Dog we have never seen before and have no

knowledge of is sad.But I just pulled my maga-

zine higher over my face, following the advice of

the immortal Richard Milhous Nixon: plausible

deniability. The jet engines whined and the plane

taxied down the runway, drowning out Marley’s

dirge. I pictured him down below in the dark hold,

alone, scared, confused, stoned, not even able to

fully stand up. I imagined the roaring engines,

which in Marley’s warped mind might be just an-

other thunderous assault by random lightning

bolts determined to take him out. The poor guy. I

wasn’t willing to admit he was mine, but I knew I

would be spending the whole flight worrying

about him.

The airplane was barely off the ground when I

heard another little crash, and this time it was

Conor who said, “Oops.” I looked down and then,

Marley & Me

once again, stared straight into my magazine.

Plausible deniability.After several seconds, I

furtively glanced around. When I was pretty sure

no one was staring, I leaned forward and whis-

pered into Jenny’s ear: “Don’t look now, but the

crickets are loose.”

C H A P T E R 2 2

In the Land of Pencils

❉

We settled into a rambling house on two

acres perched on the side of a steep hill.

Or perhaps it was a small mountain; the locals

seemed to disagree on this point. Our property

had a meadow where we could pick wild raspber-

ries, a woods where I could chop logs to my heart’s

content, and a small, spring-fed creek where the

kids and Marley soon found they could get excep-

tionally muddy. There was a fireplace and endless

garden possibilities and a white-steepled church

on the next hill, visible from our kitchen window

when the leaves dropped in the fall.

Our new home even came with a neighbor right

out of Central Casting, an orange-bearded bear of

a man who lived in a 1790s stone farmhouse and

on Sundays enjoyed sitting on his back porch and

shooting his rifle into the woods just for fun, much

John Grogan

to Marley’s unnerved dismay. On our first day in

our new house, he walked over with a bottle of

homemade wild-cherry wine and a basket of the

biggest blackberries I had ever seen. He intro-

duced himself as Digger. As we surmised from the

nickname, Digger made his living as an excavator.

If we had any holes we needed dug or earth we

wanted moved, he instructed, we were to just give

a shout and he’d swing by with one of his big ma-

chines. “And if you hit a deer with your car, come

get me,” he said with a wink. “We’ll butcher it up

and split the meat before the game officer knows a

thing.” No doubt about it, we weren’t in Boca

anymore.

There was only one thing missing from our new

bucolic existence. Minutes after we pulled into the

driveway of our new house, Conor looked up at

me, big tears rolling out of his eyes, and declared:

“I thought there were going to be pencils in Pen-

cilvania.” For our boys, now ages seven and five,

this was a near deal breaker. Given the name of

the state we were adopting, both of them arrived

fully expecting to see bright yellow writing imple-

ments hanging like berries from every tree and

shrub, there for the plucking. They were crushed

to learn otherwise.

What our property lacked in school supplies, it

made up for in skunks, opossums, woodchucks,

Marley & Me

and poison ivy, which flourished along the edge of

our woods and snaked up the trees, giving me hives

just to look at it. One morning I glanced out the

kitchen window as I fumbled with the coffeemaker

and there staring back at me was a magnificent

eight-point buck. Another morning a family of

wild turkeys gobbled its way across the backyard.

As Marley and I walked through the woods down

the hill from our house one Saturday, we came

upon a mink trapper laying snares. A mink trap-

per! Almost in my backyard! What the Bocahontas

set would have given for that connection.

Living in the country was at once peaceful,

charming—and just a little lonely. The Pennsylva-

nia Dutch were polite but cautious of outsiders.

And we were definitely outsiders. After South

Florida’s legion crowds and lines, I should have

been ecstatic about the solitude. Instead, at least in

the early months, I found myself darkly ruminat-

ing over our decision to move to a place where so

few others apparently wanted to live.

Marley, on the other hand, had no such misgiv-

ings. Except for the crack of Digger’s gun going

off, the new country lifestyle fit him splendidly.

For a dog with more energy than sense, what

wasn’t to like? He raced across the lawn, crashed

through the brambles, splashed through the creek.

His life’s mission was to catch one of the countless

John Grogan

rabbits that considered my garden their own per-

sonal salad bar. He would spot a rabbit munching

the lettuce and barrel off down the hill in hot pur-

suit, ears flapping behind him, paws pounding the

ground, his bark filling the air. He was about as

stealthy as a marching band and never got closer

than a dozen feet before his intended prey scam-

pered off into the woods to safety. True to his

trademark, he remained eternally optimistic that

success waited just around the bend. He would

loop back, tail wagging, not discouraged in the

least, and five minutes later do it all over again.

Fortunately, he was no better at sneaking up on

the skunks.

Autumn came and with it a whole new mischie-

vous game: Attack the Leaf Pile. In Florida, trees

did not shed their leaves in the fall, and Marley

was positively convinced the foliage drifting down

from the skies now was a gift meant just for him.

As I raked the orange and yellow leaves into giant

heaps, Marley would sit and watch patiently, bid-

ing his time, waiting until just the right moment to

strike. Only after I had gathered a mighty tower-

ing pile would he slink forward, crouched low.

Every few steps, he would stop, front paw raised,

to sniff the air like a lion on the Serengeti stalking

an unsuspecting gazelle. Then, just as I leaned on

Marley & Me

my rake to admire my handiwork, he would lunge,

charging across the lawn in a series of bounding

leaps, flying for the last several feet and landing in

a giant belly flop in the middle of the pile, where

he growled and rolled and flailed and scratched

and snapped, and, for reasons not clear to me,

fiercely chased his tail, not stopping until my neat

leaf pile was scattered across the lawn again. Then

he would sit up amid hishandiwork, the shredded

remains of leaves clinging to his fur, and give me a

self-satisfied look, as if his contribution were an

integral part of the leaf-gathering process.

