Conor

out in the breezeway, but how would we explain

this one? (“Well, I know how it must look, Officer,

but he’s actually surprisingly responsible . . .”)

We stepped out of the bushes and waved to the

couple—and watched the relief wash over their

faces. Thank God, that baby hadn’t been thrown

to the dogs after all.

“You must really trust your dog,” the woman

said somewhat cautiously, betraying a belief that

dogs were fierce and unpredictable and had no

place that close to a defenseless newborn.

“He hasn’t eaten one yet,” I said.

Marley & Me

❉ ❉ ❉

Two months after Colleen arrived home I cele-

brated my fortieth birthday in a most inauspicious

manner, namely, by myself. The Big Four-O is

supposed to be a major turning point, the place in

life where you bid restless youth farewell and em-

brace the predictable comforts of middle age. If

any birthday merited a blowout celebration, it was

the fortieth, but not for me. We were now respon-

sible parents with three children; Jenny had a new

baby pressed to her breast. There were more im-

portant things to worry about. I arrived home

from work, and Jenny was tired and worn down.

After a quick meal of leftovers, I bathed the boys

and put them to bed while Jenny nursed Colleen.

By eight-thirty, all three children were asleep, and

so was my wife. I popped a beer and sat out on the

patio, staring into the iridescent blue water of the

lit swimming pool. As always, Marley was faith-

fully at my side, and as I scratched his ears, it oc-

curred to me that he was at about the same

turning point in life. We had brought him home

six years earlier. In dog years, that would put him

somewhere in his early forties now. He had crossed

unnoticed into middle age but still acted every bit

the puppy. Except for a string of stubborn ear in-

fections that required Dr. Jay’s repeated interven-

John Grogan

tion, he was healthy. He showed no signs whatso-

ever of growing up or winding down. I had never

thought of Marley as any kind of role model, but

sitting there sipping my beer, I was aware that

maybe he held the secret for a good life. Never

slow down, never look back, live each day with

adolescent verve and spunk and curiosity and

playfulness. If you think you’re still a young pup,

then maybe you are, no matter what the calendar

says. Not a bad philosophy for life, though I’d take

a pass on the part that involved vandalizing

couches and laundry rooms.

“Well, big guy,” I said, pressing my beer bottle

against his cheek in a kind of interspecies toast.

“It’s just you and me tonight. Here’s to forty.

Here’s to middle age. Here’s to running with the

big dogs right up until the end.” And then he, too,

curled up and went to sleep.

I was still moping about my solitary birthday a

few days later when Jim Tolpin, my old colleague

who had broken Marley of his jumping habit,

called unexpectedly and asked if I wanted to grab

a beer the next night, a Saturday. Jim had left the

newspaper business to pursue a law degree at

about the same time we moved to Boca Raton, and

we hadn’t spoken in months. “Sure,” I said, not

stopping to wonder why. Jim picked me up at six

Marley & Me

and took me to an English pub, where we quaffed

Bass ale and caught up on each other’s lives. We

were having a grand old time until the bartender

called out, “Is there a John Grogan here? Phone

for John Grogan.”

It was Jenny, and she sounded very upset and

stressed-out. “The baby’s crying, the boys are out

of control, and I just ripped my contact lens!” she

wailed into the phone. “Can you come home right

away?”

“Try to calm down,” I said. “Sit tight. I’ll be

right home.” I hung up, and the bartender gave

me a you-poor-sorry-henpecked-bastard kind of

a nod and simply said, “My sympathies, mate.”

“Come on,” Jim said. “I’ll drive you home.”

When we turned onto my block, both sides of

the street were lined with cars. “Somebody’s hav-

ing a party,” I said.

“Looks like it,” Jim answered.

“For God’s sakes,” I said when we reached the

house. “Look at that! Someone even parked in my

driveway. If that isn’t nerve.”

We blocked the offender in, and I invited Jim

inside. I was still griping about the inconsiderate

jerk who parked in my driveway when the front

door swung open. It was Jenny with Colleen in her

arms. She didn’t look upset at all. In fact, she had

John Grogan

a big grin on her face. Behind her stood a bagpipe

player in kilts. Good God! What have I walked in

on?Then I looked beyond the bagpipe player and

saw that someone had taken down the kiddy fence

around the pool and launched floating candles on

the water. The deck was crammed with several

dozen of my friends, neighbors, and coworkers.

