Hey, I might be a dad twice over now, but the

women still notice me.Then she said, “Do you

know you have a Barney sticker in your hair?”

Complicating the sleep-deprived chaos that was

our lives, our new baby had us terribly worried.

Already underweight, Conor was unable to keep

nourishment down. Jenny was on a single-minded

quest to nurse him to robust health, and he

seemed equally intent on foiling her. She would

offer him her breast, and he would oblige her,

suckling hungrily. Then, in one quick heave, he

would throw it all up. She would nurse him again;

Marley & Me

he would eat ravenously, then empty his stomach

yet again. Projectile vomiting became an hourly

occurrence in our lives. Over and over the routine

repeated itself, each time Jenny becoming more

frantic. The doctors diagnosed reflux and referred

us to a specialist, who sedated our baby boy and

snaked a scope down his throat to scrutinize his

insides. Conor eventually would outgrow the con-

dition and catch up on his weight, but for four

long months we were consumed with worry over

him. Jenny was a basket case of fear and stress and

frustration, all exacerbated by lack of sleep, as she

nursed him nearly nonstop and then watched

helpless as he tossed her milk back at her. “I feel

so inadequate,” she would say. “Moms are sup-

posed to be able to give their babies everything

they need.” Her fuse was as short as I had seen it,

and the smallest infractions—a cupboard door left

open, crumbs on the counter—would set her off.

The good news was that Jenny never once took

out her anxiety on either baby. In fact, she nur-

tured both of them with almost obsessive care and

patience. She poured every ounce of herself into

them. The bad news was that she directed her

frustration and anger at me and even more at Mar-

ley. She had lost all patience with him. He was

squarely in her crosshairs and could do no right.

Each transgression—and there continued to be

John Grogan

many—pushed Jenny a little closer to the edge.

Oblivious, Marley stayed the course with his antics

and misdeeds and boundless ebullience. I bought a

flowering shrub and planted it in the garden to

commemorate Conor’s birth; Marley pulled it out

by the roots the same day and chewed it into

mulch. I finally got around to replacing the ripped

porch screen, and Marley, by now quite accus-

tomed to his self-made doggie door, promptly

dove through it again. He escaped one day and

when he finally returned, he had a pair of women’s

panties in his teeth. I didn’t want to know.

Despite the prescription tranquilizers, which

Jenny was feeding him with increasing frequency,

more for her sake than for his, Marley’s thunder

phobia grew more intense and irrational each day.

By now a soft shower would send him into a panic.

If we were home, he would merely glom on to us

and salivate nervously all over our clothes. If we

weren’t home, he sought safety in the same

warped way, by digging and gouging through

doors and plaster and linoleum. The more I re-

paired, the more he destroyed. I could not keep up

with him. I should have been furious, but Jenny

was angry enough for both of us. Instead, I started

covering for him. If I found a chewed shoe or

book or pillow, I hid the evidence before she could

find it. When he crashed through our small home,

Marley & Me

the bull in our china closet, I followed behind him,

straightening throw rugs, righting coffee tables,

and wiping up the spittle he flung on the walls.

Before Jenny discovered them, I would race to

vacuum up the wood chips in the garage where he

had gouged the door once again. I stayed up late

into the night patching and sanding so by morning

when Jenny awoke the latest damage would be

covered over. “For God’s sake, Marley, do you

have a death wish?” I said to him one night as he

stood at my side, tail wagging, licking my ear as I

knelt and repaired the most recent destruction.

“You’ve got to stop this.”

It was into this volatile environment that I

walked one evening. I opened the front door to

find Jenny beating Marley with her fists. She was

crying uncontrollably and flailing wildly at him,

more like she was pounding a kettledrum than im-

posing a beating, landing glancing blows on his

back and shoulders and neck. “Why? Why do you

do this?” she screamed at him. “Why do you

wreck everything?” In that instant I saw what he

had done. The couch cushion was gouged open,

the fabric shredded and the stuffing pulled out.

Marley stood with head down and legs splayed as

though leaning into a hurricane. He didn’t try to

flee or dodge the blows; he just stood there and

took each one without whimper or complaint.

John Grogan

“Hey! Hey! Hey!” I shouted, grabbing her

wrists. “Come on. Stop. Stop!” She was sobbing

and gasping for breath. “Stop,” I repeated.