Our first Christmas in Pennsylvania was supposed

to be white. Jenny and I had had to do a sales job

on Patrick and Conor to convince them that leav-

ing their home and friends in Florida was for the

best, and one of the big selling points was the

promise of snow. Not just any kind of snow, but

deep, fluffy, made-for-postcards snow, the kind

that fell from the sky in big silent flakes, piled into

drifts, and was of just the right consistency for

shaping into snowmen. And snow for Christmas

Day, well, that was best of all, the Holy Grail of

northern winter experiences. We wantonly spun a

Currier and Ives image for them of waking up on

John Grogan

Christmas morning to a starkly white landscape,

unblemished except for the solitary tracks of

Santa’s sleigh outside our front door.

In the week leading up to the big day, the three

of them sat in the window together for hours,

their eyes glued on the leaden sky as if they could

will it to open and discharge its load. “Come on,

snow!” the kids chanted. They had never seen it;

Jenny and I hadn’t seen it for the last quarter of

our lives. We wanted snow, but the clouds would

not give it up. A few days before Christmas, the

whole family piled into the minivan and drove to a

farm a half mile away where we cut a spruce tree

and enjoyed a free hayride and hot apple cider

around a bonfire. It was the kind of classic north-

ern holiday moment we had missed in Florida, but

one thing was absent. Where was the damn snow?

Jenny and I were beginning to regret how reck-

lessly we had hyped the inevitable first snowfall.

As we hauled our fresh-cut tree home, the sweet

scent of its sap filling the van, the kids complained

about getting gypped. First no pencils, now no

snow; what else had their parents lied to them

about?

Christmas morning found a brand-new tobog-

gan beneath the tree and enough snow gear to

outfit an excursion to Antarctica, but the view out

our windows remained all bare branches, dor-

Marley & Me

mant lawns, and brown cornfields. I built a cheery

fire in the fireplace and told the children to be pa-

tient. The snow would come when the snow

would come.

New Year’s arrived and still it did not come.

Even Marley seemed antsy, pacing and gazing out

the windows, whimpering softly, as if he too felt

he had been sold a bill of goods. The kids re-

turned to school after the holiday, and still noth-

ing. At the breakfast table they gazed sullenly at

me, the father who had betrayed them. I began

making lame excuses, saying things like “Maybe

little boys and girls in some other place need the

snow more than we do.”

“Yeah, right, Dad,” Patrick said.

Three weeks into the new year, the snow finally

rescued me from my purgatory of guilt. It came

during the night after everyone was asleep, and

Patrick was the first to sound the alarm, running

into our bedroom at dawn and yanking open the

blinds. “Look! Look!” he squealed. “It’s here!”

Jenny and I sat up in bed to behold our vindica-

tion. A white blanket covered the hillsides and

cornfields and pine trees and rooftops, stretching

to the horizon. “Of course, it’s here,” I answered

nonchalantly. “What did I tell you?”

The snow was nearly a foot deep and still com-

ing down. Soon Conor and Colleen came chugging

John Grogan

down the hall, thumbs in mouths, blankies trailing

behind them. Marley was up and stretching, bang-

ing his tail into everything, sensing the excite-

ment. I turned to Jenny and said, “I guess going

back to sleep isn’t an option,” and when she con-

firmed it was not, I turned to the kids and

shouted, “Okay, snow bunnies, let’s suit up!”

For the next half hour we wrestled with zippers

and leggings and buckles and hoods and gloves. By

the time we were done, the kids looked like mum-

mies and our kitchen like the staging area for the

Winter Olympics. And competing in the Goof on

Ice Downhill Competition, Large Canine Divi-

sion, was . . . Marley the Dog. I opened the front

door and before anyone else could step out, Mar-

ley blasted past us, knocking the well-bundled

Colleen over in the process. The instant his paws

hit the strange white stuff—Ah, wet! Ah, cold!—

he had second thoughts and attempted an abrupt

about-face. As anyone who has ever driven a car in

snow knows, sudden braking coupled with tight

U-turns is never a good idea.

Marley went into a full skid, his rear end spin-

ning out in front of him. He dropped down on one

flank briefly before bouncing upright again just in

time to somersault down the front porch steps and

headfirst into a snowdrift. When he popped back

Marley & Me

up a second later, he looked like a giant powdered

doughnut. Except for a black nose and two brown

eyes, he was completely dusted in white. The

Abominable Snowdog. Marley did not know what

to make of this foreign substance. He jammed his

nose deep into it and let loose a violent sneeze. He

snapped at it and rubbed his face in it. Then, as if

an invisible hand reached down from the heavens

and jabbed him with a giant shot of adrenaline, he

took off at full throttle, racing around the yard in

a series of giant, loping leaps interrupted every

several feet by a random somersault or nosedive.

Snow was almost as much fun as raiding the

neighbors’ trash.

To follow Marley’s tracks in the snow was to be-

gin to understand his warped mind. His path was

filled with abrupt twists and turns and about-

faces, with erratic loops and figure-eights, with

corkscrews and triple lutzes, as though he were

following some bizarre algorithm that only he

could understand. Soon the kids were taking his

lead, spinning and rolling and frolicking, snow

packing into every crease and crevice of their out-

erwear. Jenny came out with buttered toast, mugs

of hot cocoa, and an announcement: school was

canceled. I knew there was no way I was getting

my little two-wheel-drive Nissan out the driveway

John Grogan

anytime soon, let alone up and down the un-

plowed mountain roads, and I declared an official

snow day for me, too.

I scraped the snow away from the stone circle I

had built that fall for backyard campfires and soon

had a crackling blaze going. The kids glided

screaming down the hill in the toboggan, past the

campfire and to the edge of the woods, Marley

chasing behind them. I looked at Jenny and asked,

“If someone had told you a year ago that your kids

would be sledding right out their back door, would

you have believed them?”

“Not a chance,” she said, then wound up and

unleashed a snowball that thumped me in the

chest. The snow was in her hair, a blush in her

cheeks, her breath rising in a cloud above her.

“Come here and kiss me,” I said.

Later, as the kids warmed themselves by the

fire, I decided to try a run on the toboggan, some-

thing I hadn’t done since I was a teenager. “Care to

join me?” I asked Jenny.

“Sorry, Jean Claude, you’re on your own,” she

said.

