here? Smack in front of the picture window?

You can’t be serious.He turned and, with a

mighty heave to climb up the slippery porch steps,

went back inside.

That night after dinner I brought him out again,

and this time Marley no longer could afford the

luxury of waiting. He had to go. He nervously

paced up and down the cleared walkway, into the

potty room and out onto the driveway, sniffing the

snow, pawing at the frozen ground. No, this just

won’t do.Before I could stop him, he somehow

clambered up and over the sheer snow wall the

snowblower had cut and began making his way

across the yard toward a stand of white pines fifty

feet away. I couldn’t believe it; my arthritic, geri-

atric dog was off on an alpine trek. Every couple

of steps his back hips collapsed on him and he

sank down into the snow, where he rested on his

belly for a few seconds before struggling back to

his feet and pushing on. Slowly, painfully, he made

his way through the deep snow, using his still-

strong front shoulders to pull his body forward. I

stood in the driveway, wondering how I was going

John Grogan

to rescue him when he finally got stuck and could

go no farther. But he trudged on and finally made

it to the closest pine tree. Suddenly I saw what he

was up to. The dog had a plan. Beneath the dense

branches of the pine, the snow was just a few

inches deep. The tree acted like an umbrella, and

once underneath it Marley was free to move about

and squat comfortably to relieve himself. I had to

admit, it was pretty brilliant. He circled and

sniffed and scratched in his customary way, trying

to locate a worthy shrine for his daily offering.

Then, to my amazement, he abandoned the cozy

shelter and lunged back into the deep snow en

route to the next pine tree. The first spot looked

perfect to me, but clearly it was just not up to his

sterling standards.

With difficulty he reached the second tree, but

again, after considerable circling, found the area

beneath its branches unsuitable. So he set off to

the third tree, and then the fourth and the fifth,

each time getting farther from the driveway. I

tried calling him back, though I knew he couldn’t

hear me. “Marley, you’re going to get stuck, you

dumbo!” I yelled. He just plowed ahead with

single-minded determination. The dog was on a

quest. Finally, he reached the last tree on our

property, a big spruce with a dense canopy of

branches out near where the kids waited for the

Marley & Me

school bus. It was here he found the frozen piece

of ground he had been looking for, private and

barely dusted with snow. He circled a few times

and creakily squatted down on his old, shot,

arthritis-riddled haunches. There he finally found

relief. Eureka!

With mission accomplished, he set off on the

long journey home. As he struggled through the

snow, I waved my arms and clapped my hands to

encourage him. “Keep coming, boy! You can make

it!” But I could see him tiring, and he still had a

long way to go. “Don’t stop now!” I yelled. A

dozen yards from the driveway, that’s just what he

did. He was done. He stopped and lay down in the

snow, exhausted. Marley did not exactly look dis-

tressed, but he didn’t look at ease, either. He shot

me a worried look. Now what do we do, boss?I

had no idea. I could wade through the snow to

him, but then what? He was too heavy for me to

pick up and carry. For several minutes I stood

there, calling and cajoling, but Marley wouldn’t

budge.

“Hang on,” I said. “Let me get my boots on and

I’ll come get you.” It had dawned on me that I

could wrestle him up onto the toboggan and pull

him back to the house. As soon as he saw me ap-

proaching with the toboggan, my plan became

moot. He jumped up, reenergized. The only thing

John Grogan

I could think was that he remembered our infa-

mous ride into the woods and over the creek bank

and was hoping for a repeat. He lurched forward

toward me like a dinosaur in a tar pit. I waded out

into the snow, stomping down a path for him as I

went, and he inched ahead. Finally we scrambled

over the snowbank and onto the driveway to-

gether. He shook the snow off and banged his tail

against my knees, prancing about, all frisky and

cocky, flush with the bravado of an adventurer just

back from a jaunt through uncharted wilderness.

To think, I had doubted he could do it.

The next morning I shoveled a narrow path out

to the far spruce tree on the corner of the prop-

erty for him, and Marley adopted the space as his

own personal powder room for the duration of the

winter. The crisis had been averted, but bigger

questions loomed. How much longer could he

continue like this? And at what point would the

aches and indignities of old age outstrip the sim-

ple contentment he found in each sleepy, lazy day?

C H A P T E R 2 5

Beating the Odds

❉

When school let out for the summer, Jenny

packed the kids into the minivan and

headed to Boston for a week to visit her sister. I

stayed behind to work. That left Marley with no

one at home to keep him company and let him out.

Of the many little embarrassments old age in-

flicted on him, the one that seemed to bother him

most was the diminished control he had over his

bowels. For all Marley’s bad behavior over the

years, his bathroom habits had always been sure-

fire. It was the one Marley feature we could brag

about. From just a few months of age, he never,

ever, had accidents in the house, even when left

alone for ten or twelve hours. We joked that his

bladder was made of steel and his bowels of stone.

That had changed in recent months. He no

longer could go more than a few hours between pit

John Grogan

stops. When the urge called, he had to go, and if we

were not home to let him out, he had no choice but

to go inside. It killed him to do it, and we always

knew the second we walked into the house when he

had had an accident. Instead of greeting us at the

door in his exuberant manner, he would be stand-

ing far back in the room, his head hanging nearly to

the floor, his tail flat between his legs, the shame ra-

diating off him. We never punished him for it. How

could we? He was nearly thirteen, about as old as

Labs got. We knew he couldn’t help it, and he

seemed to know it, too. I was sure if he could talk,

he would profess his humiliation and assure us that

he had tried, really tried, to hold it in.

Jenny bought a steam cleaner for the carpet, and

we began arranging our schedules to make sure we

were not away from the house for more than a few

hours at a time. Jenny would rush home from

school, where she volunteered, to let Marley out. I

would leave dinner parties between the main

course and dessert to give him a walk, which, of

course, Marley dragged out as long as possible,

sniffing and circling his way around the yard. Our

friends teasingly wondered aloud who was the real

master over at the Grogan house.