I stepped between her and Marley and shoved

my face directly in front of hers. It was like a

stranger was staring back at me. I did not recog-

nize the look in her eyes. “Get him out of here,”

she said, her voice flat and tinged with a quiet

burn. “Get him out of here now.”

“Okay, I’ll take him out,” I said, “but you settle

down.”

“Get him out of here and keep him out of

here,” she said in an unsettling monotone.

I opened the front door and he bounded out-

side, and when I turned back to grab his leash off

the table, Jenny said, “I mean it. I want him gone.

I want him out of here for good.”

“Come on,” I said. “You don’t mean that.”

“I mean it,” she said. “I’m done with that dog.

You find him a new home, or I will.”

She couldn’t mean it. She loved this dog. She

adored him despite his laundry list of shortcom-

ings. She was upset; she was stressed to the break-

ing point. She would reconsider. For the moment I

thought it was best to give her time to cool down.

I walked out the door without another word. In

the front yard, Marley raced around, jumping into

the air and snapping his jaws, trying to bite the

Marley & Me

leash out of my hand. He was his old jolly self, ap-

parently no worse for the pummeling. I knew she

hadn’t hurt him. In all honesty, I routinely

whacked him much harder when I played rough

with him, and he loved it, always bounding back

for more. As was a hallmark of his breed, he was

immune to pain, an unstoppable machine of mus-

cle and sinew. Once when I was in the driveway

washing the car, he jammed his head into the

bucket of soapy water and galloped blindly off

across the front lawns with the bucket firmly stuck

over his head, not stopping until he crashed full

force into a concrete wall. It didn’t seem to faze

him. But slap him lightly on the rump with an

open palm in anger, or even just speak to him with

a stern voice, and he acted deeply wounded. For

the big dense oaf that he was, Marley had an in-

credibly sensitive streak. Jenny hadn’t hurt him

physically, not even close, but she had crushed his

feelings, at least for the moment. Jenny was every-

thing to him, one of his two best pals in the whole

world, and she had just turned on him. She was his

mistress and he her faithful companion. If she saw

fit to strike him, he saw fit to suck it up and take it.

As far as dogs went, he was not good at much; but

he was unquestionably loyal. It was my job now to

repair the damage and make things right again.

Out in the street, I hooked him to his leash and

John Grogan

ordered, “Sit!” He sat. I pulled the choker chain

up high on his throat in preparation for our walk.

Before I stepped off I ran my hand over his head

and massaged his neck. He flipped his nose in the

air and looked up at me, his tongue hanging

halfway down his neck. The incident with Jenny

appeared to be behind him; now I hoped it would

be behind her, as well. “What am I going to do

with you, you big dope?” I asked him. He leaped

straight up, as though outfitted with springs, and

smashed his tongue against my lips.

Marley and I walked for miles that evening, and

when I finally opened the front door, he was ex-

hausted and ready to collapse quietly in the cor-

ner. Jenny was feeding Patrick a jar of baby food

as she cradled Conor in her lap. She was calm and

appeared back to her old self. I unleashed Marley

and he took a huge drink, lapping lustily at the

water, sloshing little tidal waves over the side of

his bowl. I toweled up the floor and stole a glance

in Jenny’s direction; she appeared unperturbed.

Maybe the horrible moment had passed. Maybe

she had reconsidered. Maybe she felt sheepish

about her outburst and was searching for the

words to apologize. As I walked past her, Marley

close at my heels, she said in a calm, quiet voice

without looking at me, “I’m dead serious. I want

him out of here.”

Marley & Me

❉ ❉ ❉

Over the next several days she repeated the ulti-

matum enough times that I finally accepted that

this was not an idle threat. She wasn’t just blowing

off steam, and the issue was not going away. I was

sick about it. As pathetic as it sounds, Marley had

become my male-bonding soul mate, my near-

constant companion, my friend. He was the

undisciplined, recalcitrant, nonconformist, politi-

cally incorrect free spirit I had always wanted to

be, had I been brave enough, and I took vicarious

joy in his unbridled verve. No matter how compli-

cated life became, he reminded me of its simple

joys. No matter how many demands were placed

on me, he never let me forget that willful disobe-

dience is sometimes worth the price. In a world

full of bosses, he was his own master. The thought

of giving him up seared my soul. But I had two

children to worry about now and a wife whom we

needed. Our household was being held together

by the most tenuous of threads. If losing Marley

made the difference between meltdown and stabil-

ity, how could I not honor Jenny’s wishes?