I positioned the toboggan at the top of the hill

and lay back on it, propped up on my elbows, my

feet tucked inside its nose. I began rocking to get

moving. Not often did Marley have the opportu-

nity to look down at me, and having me prone like

Marley & Me

that was tantamount to an invitation. He sidled up

to me and sniffed my face. “What do you want?” I

asked, and that was all the welcome he needed. He

clambered aboard, straddling me and dropping

onto my chest. “Get off me, you big lug!” I

screamed. But it was too late. We were already

creeping forward, gathering speed as we began

our descent.

“Bon voyage!” Jenny yelled behind us.

Off we went, snow flying, Marley plastered on

top of me, licking me lustily all over my face as we

careered down the slope. With our combined

weight, we had considerably more momentum

than the kids had, and we barreled past the point

where their tracks petered out. “Hold on, Mar-

ley!” I screamed. “We’re going into the woods!”

We shot past a large walnut tree, then between

two wild cherry trees, miraculously avoiding all

unyielding objects as we crashed through the un-

derbrush, brambles tearing at us. It suddenly oc-

curred to me that just up ahead was the bank

leading down several feet to the creek, still un-

frozen. I tried to kick my feet out to use as brakes,

but they were stuck. The bank was steep, nearly a

sheer drop-off, and we were going over. I had time

only to wrap my arms around Marley, squeeze my

eyes shut, and yell, “Whoaaaaaa!”

Our toboggan shot over the bank and dropped

John Grogan

out from beneath us. I felt like I was in one of

those classic cartoon moments, suspended in

midair for an endless second before falling to ru-

inous injury. Only in this cartoon I was welded to a

madly salivating Labrador retriever. We clung to

each other as we crash-landed into a snowbank

with a soft poofand, hanging half off the tobog-

gan, slid to the water’s edge. I opened my eyes and

took stock of my condition. I could wiggle my toes

and fingers and rotate my neck; nothing was bro-

ken. Marley was up and prancing around me, ea-

ger to do it all over again. I stood up with a groan

and, brushing myself off, said, “I’m getting too

old for this stuff.” In the months ahead it would

become increasingly obvious that Marley was, too.

Sometime toward the end of that first winter in

Pennsylvania I began to notice Marley had moved

quietly out of middle age and into retirement. He

had turned nine that December, and ever so

slightly he was slowing down. He still had his

bursts of unbridled, adrenaline-pumped energy,

as he did on the day of the first snowfall, but they

were briefer now and farther apart. He was con-

tent to snooze most of the day, and on walks he

tired before I did, a first in our relationship. One

late-winter day, the temperature above freezing

Marley & Me

and the scent of spring thaw in the air, I walked

him down our hill and up the next one, even

steeper than ours, where the white church perched

on the crest beside an old cemetery filled with

Civil War veterans. It was a walk I took often and

one that even the previous fall Marley had made

without visible effort, despite the angle of the

climb, which always got us both panting. This

time, though, he was falling behind. I coaxed him

along, calling out words of encouragement, but it

was like watching a toy slowly wind down as its

battery went dead. Marley just did not have the

oomph needed to make it to the top. I stopped to

let him rest before continuing, something I had

never had to do before. “You’re not going soft on

me, are you?” I asked, leaning over and stroking

his face with my gloved hands. He looked up at

me, his eyes bright, his nose wet, not at all con-

cerned about his flagging energy. He had a con-

tented but tuckered-out look on his face, as

though life got no better than this, sitting along

the side of a country road on a crisp late-winter’s

day with your master at your side. “If you think

I’m carrying you,” I said, “forget it.”

The sun bathed over him, and I noticed just

how much gray had crept into his tawny face. Be-

cause his fur was so light, the effect was subtle but

undeniable. His whole muzzle and a good part of

John Grogan

his brow had turned from buff to white. Without

us quite realizing it, our eternal puppy had be-

come a senior citizen.

That’s not to say he was any better behaved.

Marley was still up to all his old antics, simply at a

more leisurely pace. He still stole food off the

children’s plates. He still flipped open the lid of

the kitchen trash can with his nose and rummaged

inside. He still strained at his leash. Still swallowed

a wide assortment of household objects. Still

drank out of the bathtub and trailed water from

his gullet. And when the skies darkened and thun-

der rumbled, he still panicked and, if alone,

turned destructive. One day we arrived home to

find Marley in a lather and Conor’s mattress

splayed open down to the coils.

Over the years, we had become philosophical

about the damage, which had become much less

frequent now that we were away from Florida’s

daily storm patterns. In a dog’s life, some plaster

would fall, some cushions would open, some rugs

would shred. Like any relationship, this one had

its costs. They were costs we came to accept and

balance against the joy and amusement and pro-

tection and companionship he gave us. We could

have bought a small yacht with what we spent on

our dog and all the things he destroyed. Then

again, how many yachts wait by the door all day

Marley & Me

for your return? How many live for the moment

they can climb in your lap or ride down the hill

with you on a toboggan, licking your face?

Marley had earned his place in our family. Like a

quirky but beloved uncle, he was what he was. He

would never be Lassie or Benji or Old Yeller; he

would never reach Westminster or even the county

fair. We knew that now. We accepted him for the

dog he was, and loved him all the more for it.

“You old geezer,” I said to him on the side of

the road that late-winter day, scruffing his neck.

Our goal, the cemetery, was still a steep climb

ahead. But just as in life, I was figuring out, the

destination was less important than the journey. I

dropped to one knee, running my hands down his

sides, and said, “Let’s just sit here for a while.”

When he was ready, we turned back down the hill

and poked our way home.

C H A P T E R 2 3

Poultry on Parade

❉

That spring we decided to try our hand at ani-

mal husbandry. We owned two acres in the

country now; it only seemed right to share it with

a farm animal or two. Besides, I was editor of Or-

ganic Gardening,a magazine that had long cele-

brated the incorporation of animals—and their

manure—into a healthy, well-balanced garden. “A

cow would be fun,” Jenny suggested.