With Jenny and the kids away, I knew I would

be putting in long days. This was my chance to

stay out after work, wandering around the region

Marley & Me

and exploring the towns and neighborhoods I was

now writing about. With my long commute, I

would be away from home ten to twelve hours a

day. There was no question Marley couldn’t be

alone that long, or even half that long. We decided

to board him at the local kennel we used every

summer when we went on vacation. The kennel

was attached to a large veterinarian practice that

offered professional care if not the most personal

service. Each time we went there, it seemed, we

saw a different doctor who knew nothing about

Marley except what was printed in his chart. We

never even learned their names. Unlike our

beloved Dr. Jay in Florida, who knew Marley al-

most as well as we did and who truly had become a

family friend by the time we left, these were

strangers—competent strangers but strangers

nonetheless. Marley didn’t seem to mind.

“Waddy go doggie camp!” Colleen screeched,

and he perked up as though the idea had possibili-

ties. We joked about the activities the kennel staff

would have for him: hole digging from 9:00 to

10:00; pillow shredding from 10:15 to 11:00;

garbage raiding from 11:05 to noon, and so on. I

dropped him off on a Sunday evening and left my

cell phone number with the front desk. Marley

never seemed to fully relax when he was boarded,

even in the familiar surroundings of Dr. Jay’s of-

John Grogan

fice, and I always worried a little about him. After

each visit, he returned looking gaunter, his snout

often rubbed raw from where he had fretted it

against the grating of his cage, and when he got

home he would collapse in the corner and sleep

heavily for hours, as if he had spent the entire

time away pacing his cage with insomnia.

That Tuesday morning, I was near Indepen-

dence Hall in downtown Philadelphia when my

cell phone rang. “Could you please hold for Dr.

So-and-so?” the woman from the kennel asked. It

was yet another veterinarian whose name I had

never heard before. A few seconds later the vet

came on the phone. “We have an emergency with

Marley,” she said.

My heart rose in my chest. “An emergency?”

The vet said Marley’s stomach had bloated with

food, water, and air and then, stretched and dis-

tended, had flipped over on itself, twisting and

trapping its contents. With nowhere for the gas and

other contents to escape, his stomach had swelled

painfully in a life-threatening condition known as

gastric dilatation-volvulus. It almost always re-

quired surgery to correct, she said, and if left un-

treated could result in death within a few hours.

She said she had inserted a tube down his throat

and released much of the gas that had built up in

his stomach, which relieved the swelling. By ma-

Marley & Me

nipulating the tube in his stomach, she had

worked the twist out of it, or as she put it, “un-

flipped it,” and he was now sedated and resting

comfortably.

“That’s a good thing, right?” I asked cautiously.

“But only temporary,” the doctor said. “We got

him through the immediate crisis, but once their

stomachs twist like that, they almost always will

twist again.”

“Like how almost always?” I asked.

“I would say he has a one percent chance that it

won’t flip again,” she said. One percent? For

God’s sake,I thought, he has better odds of get-

ting into Harvard.

“One percent? That’s it?”

“I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s very grave.”

If his stomach did flip again—and she was

telling me it was a virtual certainty—we had two

choices. The first was to operate on him. She said

she would open him up and attach the stomach to

the cavity wall with sutures to prevent it from flip-

ping again. “The operation will cost about two

thousand dollars,” she said. I gulped. “And I have

to tell you, it’s very invasive. It will be tough going

for a dog his age.” The recovery would be long and

difficult, assuming he made it through the opera-

tion at all. Sometimes older dogs like him did not

survive the trauma of the surgery, she explained.

John Grogan

“If he was four or five years old, I would be say-

ing by all means let’s operate,” the vet said. “But

at his age, you have to ask yourself if you really

want to put him through that.”

“Not if we can help it,” I said. “What’s the sec-

ond option?”

“The second option,” she said, hesitating only

slightly, “would be putting him to sleep.”

“Oh,” I said.

I was having trouble processing it all. Five min-

utes ago I was walking to the Liberty Bell, assum-

ing Marley was happily relaxing in his kennel run.

Now I was being asked to decide whether he

should live or die. I had never even heard of the

condition she described. Only later would I learn

that bloat was fairly common in some breeds of

dogs, especially those, such as Marley, with deep

barrel chests. Dogs who scarfed down their entire

meal in a few quick gulps—Marley, once again—

also seemed to be at higher risk. Some dog owners

suspected the stress of being in a kennel could

trigger bloat, but I later would see a professor of

veterinarian medicine quoted as saying his research

showed no connection between kennel stress and

bloat. The vet on the phone acknowledged Mar-

ley’s excitement around the other dogs in the ken-

nel could have brought on the attack. He had

gulped down his food as usual and was panting and

Marley & Me

salivating heavily, worked up by all the other dogs

around him. She thought he might have swallowed

so much air and saliva that his stomach began to di-

late on its long axis, making it vulnerable to twist-

ing. “Can’t we just wait and see how he does?” I

asked. “Maybe it won’t twist again.”

“That’s what we’re doing right now,” she said,

“waiting and watching.” She repeated the one

percent odds and added, “If his stomach flips

again, I’ll need you to make a quick decision. We

can’t let him suffer.”

“I need to speak with my wife,” I told her. “I’ll

call you back.”

When Jenny answered her cell phone she was on

a crowded tour boat with the kids in the middle of

Boston Harbor. I could hear the boat’s engine

chugging and the guide’s voice booming through a

loudspeaker in the background. We had a choppy,

awkward conversation over a bad connection.

Neither of us could hear the other well. I shouted

to try to communicate what we were up against.

She was only getting snippets. Marley . . . emer-

gency . . . stomach . . . surgery . . . put to sleep.

There was silence on the other end. “Hello?” I

said. “Are you still there?”

“I’m here,” Jenny said, then went quiet again.