I began putting out feelers, discreetly asking

friends and coworkers if they might be interested

in taking on a lovable and lively two-year-old

Labrador retriever. Through word of mouth, I

John Grogan

learned of a neighbor who adored dogs and

couldn’t refuse a canine in need. Even he said no.

Unfortunately, Marley’s reputation preceded him.

Each morning I opened the newspaper to the

classifieds as if I might find some miracle ad:

“Seeking wildly energetic, out-of-control

Labrador retriever with multiple phobias. De-

structive qualities a plus. Will pay top dollar.”

What I found instead was a booming trade in

young adult dogs that, for whatever reason, had

not worked out. Many were purebreds that their

owners had spent several hundred dollars for just

months earlier. Now they were being offered for a

pittance or even for free. An alarming number of

the unwanted dogs were male Labs.

The ads were in almost every day, and were at

once heartbreaking and hilarious. From my in-

sider’s vantage point, I recognized the attempts to

gloss over the real reasons these dogs were back on

the market. The ads were full of sunny eu-

phemisms for the types of behavior I knew all too

well. “Lively . . . loves people . . . needs big

yard . . . needs room to run . . . energetic . . .

spirited . . . powerful . . . one of a kind.” It all

added up to the same thing: a dog its master could

not control. A dog that had become a liability. A

dog its owner had given up on.

Part of me laughed knowingly; the ads were

Marley & Me

comical in their deception. When I read “fiercely

loyal” I knew the seller really meant “known to

bite.” “Constant companion” meant “suffers sep-

aration anxiety,” and “good watchdog” translated

to “incessant barker.” And when I saw “best of-

fer,” I knew too well that the desperate owner re-

ally was asking, “How much do I need to pay you

to take this thing off my hands?” Part of me ached

with sadness. I was not a quitter; I did not believe

Jenny was a quitter, either. We were not the kind

of people who pawned off our problems in the

classifieds. Marley was undeniably a handful. He

was nothing like the stately dogs both of us had

grown up with. He had a host of bad habits and

behaviors. Guilty as charged. He also had come a

great distance from the spastic puppy we had

brought home two years earlier. In his own flawed

way, he was trying. Part of our journey as his

owners was to mold him to our needs, but part

also was to accept him for what he was. Not just to

accept him, but to celebrate him and his in-

domitable canine spirit. We had brought into our

home a living, breathing being, not a fashion ac-

cessory to prop in the corner. For better or worse,

he was our dog. He was a part of our family, and,

for all his flaws, he had returned our affection one

hundredfold. Devotion such as his could not be

bought for any price.

John Grogan

I was not ready to give up on him.

Even as I continued to make halfhearted in-

quiries about finding Marley a new home, I began

working with him in earnest. My own private

Mission: Impossible was to rehabilitate this dog

and prove to Jenny he was worthy. Interrupted

sleep be damned, I began rising at dawn, buckling

Patrick into the jogging stroller, and heading down

to the water to put Marley through the paces. Sit.

Stay. Down. Heel. Over and over we practiced.

There was a desperation to my mission, and Mar-

ley seemed to sense it. The stakes were different

now; this was for real. In case he didn’t fully un-

derstand that, I spelled it out for him more than

once without mincing words: “We’re not screwing

around here, Marley. This is it. Let’s go.” And I

would put him through the commands again, with

my helper Patrick clapping and calling to his big

yellow friend, “Waddy! Hee-O!”

By the time I reenrolled Marley in obedience

school, he was a different dog from the juvenile

delinquent I had first shown up with. Yes, still as

wild as a boar, but this time he knew I was the boss

and he was the underling. This time there would

be no lunges toward other dogs (or at least not

many), no out-of-control surges across the tar-

mac, no crashing into strangers’ crotches.

Through eight weekly sessions, I marched him

Marley & Me

through the commands on a tight leash, and he

was happy—make that overjoyed—to cooperate.

At our final meeting, the trainer—a relaxed

woman who was the antithesis of Miss

Dominatrix—called us forward. “Okay,” she said,

“show us what you’ve got.”