“A cow?” I asked. “Are you crazy? We don’t

even have a barn; how can we have a cow? Where

do you suggest we keep it, in the garage next to

the minivan?”

“How about sheep?” she said. “Sheep are

cute.” I shot her my well-practiced you’re-not-

being-practical look.

“A goat? Goats are adorable.”

In the end we settled on poultry. For any gar-

John Grogan

dener who has sworn off chemical pesticides and

fertilizers, chickens made a lot of sense. They

were inexpensive and relatively low-maintenance.

They needed only a small coop and a few cups of

cracked corn each morning to be happy. Not only

did they provide fresh eggs, but, when let loose to

roam, they spent their days studiously scouring

the property, eating bugs and grubs, devouring

ticks, scratching up the soil like efficient little ro-

totillers, and fertilizing with their high-nitrogen

droppings as they went. Each evening at dusk they

returned to their coop on their own. What wasn’t

to like? A chicken was an organic gardener’s best

friend. Chickens made perfect sense. Besides, as

Jenny pointed out, they passed the cuteness test.

Chickens it was. Jenny had become friendly

with a mom from school who lived on a farm and

said she’d be happy to give us some chicks from

the next clutch of eggs to hatch. I told Digger

about our plans, and he agreed a few hens around

the place made sense. Digger had a large coop of

his own in which he kept a flock of chickens for

both eggs and meat.

“Just one word of warning,” he said, folding his

meaty arms across his chest. “Whatever you do,

don’t let the kids name them. Once you name ’em,

they’re no longer poultry, they’re pets.”

Marley & Me

“Right,” I said. Chicken farming, I knew, had

no room for sentimentality. Hens could live fifteen

years or more but only produced eggs in their first

couple of years. When they stopped laying, it was

time for the stewing pot. That was just part of

managing a flock.

Digger looked hard at me, as if divining what I

was up against, and added, “Once you name

them, it’s all over.”

“Absolutely,” I agreed. “No names.”

The next evening I pulled into the driveway

from work, and the three kids raced out of the

house to greet me, each cradling a newborn chick.

Jenny was behind them with a fourth in her hands.

Her friend, Donna, had brought the baby birds

over that afternoon. They were barely a day old

and peered up at me with cocked heads as if to

ask, “Are you my mama?”

Patrick was the first to break the news. “I

named mine Feathers!” he proclaimed.

“Mine is Tweety,” said Conor.

“My wicka Wuffy,” Colleen chimed in.

I shot Jenny a quizzical look.

“Fluffy,” Jenny said. “She named her chicken

Fluffy.”

“Jenny,” I protested. “What did Digger tell us?

These are farm animals, not pets.”

John Grogan

“Oh, get real, Farmer John,” she said. “You

know as well as I do that you could never hurt one

of these. Just look at how cute they are.”

“Jenny,” I said, the frustration rising in my

voice.

“By the way,” she said, holding up the fourth

chick in her hands, “meet Shirley.”

Feathers, Tweety, Fluffy, and Shirley took up

residence in a box on the kitchen counter, a light-

bulb dangling above them for warmth. They ate

and they pooped and they ate some more—and

grew at a breathtaking pace. Several weeks after

we brought the birds home, something jolted me

awake before dawn. I sat up in bed and listened.

From downstairs came a weak, sickly call. It was

croaky and hoarse, more like a tubercular cough

than a proclamation of dominance. It sounded

again: Cock-a-doodle-do!A few seconds ticked

past and then came an equally sickly, but distinct,

reply: Rook-ru-rook-ru-roo!

I shook Jenny and, when she opened her eyes,

asked: “When Donna brought the chicks over, you

did ask her to check to make sure they were hens,

right?”

“You mean you can do that?” she asked, and

rolled back over, sound asleep.

It’s called sexing. Farmers who know what they

are doing can inspect a newborn chicken and de-

Marley & Me

termine, with about 80 percent accuracy, whether

it is male or female. At the farm store, sexed

chicks command a premium price. The cheaper

option is to buy “straight run” birds of unknown

gender. You take your chances with straight run,

the idea being that the males will be slaughtered

young for meat and the hens will be kept to lay

eggs. Playing the straight-run gamble, of course,

assumes you have what it takes to kill, gut, and

pluck any excess males you might end up with. As

anyone who has ever raised chickens knows, two

roosters in a flock is one rooster too many.

As it turned out, Donna had not attempted to

sex our four chicks, and three of our four “laying

hens” were males. We had on our kitchen counter

the poultry equivalent of Boys Town U.S.A. The

thing about roosters is they’re never content to

play second chair to any other rooster. If you had

equal numbers of roosters and hens, you might

think they would pair off into happy little Ozzie

and Harriet–style couples. But you would be

wrong. The males will fight endlessly, bloodying

one another gruesomely, to determine who will

dominate the roost. Winner takes all.

As they grew into adolescents, our three roost-

ers took to posturing and pecking and, most dis-

tressing considering they were still in our kitchen

as I raced to finish their coop in the backyard,

John Grogan

crowing their testosterone-pumped hearts out.

Shirley, our one poor, overtaxed female, was get-

ting way more attention than even the most lusty

of women could want.

I had thought the constant crowing of our

roosters would drive Marley insane. In his

younger years, the sweet chirp of a single tiny

songbird in the yard would set him off on a fre-

netic barking jag as he raced from one window to

the next, hopping up and down on his hind legs.

Three crowing roosters a few steps from his food

bowl, however, had no effect on him at all. He

didn’t seem to even know they were there. Each

day the crowing grew louder and stronger, rising

up from the kitchen to echo through the house at

five in the morning. Cock-a-doodle-dooooo!

Marley slept right through the racket. That’s

when it first occurred to me that maybe he wasn’t

just ignoring the crowing; maybe he couldn’t hear

it. I walked up behind him one afternoon as he

snoozed in the kitchen and said, “Marley?” Noth-

ing. I said it louder: “Marley!” Nothing. I clapped

my hands and shouted, “MARLEY!” He lifted his

head and looked blankly around, his ears up, try-

ing to figure out what it was his radar had de-

tected. I did it again, clapping loudly and shouting

his name. This time he turned his head enough to

catch a glimpse of me standing behind him. Oh,

Marley & Me

it’s you!He bounced up, tail wagging, happy—

and clearly surprised—to see me. He bumped up

against my legs in greeting and gave me a sheepish

look as if to ask, What’s the idea sneaking up on

me like that?My dog, it seemed, was going deaf.