We both knew this day would come eventually; we

just did not think it would be today. Not with her

John Grogan

and the kids out of town where they couldn’t even

have their good-byes; not with me ninety minutes

away in downtown Philadelphia with work com-

mitments. By the end of the conversation,

through shouts and blurts and pregnant pauses,

we decided there was really no decision at all. The

vet was right. Marley was fading on all fronts. It

would be cruel to put him through a traumatic

surgery to simply try to stave off the inevitable.

We could not ignore the high cost, either. It

seemed obscene, almost immoral, to spend that

kind of money on an old dog at the end of his life

when there were unwanted dogs put down every

day for lack of a home, and more important, chil-

dren not getting proper medical attention for lack

of financial resources. If this was Marley’s time,

then it was his time, and we would see to it he

went out with dignity and without suffering. We

knew it was the right thing, yet neither of us was

ready to lose him.

I called the veterinarian back and told her our

decision. “His teeth are rotted away, he’s stone-

deaf, and his hips have gotten so bad he can barely

get up the porch stoop anymore,” I told her as if

she needed convincing. “He’s having trouble

squatting to have a bowel movement.”

The vet, whom I now knew as Dr. Hopkinson,

made it easy on me. “I think it’s time,” she said.

Marley & Me

“I guess so,” I answered, but I didn’t want her

to put him down without calling me first. I wanted

to be there with him if possible. “And,” I re-

minded her, “I’m still holding out for that one

percent miracle.”

“Let’s talk in an hour,” she said.

An hour later Dr. Hopkinson sounded slightly

more optimistic. Marley was still holding his own,

resting with an intravenous drip in his front leg.

She raised his odds to five percent. “I don’t want

you to get your hopes up,” she said. “He’s a very

sick dog.”

The next morning the doctor sounded brighter

still. “He had a good night,” she said. When I called

back at noon, she had removed the IV from his paw

and started him on a slurry of rice and meat. “He’s

famished,” she reported. By the next call, he was

up on his feet. “Good news,” she said. “One of our

techs just took him outside and he pooped and

peed.” I cheered into the phone as though he had

just taken Best in Show. Then she added: “He must

be feeling better. He just gave me a big sloppy kiss

on the lips.” Yep, that was our Marley.

“I wouldn’t have thought it possible yesterday,”

the doc said, “but I think you’ll be able to take

him home tomorrow.” The following evening af-

ter work, that’s just what I did. He looked

terrible—weak and skeletal, his eyes milky and

John Grogan

crusted with mucus, as if he had been to the other

side of death and back, which in a sense I guess he

had. I must have looked a little ill myself after

paying the eight-hundred-dollar bill. When I

thanked the doctor for her good work, she replied,

“The whole staff loves Marley. Everyone was

rooting for him.”

I walked him out to the car, my ninety-nine-to-

one-odds miracle dog, and said, “Let’s get you

home where you belong.” He just stood there

looking woefully into the backseat, knowing it was

as unattainable as Mount Olympus. He didn’t even

try to hop in. I called to one of the kennel workers,

who helped me gingerly lift him into the car, and I

drove him home with a box of medicines and strict

instructions. Marley would never again gulp a

huge meal in one sitting, or slurp unlimited

amounts of water. His days of playing submarine

with his snout in the water bowl were over. From

now on, he was to receive four small meals a day

and only limited rations of water—a half cup or so

in his bowl at a time. In this way, the doctor hoped,

his stomach would stay calm and not bloat and

twist again. He also was never again to be boarded

in a large kennel surrounded by barking, pacing

dogs. I was convinced, and Dr. Hopkinson seemed

to be, too, that that had been the precipitating fac-

tor in his close call with death.

Marley & Me

❉ ❉ ❉

That night, after I got him home and inside, I

spread a sleeping bag on the floor in the family

room beside him. He was not up to climbing the

stairs to the bedroom, and I didn’t have the heart

to leave him alone and helpless. I knew he would

fret all night if he was not at my side. “We’re hav-

ing a sleepover, Marley!” I proclaimed, and lay

down next to him. I stroked him head to tail until

huge clouds of fur rolled off his back. I wiped the

mucus from the corners of his eyes and scratched

his ears until he moaned with pleasure. Jenny and

the kids would be home in the morning; she would

pamper him with frequent minimeals of boiled

hamburger and rice. It had taken him thirteen

years, but Marley had finally merited people food,

not leftovers but a stovetop meal made just for

him. The children would throw their arms around

him, unaware of how close they had come to never

seeing him again.

Tomorrow the house would be loud and boister-

ous and full of life again. For tonight, it was just

the two of us, Marley and me. Lying there with

him, his smelly breath in my face, I couldn’t help

thinking of our first night together all those years

ago after I brought him home from the breeder, a

tiny puppy whimpering for his mother. I remem-

John Grogan

bered how I dragged his box into the bedroom and

the way we had fallen asleep together, my arm

dangling over the side of the bed to comfort him.

Thirteen years later, here we were, still insepara-

ble. I thought about his puppyhood and adoles-

cence, about the shredded couches and eaten

mattresses, about the wild walks along the Intra-

coastal and the cheek-to-jowl dances with the

stereo blaring. I thought about the swallowed ob-

jects and purloined paychecks and sweet moments

of canine-human empathy. Mostly I thought

about what a good and loyal companion he had

been all these years. What a trip it had been.

“You really scared me, old man,” I whispered as

he stretched out beside me and slid his snout be-

neath my arm to encourage me to keep petting

him. “It’s good to have you home.”

We fell asleep together, side by side on the

floor, his rump half on my sleeping bag, my arm

draped across his back. He woke me once in the

night, his shoulders flinching, his paws twitching,

little baby barks coming from deep in his throat,

more like coughs than anything else. He was

dreaming. Dreaming, I imagined, that he was

young and strong again. And running like there

was no tomorrow.