Just as I was making the connection that all those

cars on the street belonged to all these people in

my house, they shouted in unison, “HAPPY

BIRTHDAY, OLD MAN!”

My wife had not forgotten after all.

When I was finally able to snap my jaw shut, I

took Jenny in my arms, kissed her on the cheek,

and whispered in her ear, “I’ll get you later for

this.”

Someone opened the laundry-room door look-

ing for the trash can, and out bounded Marley in

prime party mode. He swept through the crowd,

stole a mozzarella-and-basil appetizer off a tray,

lifted a couple of women’s miniskirts with his

snout, and made a break for the unfenced swim-

ming pool. I tackled him just as he was launch-

ing into his signature running belly flop and

dragged him back to solitary confinement.

“Don’t worry,” I said. “I’ll save you the left-

overs.”

Marley & Me

❉ ❉ ❉

It wasn’t long after the surprise party—a party

whose success was marked by the arrival of the

police at midnight to tell us to pipe down—that

Marley finally was able to find validation for his

intense fear of thunder. I was in the backyard on a

Sunday afternoon under brooding, darkening

skies, digging up a rectangle of grass to plant yet

another vegetable garden. Gardening was becom-

ing a serious hobby for me, and the better I got at

it, the more I wanted to grow. Slowly I was taking

over the entire backyard. As I worked, Marley

paced nervously around me, his internal barome-

ter sensing an impending storm. I sensed it, too,

but I wanted to get the project done and figured I

would work until I felt the first drops of rain. As I

dug, I kept glancing at the sky, watching an omi-

nous black thunderhead forming several miles to

the east, out over the ocean. Marley was whining

softly, beckoning me to put down the shovel and

head inside. “Relax,” I told him. “It’s still miles

away.”

The words had barely left my lips when I felt a

previously unknown sensation, a kind of quiver-

ing tingle on the back of my neck. The sky had

turned an odd shade of olive gray, and the air

John Grogan

seemed to go suddenly dead as though some heav-

enly force had grabbed the winds and frozen them

in its grip. Weird,I thought as I paused, leaning

on my shovel to study the sky. That’s when I heard

it: a buzzing, popping, crackling surge of energy,

similar to what you sometimes can hear standing

beneath high-tension power lines. A sort of

pffffffffffftsound filled the air around me, fol-

lowed by a brief instant of utter silence. In that

instant, I knew trouble was coming, but I had no

time to react. In the next fraction of a second, the

sky went pure, blindingly white, and an explosion,

the likes of which I had never heard before, not in

any storm, at any fireworks display, at any demoli-

tion site, boomed in my ears. A wall of energy hit

me in the chest like an invisible linebacker. When I

opened my eyes who knows how many seconds

later, I was lying facedown on the ground, sand in

my mouth, my shovel ten feet away, rain pelting

me. Marley was down, too, in his hit-the-deck

stance, and when he saw me raise my head he wig-

gled desperately toward me on his belly like a sol-

dier trying to slide beneath barbed wire. When he

reached me he climbed right on my back and

buried his snout in my neck, frantically licking

me. I looked around for just a second, trying to get

my bearings, and I could see where the lightning

had struck the power-line pole in the corner of

Marley & Me

the yard and followed the wire down to the house

about twenty feet from where I had been standing.

The electrical meter on the wall was in charred

ruins.

“Come on!” I yelled, and then Marley and I

were on our feet, sprinting through the downpour

toward the back door as new bolts of lightning

flashed around us. We did not stop until we were

safely inside. I knelt on the floor, soaking wet,

catching my breath, and Marley clambered on me,

licking my face, nibbling my ears, flinging spit and

loose fur all over everything. He was beside him-

self with fear, shaking uncontrollably, drool hang-

ing off his chin. I hugged him, tried to calm him

down. “Jesus, that was close!” I said, and realized

that I was shaking, too. He looked up at me with

those big empathetic eyes that I swore could al-

most talk. I was sure I knew what he was trying to

tell me. I’ve been trying to warn you for years

Date: 2015-12-17; view: 592