It all made sense. In recent months Marley

seemed to simply ignore me in a way he never had

before. I would call for him and he would not so

much as glance my way. I would take him outside

before turning in for the night, and he would sniff

his way across the yard, oblivious to my whistles

and calls to get him to turn back. He would be

asleep at my feet in the family room when some-

one would ring the doorbell—and he would not so

much as open an eye.

Marley’s ears had caused him problems from an

early age. Like many Labrador retrievers, he was

predisposed to ear infections, and we had spent a

small fortune on antibiotics, ointments, cleansers,

drops, and veterinarian visits. He even underwent

surgery to shorten his ear canals in an attempt to

correct the problem. It had not occurred to me

until after we brought the impossible-to-ignore

roosters into our house that all those years of

problems had taken their toll and our dog had

gradually slipped into a muffled world of faraway

whispers.

Not that he seemed to mind. Retirement suited

John Grogan

Marley just fine, and his hearing problems didn’t

seem to impinge on his leisurely country lifestyle.

If anything, deafness proved fortuitous for him, fi-

nally giving him a doctor-certified excuse for dis-

obeying. After all, how could he heed a command

that he could not hear? As thick-skulled as I al-

ways insisted he was, I swear he figured out how to

use his deafness to his advantage. Drop a piece of

steak into his bowl, and he would come trotting in

from the next room. He still had the ability to de-

tect the dull, satisfying thud of meat on metal.

But yell for him to come when he had somewhere

else he’d rather be going, and he’d stroll blithely

away from you, not even glancing guiltily over his

shoulder as he once would have.

“I think the dog’s scamming us,” I told Jenny.

She agreed his hearing problems seemed selective,

but every time we tested him, sneaking up, clap-

ping our hands, shouting his name, he would not

respond. And every time we dropped food into his

bowl, he would come running. He appeared to be

deaf to all sounds except the one that was dearest

to his heart or, more accurately, his stomach: the

sound of dinner.

Marley went through life insatiably hungry. Not

only did we give him four big scoops of dog chow

a day—enough food to sustain an entire family of

Chihuahuas for a week—but we began freely sup-

Marley & Me

plementing his diet with table scraps, against the

better advice of every dog guide we had ever read.

Table scraps, we knew, simply programmed dogs

to prefer human food to dog chow (and given the

choice between a half-eaten hamburger and dry

kibble, who could blame them?). Table scraps

were a recipe for canine obesity. Labs, in particu-

lar, were prone to chubbiness, especially as they

moved into middle age and beyond. Some Labs,

especially those of the English variety, were so ro-

tund by adulthood, they looked like they’d been

inflated with an air hose and were ready to float

down Fifth Avenue in the Macy’s Thanksgiving

Day Parade.

Not our dog. Marley had many problems, but

obesity was not among them. No matter how

many calories he devoured, he always burned

more. All that unbridled high-strung exuberance

consumed vast amounts of energy. He was like a

high-kilowatt electric plant that instantly con-

verted every ounce of available fuel into pure, raw

power. Marley was an amazing physical specimen,

the kind of dog passersby stopped to admire. He

was huge for a Labrador retriever, considerably

bigger than the average male of his breed, which

runs sixty-five to eighty pounds. Even as he aged,

the bulk of his mass was pure muscle—ninety-

seven pounds of rippled, sinewy brawn with nary

John Grogan

an ounce of fat anywhere on him. His rib cage was

the size of a small beer keg, but the ribs them-

selves stretched just beneath his fur with no spare

padding. We were not worried about obesity; ex-

actly the opposite. On our many visits to Dr. Jay

before leaving Florida, Jenny and I would voice

the same concerns: We were feeding him tremen-

dous amounts of food, but still he was so much

thinner than most Labs, and he always appeared

famished, even immediately after wolfing down a

bucket of kibble that looked like it was meant for a

draft horse. Were we slowly starving him? Dr. Jay

always responded the same way. He would run his

hands down Marley’s sleek sides, setting him off

on a desperately happy Labrador evader journey

around the cramped exam room, and tell us that,

as far as physical attributes went, Marley was just

about perfect. “Just keep doing what you’re do-

ing,” Dr. Jay would say. Then, as Marley lunged

between his legs or snarfed a cotton ball off the

counter, Dr. Jay would add: “Obviously, I don’t

need to tell you that Marley burns a lot of nervous

energy.”

Each evening after we finished dinner, when it

came time to give Marley his meal, I would fill his

bowl with chow and then freely toss in any tasty

leftovers or scraps I could find. With three young

children at the table, half-eaten food was some-

Marley & Me

thing we had in plentiful supply. Bread crusts,

steak trimmings, pan drippings, chicken skins,

gravy, rice, carrots, puréed prunes, sandwiches,

three-day-old pasta—into the bowl it went. Our

pet may have behaved like the court jester, but he

ate like the Prince of Wales. The only foods we

kept from him were those we knew to be un-

healthy for dogs, such as dairy products, sweets,

potatoes, and chocolate. I have a problem with

people who buy human food for their pets, but

larding Marley’s meals with scraps that would

otherwise be thrown out made me feel thrifty—

waste not, want not—and charitable. I was giving

always-appreciative Marley a break from the end-

less monotony of dog-chow hell.

When Marley wasn’t acting as our household

garbage disposal, he was on duty as the family’s

emergency spill-response team. No mess was too

big a job for our dog. One of the kids would flip a

full bowl of spaghetti and meatballs on the floor,

and we’d simply whistle and stand back while Old

Wet Vac sucked up every last noodle and then

licked the floor until it gleamed. Errant peas,

dropped celery, runaway rigatoni, spilled apple-

sauce, it didn’t matter what it was. If it hit the

floor, it was history. To the amazement of our

friends, he even wolfed down salad greens.