C H A P T E R 2 6

Borrowed Time

❉

Over the next several weeks, Marley bounced

back from the edge of death. The mischie-

vous sparkle returned to his eyes, the cool wetness

to his nose, and a little meat to his bones. For all

he’d been through, he seemed none the worse off.

He was content to snooze his days away, favoring a

spot in front of the glass door in the family room

where the sun flooded in and baked his fur. On his

new low-bulk diet of petite meals, he was perpet-

ually ravenous and was begging and thieving food

more shamelessly than ever. One evening I caught

him alone in the kitchen up on his hind legs with

his front paws on the kitchen counter, stealing

Rice Krispies Treats from a platter. How he got up

there on his frail hips, I’ll never know. Infirmities

be damned; when the will called, Marley’s body

John Grogan

answered. I wanted to hug him, I was so happy at

the surprise display of strength.

The scare of that summer should have snapped

Jenny and me out of our denial about Marley’s ad-

vancing age, but we quickly returned to the com-

fortable assumption that the crisis was a one-time

fluke, and his eternal march into the sunset could

resume once again. Part of us wanted to believe he

could chug on forever. Despite all his frailties, he

was still the same happy-go-lucky dog. Each

morning after his breakfast, he trotted into the

family room to use the couch as a giant napkin,

walking along its length, rubbing his snout and

mouth against the fabric as he went and flipping

up the cushions in the process. Then he would

turn around and come back in the opposite direc-

tion so he could wipe the other side. From there

he would drop to the floor and roll onto his back,

wiggling from side to side to give himself a back

rub. He liked to sit and lick the carpeting with

lust, as if it had been larded with the most delec-

table gravy he had ever tasted. His daily routine

included barking at the mailman, visiting the

chickens, staring at the bird feeder, and making

the rounds of the bathtub faucets to check for any

drips of water he could lap up. Several times a day

he flipped the lid up on the kitchen trash can to

see what goodies he could scavenge. On a daily ba-

Marley & Me

sis, he launched into Labrador evader mode,

banging around the house, tail thumping the walls

and furniture, and on a daily basis I continued to

pry open his jaws and extract from the roof of his

mouth all sorts of flotsam from our daily lives—

potato skins and muffin wrappers, discarded

Kleenex and dental floss. Even in old age, some

things did not change.

As September 11, 2003, approached, I drove

across the state to the tiny mining town of

Shanksville, Pennsylvania, where United Flight 93

had crashed into an empty field on that infamous

morning two years earlier amid a passenger upris-

ing. The hijackers who had seized the flight were

believed to be heading for Washington, D.C., to

crash the plane into the White House or the Capi-

tol, and the passengers who rushed the cockpit al-

most certainly saved countless lives on the ground.

To mark the second anniversary of the attacks, my

editors wanted me to visit the site and take my

best shot at capturing that sacrifice and the lasting

effect it had on the American psyche.

I spent the entire day at the crash site, lingering

at the impromptu memorial that had risen there. I

talked to the steady stream of visitors who showed

up to pay their respects, interviewed locals who

remembered the force of the explosion, sat with a

woman who had lost her daughter in a car accident

John Grogan

and who came to the crash site to find solace in

communal grief. I documented the many memen-

toes and notes that filled the gravel parking lot.

Still I was not feeling the column. What could I

say about this immense tragedy that had not been

said already? I went to dinner in town and pored

over my notes. Writing a newspaper column is a

lot like building a tower out of blocks; each nugget

of information, each quote and captured moment,

is a block. You start by building a broad founda-

tion, strong enough to support your premise, then

work your way up toward the pinnacle. My note-

book was full of solid building blocks, but I was

missing the mortar to hold them all together. I had

no idea what to do with them.

After I finished my meat loaf and iced tea, I

headed back to the hotel to try to write. Halfway

there, on an impulse, I pulled a U-turn and drove

back out to the crash site, several miles outside

town, arriving just as the sun was slipping behind

the hillside and the last few visitors were pulling

away. I sat out there alone for a long time, as sun-

set turned to dusk and dusk to night. A sharp

wind blew down off the hills, and I pulled my

Windbreaker tight around me. Towering over-

head, a giant American flag snapped in the breeze,

its colors glowing almost iridescent in the last

smoldering light. Only then did the emotion of

Marley & Me

this sacred place envelop me and the magnitude of

what happened in the sky above this lonely field

begin to sink in. I looked out on the spot where

the plane hit the earth and then up at the flag, and

I felt tears stinging my eyes. For the first time in

my life, I took the time to count the stripes. Seven

red and six white. I counted the stars, fifty of

them on a field of blue. It meant more to us now,

this American flag. To a new generation, it stood

once again for valor and sacrifice. I knew what I

needed to write.

I shoved my hands into my pockets and walked

out to the edge of the gravel lot, where I stared

into the growing blackness. Standing out there in

the dark, I felt many different things. One of them

was pride in my fellow Americans, ordinary peo-

ple who rose to the moment, knowing it was their

last. One was humility, for I was alive and un-

touched by the horrors of that day, free to con-

tinue my happy life as a husband and father and

writer. In the lonely blackness, I could almost

taste the finiteness of life and thus its precious-

ness. We take it for granted, but it is fragile, pre-

carious, uncertain, able to cease at any instant

without notice. I was reminded of what should be

obvious but too often is not, that each day, each

hour and minute, is worth cherishing.

I felt something else, as well—an amazement at

John Grogan

the boundless capacity of the human heart, at

once big enough to absorb a tragedy of this mag-

nitude yet still find room for the little moments of

personal pain and heartache that are part of any

life. In my case, one of those little moments was

my failing dog. With a tinge of shame, I realized

that even amid the colossus of human heartbreak

that was Flight 93, I could still feel the sharp pang

of the loss I knew was coming.

Marley was living on borrowed time; that much

was clear. Another health crisis could come any

day, and when it did, I would not fight the in-

evitable. Any invasive medical procedure at this

stage in his life would be cruel, something Jenny

and I would be doing more for our sake than his.