I ordered Marley into a sit position, and he

dropped neatly to his haunches. I raised the

choker chain high around his throat and with a

crisp tug of the lead ordered him to heel. We trot-

ted across the parking lot and back, Marley at my

side, his shoulder brushing my calf, just as the

book said it should. I ordered him to sit again, and

I stood directly in front of him and pointed my

finger at his forehead. “Stay,” I said calmly, and

with the other hand I dropped his leash. I stepped

backward several paces. His big brown eyes fixed

on me, waiting for any small sign from me to re-

lease him, but he remained anchored. I walked in a

360-degree circle around him. He quivered with

excitement and tried to rotate his head, Linda

Blair–style, to watch me, but he did not budge.

When I was back in front of him, just for kicks, I

snapped my fingers and yelled, “Incoming!” He

hit the deck like he was storming Iwo Jima. The

teacher burst out laughing, a good sign. I turned

my back on him and walked thirty feet away. I

could feel his eyes burning into my back, but he

John Grogan

held fast. He was quaking violently by the time I

turned around to face him. The volcano was get-

ting ready to blow. Then, spreading my feet into a

wide boxer’s stance in anticipation of what was

coming, I said, “Marley . . .” I let his name hang

in the air for a few seconds. “Come!” He shot at

me with everything he had, and I braced for im-

pact. At the last instant I deftly sidestepped him

with a bullfighter’s grace, and he blasted past me,

then circled back and goosed me from behind with

his nose.

“Good boy, Marley,” I gushed, dropping to my

knees. “Good, good, good boy! You a good boy!”

He danced around me like we had just conquered

Mount Everest together.

At the end of the evening, the instructor called

us up and handed us our diploma. Marley had

passed basic obedience training, ranking seventh

in the class. So what if it was a class of eight and

the eighth dog was a psychopathic pit bull that

seemed intent on taking a human life at the first

opportunity? I would take it. Marley, my incorri-

gible, untrainable, undisciplined dog, had passed.

I was so proud I could have cried, and in fact I ac-

tually might have had Marley not leapt up and

promptly eaten his diploma.

On the way home, I sang “We Are the Champi-

ons” at the top of my lungs. Marley, sensing my

Marley & Me

joy and pride, stuck his tongue in my ear. For

once, I didn’t even mind.

There was still one piece of unfinished business

between Marley and me. I needed to break him of

his worst habit of all: jumping on people. It didn’t

matter if it was a friend or a stranger, a child or an

adult, the meter reader or the UPS driver. Marley

greeted them the same way—by charging at them

full speed, sliding across the floor, leaping up, and

planting his two front paws on the person’s chest

or shoulders as he licked their face. What had

been cute when he was a cuddly puppy had turned

obnoxious, even terrifying for some recipients of

his uninvited advances. He had knocked over chil-

dren, startled guests, dirtied our friends’ dress

shirts and blouses, and nearly taken down my frail

mother. No one appreciated it. I had tried without

success to break him of jumping up, using stan-

dard dog-obedience techniques. The message was

not getting through. Then a veteran dog owner I

respected said, “You want to break him of that,

give him a swift knee in the chest next time he

jumps up on you.”

“I don’t want to hurt him,” I said.

“You won’t hurt him. A few good jabs with your

knee, and I guarantee you he’ll be done jumping.”

John Grogan

It was tough-love time. Marley had to reform or

relocate. The next night when I arrived home

from work, I stepped in the front door and yelled,

“I’m home!” As usual, Marley came barreling

across the wood floors to greet me. He slid the last

ten feet as though on ice, then lifted off to smash

his paws into my chest and slurp at my face. Just as

his paws made contact with me, I gave one swift

pump of my knee, connecting in the soft spot just

below his rib cage. He gasped slightly and slid

down to the floor, looking up at me with a

wounded expression, trying to figure out what had

gotten into me. He had been jumping on me his

whole life; what was with the sudden sneak attack?

The next night I repeated the punishment. He

leapt, I kneed, he dropped to the floor, coughing. I

felt a little cruel, but if I were going to save him

from the classifieds, I knew I had to drive home

the point. “Sorry, guy,” I said, leaning down so he

could lick me with all four paws on the ground.

“It’s for your own good.”

The third night when I walked in, he came

charging around the corner, going into his typical

high-speed skid as he approached. This time,

however, he altered the routine. Instead of leap-

ing, he kept his paws on the ground and crashed

headfirst into my knees, nearly knocking me over.