Not that food had to make it to the ground be-

John Grogan

fore it ended up in Marley’s stomach. He was a

skilled and unremorseful thief, preying mostly on

unsuspecting children and always after checking

to make sure neither Jenny nor I was watching.

Birthday parties were bonanzas for him. He would

make his way through the crowd of five-year-olds,

shamelessly snatching hot dogs right out of their

little hands. During one party, we estimated he

ended up getting two-thirds of the birthday cake,

nabbing piece after piece off the paper plates the

children held on their laps.

It didn’t matter how much food he devoured, ei-

ther through legitimate means or illicit activities.

He always wanted more. When deafness came, we

weren’t completely surprised that the only sound

he could still hear was the sweet, soft thud of

falling food.

One day I arrived home from work to find the

house empty. Jenny and the kids were out some-

where, and I called for Marley but got no re-

sponse. I walked upstairs, where he sometimes

snoozed when left alone, but he was nowhere in

sight. After I changed my clothes, I returned

downstairs and found him in the kitchen up to no

good. His back to me, he was standing on his hind

legs, his front paws and chest resting on the

kitchen table as he gobbled down the remains of a

grilled cheese sandwich. My first reaction was to

Marley & Me

loudly scold him. Instead I decided to see how

close I could get before he realized he had com-

pany. I tiptoed up behind him until I was close

enough to touch him. As he chewed the crusts, he

kept glancing at the door that led into the garage,

knowing that was where Jenny and the kids would

enter upon their return. The instant the door

opened, he would be on the floor under the table,

feigning sleep. Apparently it had not occurred to

him that Dad would be arriving home, too, and

just might sneak in through the front door.

“Oh, Marley?” I asked in a normal voice.

“What do you think you’re doing?” He just kept

gulping the sandwich down, clueless to my pres-

ence. His tail was wagging languidly, a sign he

thought he was alone and getting away with a ma-

jor food heist. Clearly he was pleased with himself.

I cleared my throat loudly, and he still didn’t

hear me. I made kissy noises with my mouth.

Nothing. He polished off one sandwich, nosed the

plate out of the way, and stretched forward to

reach the crusts left on a second plate. “You are

such a bad dog,” I said as he chewed away. I

snapped my fingers twice and he froze midbite,

staring at the back door. What was that? Did I

hear a car door slam?After a moment, he con-

vinced himself that whatever he heard was noth-

ing and went back to his purloined snack.

John Grogan

That’s when I reached out and tapped him once

on the butt. I might as well have lit a stick of dy-

namite. The old dog nearly jumped out of his fur

coat. He rocketed backward off the table and, as

soon as he saw me, dropped onto the floor, rolling

over to expose his belly to me in surrender.

“Busted!” I told him. “You are so busted.” But I

didn’t have it in me to scold him. He was old; he

was deaf; he was beyond reform. I wasn’t going to

change him. Sneaking up on him had been great

fun, and I laughed out loud when he jumped. Now

as he lay at my feet begging for forgiveness I just

found it a little sad. I guess secretly I had hoped

he’d been faking all along.

I finished the chicken coop, an A-frame plywood

affair with a drawbridge-style gangplank that

could be raised at night to keep out predators.

Donna kindly took back two of our three roosters

and exchanged them for hens from her flock. We

now had three girls and one testosterone-pumped

guy bird that spent every waking minute doing

one of three things: pursuing sex, having sex, or

crowing boastfully about the sex he had just

scored. Jenny observed that roosters are what men

would be if left to their own devices, with no so-

cial conventions to rein in their baser instincts,

Marley & Me

and I couldn’t disagree. I had to admit, I kind of

admired the lucky bastard.

We let the chickens out each morning to roam

the yard, and Marley made a few gallant runs at

them, charging ahead barking for a dozen paces or

so before losing steam and giving up. It was as

though some genetic coding deep inside him was

sending an urgent message: “You’re a retriever;

they are birds. Don’t you think it might be a good

idea to chase them?” He just did not have his heart

in it. Soon the birds learned the lumbering yellow

beast was no threat whatsoever, more a minor an-

noyance than anything else, and Marley learned to

share the yard with these new, feathered interlop-

ers. One day I looked up from weeding in the gar-

den to see Marley and the four chickens making

their way down the row toward me as if in forma-

tion, the birds pecking and Marley sniffing as they

went. It was like old friends out for a Sunday

stroll. “What kind of self-respecting hunting dog

are you?” I chastised him. Marley lifted his leg and

peed on a tomato plant before hurrying to rejoin

his new pals.

C H A P T E R 2 4

The Potty Room

❉

Aperson can learn a few things from an old

dog. As the months slipped by and his infir-

mities mounted, Marley taught us mostly about

life’s uncompromising finiteness. Jenny and I were

not quite middle-aged. Our children were young,

our health good, and our retirement years still an

unfathomable distance off on the horizon. It

would have been easy to deny the inevitable creep

of age, to pretend it might somehow pass us by.

Marley would not afford us the luxury of such de-

nial. As we watched him grow gray and deaf and

creaky, there was no ignoring his mortality—or

ours. Age sneaks up on us all, but it sneaks up on a

dog with a swiftness that is both breathtaking and

sobering. In the brief span of twelve years, Mar-

ley had gone from bubbly puppy to awkward ado-

lescent to muscular adult to doddering senior

John Grogan

citizen. He aged roughly seven years for every one

of ours, putting him, in human years, on the

downward slope to ninety.

His once sparkling white teeth had gradually

worn down to brown nubs. Three of his four front

fangs were missing, broken off one by one during

crazed panic attacks as he tried to chew his way to

safety. His breath, always a bit on the fishy side,

had taken on the bouquet of a sun-baked Dump-

ster. The fact that he had acquired a taste for that

little appreciated delicacy known as chicken ma-

nure didn’t help, either. To our complete revul-

sion, he gobbled the stuff up like it was caviar.

His digestion was not what it once had been,

and he became as gassy as a methane plant. There

were days I swore that if I lit a match, the whole

house would go up. Marley was able to clear an

entire room with his silent, deadly flatulence,

which seemed to increase in direct correlation to

the number of dinner guests we had in our home.