We loved that crazy old dog, loved him despite

everything—or perhaps becauseof everything.

But I could see now the time was near for us to let

him go. I got back in the car and returned to my

hotel room.

The next morning, my column filed, I called home

from the hotel. Jenny said, “I just want you to

know that Marley really misses you.”

“Marley?” I asked. “How about the rest of you?”

“Of course we miss you, dingo,” she said. “But

Marley & Me

I mean Marley really, reallymisses you. He’s driv-

ing us all bonkers.”

The night before, unable to find me, Marley had

paced and sniffed the entire house over and over,

she said, poking through every room, looking be-

hind doors and in closets. He struggled to get up-

stairs and, not finding me there, came back down

and began his search all over again. “He was really

out of sorts,” she said.

He even braved the steep descent into the base-

ment, where, until the slippery wooden stairs put

it off-limits to him, Marley had happily kept me

company for long hours in my workshop, snoozing

at my feet as I built things, the sawdust floating

down and covering his fur like a soft snowfall.

Once down there, he couldn’t get back up the

stairs, and he stood yipping and whining until

Jenny and the kids came to his rescue, holding him

beneath the shoulders and hips and boosting him

up step by step.

At bedtime, instead of sleeping beside our bed

as he normally did, Marley camped out on the

landing at the top of the stairs where he could

keep watch on all the bedrooms and the front door

directly at the bottom of the stairs in case I either

(1) came out of hiding; or (2) arrived home during

the night, on the chance I had snuck out without

John Grogan

telling him. That’s where he was the next morning

when Jenny went downstairs to make breakfast. A

couple of hours passed before it dawned on her

that Marley still had not shown his face, which was

highly unusual; he almost always was the first one

down the steps each morning, charging ahead of

us and banging his tail against the front door to go

out. She found him sleeping soundly on the floor

tight against my side of the bed. Then she saw

why. When she had gotten up, she had inadver-

tently pushed her pillows—she sleeps with three

of them—over to my side of the bed, beneath the

covers, forming a large lump where I usually slept.

With his Mr. Magoo eyesight, Marley could be

forgiven for mistaking a pile of feathers for his

master. “He absolutely thought you were in

there,” she said. “I could just tell he did. He was

convinced you were sleeping in!”

We laughed together on the phone, and then

Jenny said, “You’ve got to give him points for loy-

alty.” That I did. Devotion had always come easily

to our dog.

I had been back from Shanksville for only a week

when the crisis we knew could come at any time

arrived. I was in the bedroom getting dressed for

work when I heard a terrible clatter followed by

Marley & Me

Conor’s scream: “Help! Marley fell down the

stairs!” I came running and found him in a heap at

the bottom of the long staircase, struggling to get

to his feet. Jenny and I raced to him and ran our

hands over his body, gently squeezing his limbs,

pressing his ribs, massaging his spine. Nothing

seemed to be broken. With a groan, Marley made

it to his feet, shook off, and walked away without

so much as a limp. Conor had witnessed the fall.

He said Marley had started down the stairs but,

after just two steps, realized everyone was still up-

stairs and attempted an about-face. As he tried to

turn around, his hips dropped out from beneath

him and he tumbled in a free fall down the entire

length of the stairs.

“Wow, was he lucky,” I said. “A fall like that

could have killed him.”

“I can’t believe he didn’t get hurt,” Jenny said.

“He’s like a cat with nine lives.”

But he had gotten hurt. Within minutes he was

stiffening up, and by the time I arrived home from

work that night, Marley was completely incapaci-

tated, unable to move. He seemed to be sore

everywhere, as though he had been worked over

by thugs. What really had him laid up, though,

was his front left leg; he was unable to put any

weight at all on it. I could squeeze it without him

yelping, and I suspected he had pulled a tendon.

John Grogan

When he saw me, he tried to struggle to his feet to

greet me, but it was no use. His left front paw was

useless, and with his weak back legs, he just had

no power to do anything. Marley was down to one

good limb, lousy odds for any four-legged beast.

He finally made it up and tried to hop on three

paws to get to me, but his back legs caved in and

he collapsed back to the floor. Jenny gave him an

aspirin and held a bag of ice to his front leg. Mar-

ley, playful even under duress, kept trying to eat

the ice cubes.

By ten-thirty that night, he was no better, and

he hadn’t been outside to empty his bladder since

one o’clock that afternoon. He had been holding

his urine for nearly ten hours. I had no idea how to

get him outside and back in again so he could re-

lieve himself. Straddling him and clasping my

hands beneath his chest, I lifted him to his feet.

Together we waddled our way to the front door,

with me holding him up as he hopped along. But

out on the porch stoop he froze. A steady rain was

falling, and the porch steps, his nemesis, loomed

slick and wet before him. He looked unnerved.

“Come on,” I said. “Just a quick pee and we’ll go

right back inside.” He would have no part of it. I

wished I could have persuaded him to just go right

on the porch and be done with it, but there was no

teaching this old dog that new trick. He hopped

Marley & Me

back inside and stared morosely up at me as if

apologizing for what he knew was coming. “We’ll

try again later,” I said. As if hearing his cue, he

half squatted on his three remaining legs and

emptied his full bladder on the foyer floor, a pud-

dle spreading out around him. It was the first time

since he was a tiny puppy that Marley had uri-

nated in the house.

The next morning Marley was better, though

still hobbling about like an invalid. We got him

outside, where he urinated and defecated without

a problem. On the count of three, Jenny and I to-

gether lifted him up the porch stairs to get him

back inside. “I have a feeling,” I told her, “that

Marley will never see the upstairs of this house

again.” It was apparent he had climbed his last

staircase. From now on, he would have to get used

to living and sleeping on the ground floor.