I’d take that as a victory. “You did it, Marley! You

Marley & Me

did it! Good boy! You didn’t jump up.” And I got

on my knees so he could slobber me without risk-

ing a sucker punch. I was impressed. Marley had

bent to the power of persuasion.

The problem was not exactly solved, however.

He may have been cured of jumping on me, but he

was not cured of jumping on anyone else. The dog

was smart enough to figure out that only I posed a

threat, and he could still jump on the rest of the

human race with impunity. I needed to widen my

offensive, and to do that I recruited a good friend

of mine from work, a reporter named Jim Tolpin.

Jim was a mild-mannered, bookish sort, balding,

bespectacled, and of slight build. If there was

anyone Marley thought he could jump up on with-

out consequence, it was Jim. At the office one day

I laid out the plan. He was to come to the house

after work, ring the doorbell, and then walk in.

When Marley jumped up to kiss him, he was to

give him all he had. “Don’t be shy about it,” I

coached. “Subtlety is lost on Marley.”

That night Jim rang the bell and walked in the

door. Sure enough, Marley took the bait and raced

at him, ears flying back. When Marley left the

ground to leap up on him, Jim took my advice to

heart. Apparently worried he would be too timid,

he dealt a withering blow with his knee to Mar-

ley’s solar plexus, knocking the wind out of him.

John Grogan

The thud was audible across the room. Marley let

out a loud moan, went bug-eyed, and sprawled on

the floor.

“Jesus, Jim,” I said. “Have you been studying

kung fu?”

“You told me to make him feel it,” he answered.

He had. Marley got to his feet, caught his

breath, and greeted Jim the way a dog should—on

all four paws. If he could have talked, I swear he

would have cried uncle. Marley never again

jumped up on anyone, at least not in my presence,

and no one ever kneed him in the chest or any-

where else again.

One morning, not long after Marley abandoned

his jumping habit, I woke up and my wife was

back. My Jenny, the woman I loved who had dis-

appeared into that unyielding blue fog, had re-

turned to me. As suddenly as the postpartum

depression had swept over her, it swept away

again. It was as if she had been exorcised of her

demons. They were gone. Blessedly gone. She was

strong, she was upbeat, she was not only coping as

a young mother of two, but thriving. Marley was

back in her good graces, safely on solid ground.

With a baby in each arm, she leaned to kiss him.

She threw him sticks and made him gravy from

Marley & Me

hamburger drippings. She danced him around the

room when a good song came on the stereo. Some-

times at night when he was calm, I would find her

lying on the floor with him, her head resting on his

neck. Jenny was back. Thank God, she was back.

C H A P T E R 1 6

The Audition

❉

Some things in life are just too bizarre to be

anything but true, so when Jenny called me at

the office to tell me Marley was getting a film au-

dition, I knew she couldn’t be making it up. Still, I

was in disbelief. “A what?” I asked.

“A film audition.”

“Like for a movie?”

“Yes, like for a movie, dumbo,” she said. “A

feature-length movie.”

“Marley? A feature-length movie?”

We went on like this for some time as I tried to

reconcile the image of our lug-head chewer of

ironing boards with the image of a proud succes-

sor to Rin Tin Tin leaping across the silver screen,

pulling helpless children from burning buildings.

“Our Marley?” I asked one more time, just to

be sure.

John Grogan

It was true. A week earlier, Jenny’s supervisor at

the Palm Beach Postcalled and said she had a

friend who needed to ask a favor of us. The friend

was a local photographer named Colleen McGarr

who had been hired by a New York City film-

production company called the Shooting Gallery

to help with a movie they planned to make in Lake

Worth, the town just south of us. Colleen’s job

was to find a “quintessential South Florida house-

hold” and photograph it top to bottom—the

bookshelves, the refrigerator magnets, the closets,

you name it—to help the directors bring realism to

the film.

“The whole set crew is gay,” Jenny’s boss told

her. “They’re trying to figure out how married

couples with kids live around here.”

“Sort of like an anthropological case study,”

Jenny said.

“Exactly.”

“Sure,” Jenny agreed, “as long as I don’t have to

clean first.”

Colleen came over and started photographing,

not just our possessions but us, too. The way we

dressed, the way we wore our hair, the way we

slouched on the couch. She photographed tooth-

brushes on the sink. She photographed the babies

in their cribs. She photographed the quintessen-

tially heterosexual couple’s eunuch dog, too. Or at

Marley & Me

least what she could catch of him on film. As she

observed, “He’s a bit of a blur.”