“Marley! Not again!” the children would scream

in unison, and lead the retreat. Sometimes he

drove even himself away. He would be sleeping

peacefully when the smell would reach his nos-

trils; his eyes would pop open and he’d furl his

brow as if asking, “Good God! Who dealt it?”

And he would stand up and nonchalantly move

into the next room.

Marley & Me

When he wasn’t farting, he was outside poop-

ing. Or at least thinking about it. His choosiness

about where he squatted to defecate had grown to

the point of compulsive obsession. Each time I let

him out, he took longer and longer to decide on

the perfect spot. Back and forth he would prome-

nade; round and round he went, sniffing, pausing,

scratching, circling, moving on, the whole while

sporting a ridiculous grin on his face. As he

combed the grounds in search of squatting nir-

vana, I stood outside, sometimes in the rain,

sometimes in the snow, sometimes in the dark of

night, often barefoot, occasionally just in my

boxer shorts, knowing from experience that I

didn’t dare leave him unsupervised lest he decide

to meander up the hill to visit the dogs on the next

street.

Sneaking away became a sport for him. If the

opportunity presented itself and he thought he

could get away with it, he would bolt for the prop-

erty line. Well, not exactly bolt. He would more

sniff and shuffle his way from one bush to the next

until he was out of sight. Late one night I let him

out the front door for his final walk before bed.

Freezing rain was forming an icy slush on the

ground, and I turned around to grab a slicker out

of the front closet. When I walked out onto the

sidewalk less than a minute later, he was nowhere

John Grogan

to be found. I walked out into the yard, whistling

and clapping, knowing he couldn’t hear me,

though pretty sure all the neighbors could. For

twenty minutes I prowled through our neighbors’

yards in the rain, making quite the fashion state-

ment dressed in boots, raincoat, and boxer shorts.

I prayed no porch lights would come on. The more

I hunted, the angrier I got. Where the hell did he

mosey off to this time?But as the minutes

passed, my anger turned to worry. I thought of

those old men you read about in the newspaper

who wander away from nursing homes and are

found frozen in the snow three days later. I re-

turned home, walked upstairs, and woke up Jenny.

“Marley’s disappeared,” I said. “I can’t find him

anywhere. He’s out there in the freezing rain.” She

was on her feet instantly, pulling on jeans, slipping

into a sweater and boots. Together we broadened

the search. I could hear her way up the side of the

hill, whistling and clucking for him as I crashed

through the woods in the dark, half expecting to

find him lying unconscious in a creek bed.

Eventually our paths met up. “Anything?” I

asked.

“Nothing,” Jenny said.

We were soaked from the rain, and my bare legs

were stinging from the cold. “Come on,” I said.

“Let’s go home and get warm and I’ll come back

Marley & Me

out with the car.” We walked down the hill and up

the driveway. That’s when we saw him, standing

beneath the overhang out of the rain and over-

joyed to have us back. I could have killed him. In-

stead, I brought him inside and toweled him off,

the unmistakable smell of wet dog filling the

kitchen. Exhausted from his late-night jaunt,

Marley conked out and did not budge till nearly

noon the next day.

Marley’s eyesight had grown fuzzy, and bunnies

could now scamper past a dozen feet in front of

him without him noticing. He was shedding his

fur in vast quantities, forcing Jenny to vacuum

every day—and still she couldn’t keep up with it.

Dog hair insinuated itself into every crevice of

our home, every piece of our wardrobe, and more

than a few of our meals. He had always been a

shedder, but what had once been light flurries had

grown into full-fledged blizzards. He would shake

and a cloud of loose fur would rise around him,

drifting down onto every surface. One night as I

watched television, I dangled my leg off the couch

and absently stroked his hip with my bare foot. At

the commercial break, I looked down to see a

sphere of fur the size of a grapefruit near where I

had been rubbing. His hairballs rolled across the

John Grogan

wood floors like tumbleweeds on a windblown

plain.

Most worrisome of all were his hips, which had

mostly forsaken him. Arthritis had snuck into his

joints, weakening them and making them ache.

The same dog that once could ride me bronco-

style on his back, the dog that could lift the entire

dining room table on his shoulders and bounce it

around the room, could now barely pull himself

up. He groaned in pain when he lay down, and

groaned again when he struggled to his feet. I did

not realize just how weak his hips had become un-

til one day when I gave his rump a light pat and his

hindquarters collapsed beneath him as though he

had just received a cross-body block. Down he

went. It was painful to watch.

Climbing the stairs to the second floor was be-

coming increasingly difficult for him, but he

wouldn’t think of sleeping alone on the main floor,

even after we put a dog bed at the foot of the stairs

for him. Marley loved people, loved being under-

foot, loved resting his chin on the mattress and

panting in our faces as we slept, loved jamming his

head through the shower curtain for a drink as we

bathed, and he wasn’t about to stop now. Each

night when Jenny and I retired to our bedroom, he

would fret at the foot of the stairs, whining, yip-

ping, pacing, tentatively testing the first step with

Marley & Me

his front paw as he mustered his courage for the

ascent that not long before had been effortless.

From the top of the stairs, I would beckon,

“Come on, boy. You can do it.” After several min-

utes of this, he would disappear around the corner

in order to get a running start and then come

charging up, his front shoulders bearing most of

his weight. Sometimes he made it; sometimes he

stalled midflight and had to return to the bottom

and try again. On his most pitiful attempts he

would lose his footing entirely and slide inglori-

ously backward down the steps on his belly. He

was too big for me to carry, but increasingly I

found myself following him up the stairs, lifting

his rear end up each step as he hopped forward on

his front paws.