I worked from home that day and was upstairs

in the bedroom, writing a column on my laptop

computer, when I heard a commotion on the

stairs. I stopped typing and listened. The sound

was instantly familiar, a sort of loud clomping

noise as if a shod horse were galloping up a gang-

plank. I looked at the bedroom doorway and held

my breath. A few seconds later, Marley popped his

head around the corner and came sauntering into

the room. His eyes brightened when he spotted

John Grogan

me. So there you are!He smashed his head into

my lap, begging for an ear rub, which I figured he

had earned.

“Marley, you made it!” I exclaimed. “You old

hound! I can’t believe you’re up here!”

Later, as I sat on the floor with him and scruffed

his neck, he twisted his head around and gamely

gummed my wrist in his jaws. It was a good sign, a

telltale of the playful puppy still in him. The day

he sat still and let me pet him without trying to

engage me would be the day I knew he had had

enough. The previous night he had seemed on

death’s door, and I again had braced myself for the

worst. Today he was panting and pawing and try-

ing to slime my hands off. Just when I thought his

long, lucky run was over, he was back.

I pulled his head up and made him look me in

the eyes. “You’re going to tell me when it’s time,

right?” I said, more a statement than a question. I

didn’t want to have to make the decision on my

own. “You’ll let me know, won’t you?”

C H A P T E R 2 7

The Big Meadow

❉

Winter arrived early that year, and as the

days grew short and the winds howled

through the frozen branches, we cocooned into

our snug home. I chopped and split a winter’s

worth of firewood and stacked it by the back door.

Jenny made hearty soups and homemade breads,

and the children once again sat in the window and

waited for the snow to arrive. I anticipated the

first snowfall, too, but with a quiet sense of dread,

wondering how Marley could possibly make it

through another tough winter. The previous one

had been hard enough on him, and he had weak-

ened markedly, dramatically, in the ensuing year. I

wasn’t sure how he would navigate ice-glazed

sidewalks, slippery stairs, and a snow-covered

landscape. It was dawning on me why the elderly

retired to Florida and Arizona.

John Grogan

On a blustery Sunday night in mid-December,

when the children had finished their homework

and practiced their musical instruments, Jenny

started the popcorn on the stove and declared a

family movie night. The kids raced to pick out a

video, and I whistled for Marley, taking him out-

side with me to fetch a basket of maple logs off

the woodpile. He poked around in the frozen grass

as I loaded up the wood, standing with his face

into the wind, wet nose sniffing the icy air as if di-

vining winter’s descent. I clapped my hands and

waved my arms to get his attention, and he fol-

lowed me inside, hesitating at the front porch

steps before summoning his courage and lurching

forward, dragging his back legs up behind him.

Inside, I got the fire humming as the kids

queued up the movie. The flames leapt and the

heat radiated into the room, prompting Marley, as

was his habit, to claim the best spot for himself,

directly in front of the hearth. I lay down on the

floor a few feet from him and propped my head on

a pillow, more watching the fire than the movie.

Marley didn’t want to lose his warm spot, but he

couldn’t resist this opportunity. His favorite hu-

man was at ground level in the prone position, ut-

terly defenseless. Who was the alpha male now?

His tail began pounding the floor. Then he started

wiggling his way in my direction. He sashayed

Marley & Me

from side to side on his belly, his rear legs

stretched out behind him, and soon he was

pressed up against me, grinding his head into my

ribs. The minute I reached out to pet him, it was

all over. He pushed himself up on his paws, shook

hard, showering me in loose fur, and stared down

at me, his billowing jowls hanging immediately

over my face. When I started to laugh, he took this

as a green light to advance, and before I quite

knew what was happening, he had straddled my

chest with his front paws and, in one big free fall,

collapsed on top of me in a heap. “Ugh!” I

screamed under his weight. “Full-frontal Lab at-

tack!” The kids squealed. Marley could not be-

lieve his good fortune. I wasn’t even trying to get

him off me. He squirmed, he drooled, he licked

me all over the face and nuzzled my neck. I could

barely breathe under his weight, and after a few

minutes I slid him half off me, where he remained

through most of the movie, his head, shoulder,

and one paw resting on my chest, the rest of him

pressed against my side.

I didn’t say so to anyone in the room, but I

found myself clinging to the moment, knowing

there would not be too many more like it. Marley

was in the quiet dusk of a long and eventful life.

Looking back on it later, I would recognize that

night in front of the fire for what it was, our

John Grogan

farewell party. I stroked his head until he fell

asleep, and then I stroked it some more.

Four days later, we packed the minivan in

preparation for a family vacation to Disney World

in Florida. It would be the children’s first Christ-

mas away from home, and they were wild with ex-

citement. That evening, in preparation for an

early-morning departure, Jenny delivered Marley

to the veterinarian’s office, where she had

arranged for him to spend our week away in the

intensive care unit where the doctors and workers

could keep their eyes on him around the clock and

where he would not be riled by the other dogs. Af-

ter his close call on their watch the previous sum-

mer, they were happy to give him the Cadillac digs

and extra attention at no extra cost.

That night as we finished packing, both Jenny

and I commented on how strange it felt to be in a

dog-free zone. There was no oversized canine

constantly underfoot, shadowing our every move,

trying to sneak out the door with us each time we

carried a bag to the garage. The freedom was lib-

erating, but the house seemed cavernous and

empty, even with the kids bouncing off the walls.

The next morning before the sun was over the

tree line, we piled into the minivan and headed

south. Ridiculing the whole Disney experience is a

favorite sport in the circle of parents I run with.

Marley & Me

I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve said, “We

could take the whole family to Paris for the same

amount of money.” But the whole family had a

wonderful time, even naysayer Dad. Of the many

potential pitfalls—sickness, fatigue-induced

tantrums, lost tickets, lost children, sibling

fistfights—we escaped them all. It was a great

family vacation, and we spent much of the long

drive back north recounting the pros and cons of

each ride, each meal, each swim, each moment.