Marley could not have been more thrilled to

participate. Ever since babies had invaded, Marley

took his affection where he could find it. Colleen

could have jabbed him with a cattle prod; as long

as he was getting some attention, he was okay with

it. Colleen, being a lover of large animals and not

intimidated by saliva showers, gave him plenty,

dropping to her knees to wrestle with him.

As Colleen clicked away, I couldn’t help think-

ing of the possibilities. Not only were we supply-

ing raw anthropological data to the filmmakers, we

were essentially being given our own personal

casting call. I had heard that most of the second-

ary actors and all of the extras for this film would

be hired locally. What if the director spotted a

natural star amid the kitchen magnets and poster

art? Stranger things had happened.

I could just picture the director, who in my fan-

tasy looked a lot like Steven Spielberg, bent over a

large table scattered with hundreds of photo-

graphs. He flips impatiently through them, mutter-

ing, “Garbage! Garbage! This just won’t do.” Then

he freezes over a single snapshot. In it a rugged yet

sensitive, quintessentially heterosexual male goes

about his family-man business. The director stubs

his finger heavily into the photo and shouts to his

John Grogan

assistants, “Get me this man! I must have him for

my film!” When they finally track me down, I at

first humbly demur before finally agreeing to take

the starring role. After all, the show must go on.

Colleen thanked us for opening our home to her

and left. She gave us no reason to believe she or

anyone else associated with the movie would be

calling back. Our duty was now fulfilled. But a

few days later when Jenny called me at work to say,

“I just got off the phone with Colleen McGarr,

and you are NOT going to believe it,” I had no

doubt whatsoever that I had just been discovered.

My heart leapt. “Go on,” I said.

“She says the director wants Marley to try out.”

“Marley?” I asked, certain I had misheard. She

didn’t seem to notice the dismay in my voice.

“Apparently, he’s looking for a big, dumb, loopy

dog to play the role of the family pet, and Marley

caught his eye.”

“Loopy?” I asked.

“That’s what Colleen says he wants. Big, dumb,

and loopy.”

Well, he had certainly come to the right place.

“Did Colleen mention if he said anything about

me?” I asked.

“No,” Jenny said. “Why would he?”

Colleen picked Marley up the next day. Know-

ing the importance of a good entrance, he came

Marley & Me

racing through the living room to greet her at full

bore, pausing only long enough to grab the nearest

pillow in his teeth because you never knew when a

busy film director might need a quick nap, and if

he did, Marley wanted to be ready.

When he hit the wood floor, he flew into a full

skid, which did not stop until he hit the coffee

table, went airborne, crashed into a chair, landed

on his back, rolled, righted himself, and collided

head-on with Colleen’s legs. At least he didn’t

jump up, I noted.

“Are you sure you don’t want us to sedate him?”

Jenny asked.

The director would want to see him in his un-

bridled, unmedicated state, Colleen insisted, and

off she went with our desperately happy dog be-

side her in her red pickup truck.

Two hours later Colleen and Company were

back and the verdict was in: Marley had passed the

audition. “Oh, shut up!” Jenny shrieked. “No

way!” Our elation was not dampened a bit when

Colleen told us Marley was the only one up for the

part. Nor when she broke the news that his would

be the only nonpaying role in the movie.

I asked her how the audition went.

“I got Marley in the car and it was like driving

in a Jacuzzi,” she said. “He was slobbering on

everything. By the time I got him there, I was

John Grogan

drenched.” When they arrived at production

headquarters at the GulfStream Hotel, a faded

tourist landmark from an earlier era overlooking

the Intracoastal Waterway, Marley immediately

impressed the crew by jumping out of the truck

and tearing around the parking lot in random pat-

terns as if expecting the aerial bombing to com-

mence at any moment. “He was just berserk,” she

recounted, “completely mental.”

“Yeah, he gets a little excited,” I said.

At one point, she said, Marley grabbed the

checkbook out of a crew member’s hand and

raced away, running a series of tight figure-eights

to nowhere, apparently determined this was one

way to guarantee a paycheck.

“We call him our Labrador evader,” Jenny apol-

ogized with the kind of smile only a proud mother

can give.