Because of the difficulty stairs now posed for

him, I assumed Marley would try to limit the

number of trips he made up and down. That

would be giving him far too much credit for com-

mon sense. No matter how much trouble he had

getting up the stairs, if I returned downstairs, say

to grab a book or turn off the lights, he would be

right on my heels, clomping heavily down behind

me. Then, seconds later, he would have to repeat

the torturous climb. Jenny and I both took to

sneaking around behind his back once he was up-

stairs for the night so he would not be tempted to

John Grogan

follow us back down. We assumed sneaking down-

stairs without his knowledge would be easy now

that his hearing was shot and he was sleeping

longer and more heavily than ever. But he always

seemed to know when we had stolen away. I would

be reading in bed and he would be asleep on the

floor beside me, snoring heavily. Stealthily, I

would pull back the covers, slide out of bed, and

tiptoe past him out of the room, turning back to

make sure I hadn’t disturbed him. I would be

downstairs for only a few minutes when I would

hear his heavy steps on the stairs, coming in search

of me. He might be deaf and half blind, but his

radar apparently was still in good working order.

This went on not only at night but all day long,

too. I would be reading the newspaper at the

kitchen table with Marley curled up at my feet

when I would get up for a refill from the coffeepot

across the room. Even though I was within sight

and would be coming right back, he would lumber

with difficulty to his feet and trudge over to be

with me. No sooner had he gotten comfortable at

my feet by the coffeepot than I would return to the

table, where he would again drag himself and set-

tle in. A few minutes later I would walk into the

family room to turn on the stereo, and up again he

would struggle, following me in, circling around

and collapsing with a moan beside me just as I was

Marley & Me

ready to walk away. So it would go, not only with

me but with Jenny and the kids, too.

As age took its toll, Marley had good days and bad

days. He had good minutes and bad minutes, too,

sandwiched so close together sometimes it was

hard to believe it was the same dog.

One evening in the spring of 2002, I took Mar-

ley out for a short walk around the yard. The night

was cool, in the high forties, and windy. Invigo-

rated by the crisp air, I started to run, and Marley,

feeling frisky himself, galloped along beside me

just like in the old days. I even said out loud to

him, “See, Marl, you still have some of the puppy

in you.” We trotted together back to the front

door, his tongue out as he panted happily, his eyes

alert. At the porch stoop, Marley gamely tried to

leap up the two steps—but his rear hips collapsed

on him as he pushed off, and he found himself

awkwardly stuck, his front paws on the stoop, his

belly resting on the steps and his butt collapsed

flat on the sidewalk. There he sat, looking up at

me like he didn’t know what had caused such an

embarrassing display. I whistled and slapped my

hands on my thighs, and he flailed his front legs

valiantly, trying to get up, but it was no use. He

could not lift his rear off the ground. “Come on,

John Grogan

Marley!” I called, but he was immobilized. Fi-

nally, I grabbed him under the front shoulders and

turned him sideways so he could get all four legs

on the ground. Then, after a few failed tries, he

was able to stand. He backed up, looked appre-

hensively at the stairs for a few seconds, and loped

up and into the house. From that day on, his con-

fidence as a champion stair climber was shot; he

never attempted those two small steps again with-

out first stopping and fretting.

No doubt about it, getting old was a bitch. And

an undignified one at that.

Marley reminded me of life’s brevity, of its fleet-

ing joys and missed opportunities. He reminded

me that each of us gets just one shot at the gold,

with no replays. One day you’re swimming

halfway out into the ocean convinced this is the

day you will catch that seagull; the next you’re

barely able to bend down to drink out of your wa-

ter bowl. Like Patrick Henry and everyone else, I

had but one life to live. I kept coming back to the

same question: What in God’s name was I doing

spending it at a gardening magazine? It wasn’t that

my new job did not have its rewards. I was proud

of what I had done with the magazine. But I

missed newspapers desperately. I missed the peo-

Marley & Me

ple who read them and the people who write

them. I missed being part of the big story of the

day, and the feeling that I was in my own small

way helping to make a difference. I missed the

adrenaline surge of writing on deadline and the

satisfaction of waking up the next morning to find

my in-box filled with e-mails responding to my

words. Mostly, I missed telling stories. I wondered

why I had ever walked away from a gig that so per-

fectly fit my disposition to wade into the treacher-

ous waters of magazine management with its

bare-bones budgets, relentless advertising pres-

sures, staffing headaches, and thankless behind-

the-scenes editing chores.

When a former colleague of mine mentioned in

passing that the Philadelphia Inquirerwas seek-

ing a metropolitan columnist, I leapt without a

second’s hesitation. Columnist positions are ex-

tremely hard to come by, even at smaller papers,

and when a position does open up it’s almost al-

ways filled internally, a plum handed to veteran

staffers who’ve proved themselves as reporters.

The Inquirerwas well respected, winner of sev-

enteen Pulitzer Prizes over the years and one of

the country’s great newspapers. I was a fan, and

now the Inquirer’s editors were asking to meet

me. I wouldn’t even have to relocate my family to

take the job. The office I would be working in was

John Grogan

just forty-five minutes down the Pennsylvania

Turnpike, a tolerable commute. I don’t put much

stock in miracles, but it all seemed too good to be

true, like an act of divine intervention.

In November 2002, I traded in my gardening

togs for a Philadelphia Inquirerpress badge. It

quite possibly was the happiest day of my life. I

was back where I belonged, in a newsroom as a

columnist once again.

I had only been in the new job for a few months

when the first big snowstorm of 2003 hit. The

flakes began to fall on a Sunday night, and by the

time they stopped the next day, a blanket two feet

deep covered the ground. The children were off

school for three days as our community slowly dug

out, and I filed my columns from home. With a

snowblower I borrowed from my neighbor, I

cleared the driveway and opened a narrow canyon

to the front door. Knowing Marley could never

climb the sheer walls to get out into the yard, let

alone negotiate the deep drifts once he was off the

path, I cleared him his own “potty room,” as the

kids dubbed it—a small plowed space off the front

walkway where he could do his business. When I

called him outside to try out the new facilities,

though, he just stood in the clearing and sniffed

Marley & Me

the snow suspiciously. He had very particular no-

tions about what constituted a suitable place to an-

swer nature’s call, and this clearly was not what he

had in mind. He was willing to lift his leg and pee,

but that’s where he drew the line. Poop right

Date: 2015-12-17; view: 656