When we were halfway through Maryland, just

four hours from home, my cell phone rang. It was

one of the workers from the veterinarian’s office.

Marley was acting lethargic, she said, and his hips

had begun to droop worse than usual. He seemed

to be in discomfort. She said the vet wanted our

permission to give him a steroid shot and pain

medication. Sure, I said. Keep him comfortable,

and we’d be there to pick him up the next day.

When Jenny arrived to take him home the fol-

lowing afternoon, December 29, Marley looked

tired and a little out of sorts but not visibly ill. As

we had been warned, his hips were weaker than

ever. The doctor talked to her about putting him

on a regimen of arthritis medications, and a

worker helped Jenny lift him into the minivan. But

within a half hour of getting him home, he was

retching, trying to clear thick mucus from his

John Grogan

throat. Jenny let him out into the front yard, and

he simply lay on the frozen ground and could not

or would not budge. She called me at work in a

panic. “I can’t get him back inside,” she said.

“He’s lying out there in the cold, and he won’t get

up.” I left immediately, and by the time I arrived

home forty-five minutes later, she had managed to

get him to his feet and back into the house. I found

him sprawled on the dining room floor, clearly dis-

tressed and clearly not himself.

In thirteen years I had not been able to walk into

the house without him bounding to his feet,

stretching, shaking, panting, banging his tail into

everything, greeting me like I’d just returned from

the Hundred Years’ War. Not on this day. His eyes

followed me as I walked into the room, but he did

not move his head. I knelt down beside him and

rubbed his snout. No reaction. He did not try to

gum my wrist, did not want to play, did not even

lift his head. His eyes were far away, and his tail lay

limp on the floor.

Jenny had left two messages at the animal hospi-

tal and was waiting for a vet to call back, but it was

becoming obvious this was turning into an emer-

gency. I put a third call in. After several minutes,

Marley slowly stood up on shaky legs and tried to

retch again, but nothing would come out. That’s

when I noticed his stomach; it looked bigger than

Marley & Me

usual, and it was hard to the touch. My heart sank;

I knew what this meant. I called back the veteri-

narian’s office, and this time I described Marley’s

bloated stomach. The receptionist put me on hold

for a moment, then came back and said, “The

doctor says to bring him right in.”

Jenny and I did not have to say a word to each

other; we both understood that the moment had

arrived. We braced the kids, telling them Marley

had to go to the hospital and the doctors were go-

ing to try to make him better, but that he was very

sick. As I was getting ready to go, I looked in, and

Jenny and the kids were huddled around him as he

lay on the floor so clearly in distress, making their

good-byes. They each got to pet him and have a

few last moments with him. The children re-

mained bullishly optimistic that this dog who had

been a constant part of their lives would soon be

back, good as new. “Get all better, Marley,”

Colleen said in her little voice.

With Jenny’s help, I got him into the back of my

car. She gave him a last quick hug, and I drove off

with him, promising to call as soon as I learned

something. He lay on the floor in the backseat

with his head resting on the center hump, and I

drove with one hand on the wheel and the other

stretched behind me so I could stroke his head and

shoulders. “Oh, Marley,” I just kept saying.

John Grogan

In the parking lot of the animal hospital, I

helped him out of the car, and he stopped to sniff

a tree where the other dogs all pee—still curious

despite how ill he felt. I gave him a minute, know-

ing this might be his last time in his beloved out-

doors, then tugged gently at his choker chain and

led him into the lobby. Just inside the front door,

he decided he had gone far enough and gingerly

let himself down on the tile floor. When the techs

and I were unable to get him back to his feet, they

brought out a stretcher, slid him onto it, and dis-

appeared with him behind the counter, heading

for the examining area.

A few minutes later, the vet, a young woman I

had never met before, came out and led me into an

exam room where she put a pair of X-ray films up

on a light board. She showed me how his stomach

had bloated to twice its normal size. On the film,

near where the stomach meets the intestines, she

traced two fist-sized dark spots, which she said in-

dicated a twist. Just as with the last time, she said

she would sedate him and insert a tube into his

stomach to release the gas causing the bloating.

She would then use the tube to manually feel for

the back of the stomach. “It’s a long shot,” she

said, “but I’m going to try to use the tube to mas-

sage his stomach back into place.” It was exactly

the same one percent gamble Dr. Hopkinson had

Marley & Me

given over the summer. It had worked once, it

could work again. I remained silently optimistic.

“Okay,” I said. “Please give it your best shot.”

A half hour later she emerged with a grim face.

She had tried three times and was unable to open

the blockage. She had given him more sedatives in

the hope they might relax his stomach muscles.

When none of that worked, she had inserted a

catheter through his ribs, a last-ditch attempt to

clear the blockage, also without luck. “At this

point,” she said, “our only real option is to go into

surgery.” She paused, as if gauging whether I was

ready to talk about the inevitable, and then said,

“Or the most humane thing might be to put him

to sleep.”

Jenny and I had been through this decision five

months earlier and had already made the hard

choice. My visit to Shanksville had only solidified

my resolve not to subject Marley to any more suf-

fering. Yet standing in the waiting room, the hour

upon me once again, I stood frozen. The doctor

sensed my agony and discussed the complications

that could likely be expected in operating on a dog

of Marley’s age. Another thing troubling her, she

said, was a bloody residue that had come out on

the catheter, indicating problems with the stom-

ach wall. “Who knows what we might find when

we get in there,” she said.

John Grogan

I told her I wanted to step outside to call my

wife. On the cell phone in the parking lot, I told

Jenny that they had tried everything short of sur-

gery to no avail. We sat silently on the phone for a

long moment before she said, “I love you, John.”

“I love you, too, Jenny,” I said.

I walked back inside and asked the doctor if I

could have a couple of minutes alone with him.