Marley eventually calmed down enough to con-

vince everyone he could do the part, which was

basically to just play himself. The movie was

called The Last Home Run,a baseball fantasy in

which a seventy-nine-year-old nursing home resi-

dent becomes a twelve-year-old for five days to

live his dream of playing Little League ball. Mar-

ley was cast as the hyperactive family dog of the

Little League coach, played by retired major-

league catcher Gary Carter.

Marley & Me

“They really want him to be in their movie?” I

asked, still incredulous.

“Everyone loved him,” Colleen said. “He’s

perfect.”

In the days leading up to shooting, we noticed a

certain subtle change in Marley’s bearing. A

strange calm had come over him. It was as if pass-

ing the audition had given him new confidence.

He was almost regal. “Maybe he just needed

someone to believe in him,” I told Jenny.

If anyone believed, it was her, Stage Mom Ex-

traordinaire. As the first day of filming ap-

proached, she bathed him. She brushed him. She

clipped his nails and swabbed out his ears.

On the morning shooting was to begin, I walked

out of the bedroom to find Jenny and Marley tan-

gled together as if locked in mortal combat,

bouncing across the room. She was straddling him

with her knees tightly hugging his ribs and one

hand grasping the end of his choker chain as he

bucked and lurched. It was like having a rodeo

right in my own living room. “What in God’s

name are you doing?” I asked.

“What’s it look like?” she shot back. “Brushing

his teeth!”

Sure enough, she had a toothbrush in the other

hand and was doing her best to scrub his big white

ivories as Marley, frothing prodigiously at the

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mouth, did his best to eat the toothbrush. He

looked positively rabid.

“Are you using toothpaste?” I asked, which of

course begged the bigger question, “And how ex-

actly do you propose getting him to spit it out?”

“Baking soda,” she answered.

“Thank God,” I said. “So it’s notrabies?”

An hour later we left for the GulfStream Hotel,

the boys in their car seats and Marley between

them, panting away with uncharacteristically fresh

breath. Our instructions were to arrive by 9:00

A.M., but a block away, traffic came to a standstill.

Up ahead the road was barricaded and a police of-

ficer was diverting traffic away from the hotel.

The filming had been covered at length in the

newspapers—the biggest event to hit sleepy Lake

Worth since Body Heatwas filmed there fifteen

years earlier—and a crowd of spectators had

turned out to gawk. The police were keeping

everyone away. We inched forward in traffic, and

when we finally got up to the officer I leaned out

the window and said, “We need to get through.”

“No one gets through,” he said. “Keep moving.

Let’s go.”

“We’re with the cast,” I said.

He eyed us skeptically, a couple in a minivan

with two toddlers and family pet in tow. “I said

move it!” he barked.

Marley & Me

“Our dog is in the film,” I said.

Suddenly he looked at me with new respect.

“You have the dog?” he asked. The dog was on his

checklist.

“I have the dog,” I said. “Marley the dog.”

“Playing himself,” Jenny chimed in.

He turned around and blew his whistle with

great fanfare. “He’s got the dog!” he shouted to a

cop a half block down. “Marley the Dog!”

And that cop in turn yelled to someone else,

“He’s got the dog! Marley the Dog’s here!”

“Let ’em through!” a third officer shouted from

the distance.

“Let ’em through!” the second cop echoed.

The officer moved the barricade and waved us

through. “Right this way,” he said politely. I felt like

royalty. As we rolled past him he said once again, as

if he couldn’t quite believe it, “He’s got the dog.”

In the parking lot outside the hotel, the film

crew was ready for action. Cables crisscrossed the

pavement; camera tripods and microphone booms

were set up. Lights hung from scaffolding. Trailers

held racks of costumes. Two large tables of food

and drinks were set up in the shade for cast and

crew. Important-looking people in sunglasses bus-

tled about. Director Bob Gosse greeted us and

gave us a quick rundown of the scene to come. It

was simple enough. A minivan pulls up to the

John Grogan

curb, Marley’s make-believe owner, played by the

actress Liza Harris, is at the wheel. Her daughter,

played by a cute teenager named Danielle from

the local performing-arts school, and son, another

local budding actor not older than nine, are in the

back with their family dog, played by Marley. The

daughter opens the sliding door and hops out; her

brother follows with Marley on a leash. They walk

off camera. End of scene.

“Easy enough,” I told the director. “He should

be able to handle that, no problem.” I pulled

Marley off to the side to wait for his cue to get

into the van.

“Okay, people, listen up,” Gosse told the crew.

“The dog’s a little nutty, all right? But unless he

completely hijacks the scene, we’re going to keep

rolling.” He explained his thinking: Marley was

the real thing—a typical family dog—and the goal

was to capture him behaving as a typical family dog

would behave on a typical family outing. No acting

or coaching; pure cinema verité. “Just let him do

his thing,” he coached, “and work around him.”

When everyone was set to go, I loaded Marley

into the van and handed his nylon leash to the lit-

tle boy, who looked terrified of him. “He’s

friendly,” I told him. “He’ll just want to lick you.

See?” I stuck my wrist into Marley’s mouth to

demonstrate.

Marley & Me

Take one: The van pulls to the curb. The instant

the daughter slides open the side door, a yellow

streak shoots out like a giant fur ball being fired

from a cannon and blurs past the cameras trailing

a red leash.

“Cut!”

I chased Marley down in the parking lot and

hauled him back.

“Okay, folks, we’re going to try that again,”

Gosse said. Then to the boy he coached gently, “The

dog’s pretty wild. Try to hold on tighter this time.”

Take two. The van pulls to the curb. The door

slides open. The daughter is just beginning to exit

when Marley huffs into view and leaps out past

her, this time dragging the white-knuckled and

white-faced boy behind him.

“Cut!”

Take three. The van pulls up. The door slides

open. The daughter exits. The boy exits, holding

the leash. As he steps away from the van the leash

pulls taut, stretching back inside, but no dog fol-

lows. The boy begins to tug, heave, and pull. He

leans into it and gives it everything he has. Not a

budge. Long, painfully empty seconds pass. The

boy grimaces and looks back at the camera.

“Cut!”

I peered into the van to find Marley bent over

licking himself where no male was ever meant to

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lick. He looked up at me as if to say, Can’t you see

I’m busy?

Take four: I load Marley into the back of the van

with the boy and shut the door. Before Gosse calls

“Action!” he breaks for a few minutes to confer

with his assistants. Finally, the scene rolls. The van

pulls to the curb. The door slides open. The daugh-

ter steps out. The boy steps out, but with a bewil-

dered look on his face. He peers directly into the

camera and holds up his hand. Dangling from it is

half the leash, its end jagged and wet with saliva.

“Cut! Cut! Cut!”

The boy explained that as he waited in the van,

Marley began gnawing on the leash and wouldn’t

stop. The crew and cast were staring at the severed

leash in disbelief, a mix of awe and horror on their

faces as though they had just witnessed some great

and mysterious force of nature. I, on the other

hand, was not surprised in the least. Marley had

sent more leashes and ropes to their graves than I

could count; he even managed to chew his way

through a rubber-coated steel cable that was adver-

tised “as used in the airline industry.” Shortly after

Conor was born, Jenny came home with a new

product, a doggie travel harness that allowed her to

buckle Marley into a car seat belt so he couldn’t

wander around the moving vehicle. In the first

ninety seconds using the new device, he managed

Marley & Me

to chew through not only the heavy harness itself

but the shoulder strap of our brand-new minivan.

“Okay, everybody, let’s take a break!” Gosse

called out. Turning to me, he asked—in an amaz-

ingly calm voice—“How quickly can you find a

new leash?” He didn’t have to tell me how much

each lost minute cost him as his union-scale actors

and crew sat idle.

“There’s a pet store a half mile from here,” I

said. “I can be back in fifteen minutes.”

“And this time get something he can’t chew

through,” he said.

I returned with a heavy chain leash that looked

like something a lion trainer might use, and the

filming continued, take after failed take. Each

scene was worse than the one before. At one point,

Danielle the teenage actress let out a desperate

shriek midscene and screamed with true horror in

her voice, “Oh my God! His thing is out!”

“Cut!”

In another scene, Marley was panting so loudly

at Danielle’s feet as she spoke on the telephone to

her love interest that the sound engineer flipped

off his headphones in disgust and complained

loudly, “I can’t hear a word she’s saying. All I hear

is heavy breathing. It sounds like a porn flick.”

“Cut!”

So went day 1 of shooting. Marley was a disas-

John Grogan

ter, unmitigated and without redemption. Part of

me was defensive—Well, what did they expect

for free? Benji?—and part was mortified. I self-

consciously stole glances at the cast and crew and

could see it plainly on their faces: Where did this

Date: 2015-12-17; view: 798