She warned me that he was heavily sedated. “Take

all the time you need,” she said. I found him un-

conscious on the stretcher on the floor, an IV

shunt in his forearm. I got down on my knees and

ran my fingers through his fur, the way he liked. I

ran my hand down his back. I lifted each floppy

ear in my hands—those crazy ears that had caused

him so many problems over the years and cost us a

king’s ransom—and felt their weight. I pulled his

lip up and looked at his lousy, worn-out teeth. I

picked up a front paw and cupped it in my hand.

Then I dropped my forehead against his and sat

there for a long time, as if I could telegraph a mes-

sage through our two skulls, from my brain to his.

I wanted to make him understand some things.

“You know all that stuff we’ve always said about

you?” I whispered. “What a total pain you are?

Don’t believe it. Don’t believe it for a minute,

Marley.” He needed to know that, and something

more, too. There was something I had never told

Marley & Me

him, that no one ever had. I wanted him to hear it

before he went.

“Marley,” I said. “You are a greatdog.”

I found the doctor waiting at the front counter.

“I’m ready,” I said. My voice was cracking, which

surprised me because I had really believed I’d

braced myself months earlier for this moment. I

knew if I said another word, I would break down,

and so I just nodded and signed as she handed me

release forms. When the paperwork was com-

pleted, I followed her back to the unconscious

Marley, and I knelt in front of him again, my

hands cradling his head as she prepared a syringe

and inserted it into the shunt. “Are you okay?” she

asked. I nodded, and she pushed the plunger. His

jaw shuddered ever so slightly. She listened to his

heart and said it had slowed way down but not

stopped. He was a big dog. She prepared a second

syringe and again pushed the plunger. A minute

later, she listened again and said, “He’s gone.” She

left me alone with him, and I gently lifted one of

his eyelids. She was right; Marley was gone.

I walked out to the front desk and paid the bill.

She discussed “group cremation” for $75 or indi-

vidual cremation, with the ashes returned, for

$170. No, I said; I would be taking him home. A

John Grogan

few minutes later, she and an assistant wheeled out

a cart with a large black bag on it and helped me

lift it into the backseat. The doctor shook my

hand, told me how sorry she was. She had done

her best, she said. It was his time, I said, then

thanked her and drove away.

In the car on the way home, I started to cry,

something I almost never do, not even at funerals.

It only lasted a few minutes. By the time I pulled

into the driveway, I was dry-eyed again. I left

Marley in the car and went inside where Jenny was

sitting up, waiting. The children were all in bed

asleep; we would tell them in the morning. We fell

into each other’s arms and both started weeping. I

tried to describe it to her, to assure her he was al-

ready deeply asleep when the end came, that there

was no panic, no trauma, no pain. But I couldn’t

find the words. So we simply rocked in each

other’s arms. Later, we went outside and together

lifted the heavy black bag out of the car and into

the garden cart, which I rolled into the garage for

the night.

C H A P T E R 2 8

Beneath the Cherry Trees

❉

Sleep came fitfully that night, and an hour be-

fore dawn I slid out of bed and dressed quietly

so as not to wake Jenny. In the kitchen I drank a

glass of water—coffee could wait—and walked

out into a light, slushy drizzle. I grabbed a shovel

and pickax and walked to the pea patch, which

hugged the white pines where Marley had sought

potty refuge the previous winter. It was here I had

decided to lay him to rest.

The temperature was in the mid-thirties and

the ground blessedly unfrozen. In the half dark, I

began to dig. Once I was through a thin layer of

topsoil, I hit heavy, dense clay studded with

rocks—the backfill from the excavation of our

basement—and the going was slow and arduous.

After fifteen minutes I peeled off my coat and

paused to catch my breath. After thirty minutes I

John Grogan

was in a sweat and not yet down two feet. At the

forty-five-minute mark, I struck water. The hole

began to fill. And fill. Soon a foot of muddy cold

water covered the bottom. I fetched a bucket and

tried to bail it, but more water just seeped in.

There was no way I could lay Marley down in that

icy swamp. No way.

Despite the work I had invested in it—my heart

was pounding like I had just run a marathon—I

abandoned the location and scouted the yard,

stopping where the lawn meets the woods at the

bottom of the hill. Between two big native cherry

trees, their branches arching above me in the gray

light of dawn like an open-air cathedral, I sunk

my shovel. These were the same trees Marley and

I had narrowly missed on our wild toboggan ride,

and I said out loud, “This feels right.” The spot

was beyond where the bulldozers had spread the

shale substrata, and the native soil was light and

well drained, a gardener’s dream. Digging went

easily, and I soon had an oval hole roughly two by

three feet around and four feet deep. I went inside

and found all three kids up, sniffling quietly. Jenny

had just told them.

Seeing them grieving—their first up-close ex-

perience with death—deeply affected me. Yes, it

was only a dog, and dogs come and go in the

course of a human life, sometimes simply because

Marley & Me

they become an inconvenience. It was only a dog,

and yet every time I tried to talk about Marley to

them, tears welled in my eyes. I told them it was

okay to cry, and that owning a dog always ended

with this sadness because dogs just don’t live as

long as people do. I told them how Marley was

sleeping when they gave him the shot and that he

didn’t feel a thing. He just drifted off and was

gone. Colleen was upset that she didn’t have a

chance to say a real good-bye to him; she thought

he would be coming home. I told her I had said

good-bye for all of us. Conor, our budding author,

showed me something he had made for Marley, to

go in the grave with him. It was a drawing of a big

red heart beneath which he had written: “To Mar-

ley, I hope you know how much I loved you all of

my life. You were always there when I needed you.

Through life or death, I will always love you. Your

brother, Conor Richard Grogan.” Then Colleen

drew a picture of a girl with a big yellow dog and

beneath it, with spelling help from her brother,

she wrote, “P.S.—I will never forget you.”

I went out alone and wheeled Marley’s body

down the hill, where I cut an armful of soft pine

boughs that I laid on the floor of the hole. I lifted

the heavy body bag off the cart and down into the

Date: 2015-12-17; view: 626