Marley and Me: Life and Love With the World's Worst Dog

  I flicked on the TV and learned that The Donald and girlfriend Marla Maples were the proud parents of a girl, appropriately named Tiffany, who was born not long after Jenny delivered Conor. “We’ll have to invite them over for a playdate,” Jenny said.

  We watched from the window as the television crews swarmed in to catch the Trumps leaving the hospital with their new baby to return to their estate. Marla smiled demurely as she held her newborn for the cameras to capture; Donald waved and gave a jaunty wink. “I feel great!” he told the cameras. Then they were off in a chauffeured limousine.

  The next morning when our turn came to leave for home, a pleasant retiree who volunteered at the hospital guided Jenny and baby Conor through the lobby in a wheelchair and out the automatic doors into the sunshine. There were no camera crews, no satellite trucks, no sound bites, no live reports. It was just us and our senior volunteer. Not that anyone was asking, but I felt great, too. Donald Trump was not the only one bursting with pride over his progeny.

  The volunteer waited with Jenny and the baby while I pulled the car up to the curb. Before buckling my newborn son into his car seat, I lifted him high above my head for the whole world to see, had anyone been looking, and said, “Conor Grogan, you are every bit as special as Tiffany Trump, and don’t you ever forget it.”

  CHAPTER 15

  A Postpartum Ultimatum

  T hese should have been the happiest days of our lives, and in many ways they were. We had two sons now, a toddler and a newborn, just seventeen months apart. The joy they brought us was profound. Yet the darkness that had descended over Jenny while she was on forced bed rest persisted. Some weeks she was fine, cheerfully tackling the challenges of being responsible for two lives completely dependent on her for every need. Other weeks, without warning, she would turn glum and defeated, locked in a blue fog that sometimes would not lift for days. We were both exhausted and sleep deprived. Patrick was still waking us at least once in the night, and Conor was up several more times, crying to be nursed or changed. Seldom did we get more than two hours of uninterrupted sleep at a stretch. Some nights we were like zombies, moving silently past each other with glazed eyes, Jenny to one baby and I to the other. We were up at midnight and at two and at three-thirty and again at five. Then the sun would rise and with it another day, bringing renewed hope and a bone-aching weariness as we began the cycle over again. From down the hall would come Patrick’s sweet, cheery, wide-awake voice—“Mama! Dada! Fannnn!”—and as much as we tried to will it otherwise, we knew sleep, what there had been of it, was behind us for another day. I began making the coffee stronger and showing up at work with shirts wrinkled and baby spit-up on my ties. One morning in my newsroom, I caught the young, attractive editorial assistant staring intently at me. Flattered, I smiled at her. Hey, I might be a dad twice over now, but the women still notice me. Then she said, “Do you know you have a Barney sticker in your hair?”

  Complicating the sleep-deprived chaos that was our lives, our new baby had us terribly worried. Already underweight, Conor was unable to keep nourishment down. Jenny was on a single-minded quest to nurse him to robust health, and he seemed equally intent on foiling her. She would offer him her breast, and he would oblige her, suckling hungrily. Then, in one quick heave, he would throw it all up. She would nurse him again; he would eat ravenously, then empty his stomach yet again. Projectile vomiting became an hourly occurrence in our lives. Over and over the routine repeated itself, each time Jenny becoming more frantic. The doctors diagnosed reflux and referred us to a specialist, who sedated our baby boy and snaked a scope down his throat to scrutinize his insides. Conor eventually would outgrow the condition and catch up on his weight, but for four long months we were consumed with worry over him. Jenny was a basket case of fear and stress and frustration, all exacerbated by lack of sleep, as she nursed him nearly nonstop and then watched helpless as he tossed her milk back at her. “I feel so inadequate,” she would say. “Moms are supposed to be able to give their babies everything they need.” Her fuse was as short as I had seen it, and the smallest infractions—a cupboard door left open, crumbs on the counter—would set her off.

  The good news was that Jenny never once took out her anxiety on either baby. In fact, she nurtured both of them with almost obsessive care and patience. She poured every ounce of herself into them. The bad news was that she directed her frustration and anger at me and even more at Marley. She had lost all patience with him. He was squarely in her crosshairs and could do no right. Each transgression—and there continued to be many—pushed Jenny a little closer to the edge. Oblivious, Marley stayed the course with his antics and misdeeds and boundless ebullience. I bought a flowering shrub and planted it in the garden to commemorate Conor’s birth; Marley pulled it out by the roots the same day and chewed it into mulch. I finally got around to replacing the ripped porch screen, and Marley, by now quite accustomed to his self-made doggie door, promptly dove through it again. He escaped one day and when he finally returned, he had a pair of women’s panties in his teeth. I didn’t want to know.

  Despite the prescription tranquilizers, which Jenny was feeding him with increasing frequency, more for her sake than for his, Marley’s thunder phobia grew more intense and irrational each day. By now a soft shower would send him into a panic. If we were home, he would merely glom on to us and salivate nervously all over our clothes. If we weren’t home, he sought safety in the same warped way, by digging and gouging through doors and plaster and linoleum. The more I repaired, the more he destroyed. I could not keep up with him. I should have been furious, but Jenny was angry enough for both of us. Instead, I started covering for him. If I found a chewed shoe or book or pillow, I hid the evidence before she could find it. When he crashed through our small home, the bull in our china closet, I followed behind him, straightening throw rugs, righting coffee tables, and wiping up the spittle he flung on the walls. Before Jenny discovered them, I would race to vacuum up the wood chips in the garage where he had gouged the door once again. I stayed up late into the night patching and sanding so by morning when Jenny awoke the latest damage would be covered over. “For God’s sake, Marley, do you have a death wish?” I said to him one night as he stood at my side, tail wagging, licking my ear as I knelt and repaired the most recent destruction. “You’ve got to stop this.”

  It was into this volatile environment that I walked one evening. I opened the front door to find Jenny beating Marley with her fists. She was crying uncontrollably and flailing wildly at him, more like she was pounding a kettledrum than imposing a beating, landing glancing blows on his back and shoulders and neck. “Why? Why do you do this?” she screamed at him. “Why do you wreck everything?” In that instant I saw what he had done. The couch cushion was gouged open, the fabric shredded and the stuffing pulled out. Marley stood with head down and legs splayed as though leaning into a hurricane. He didn’t try to flee or dodge the blows; he just stood there and took each one without whimper or complaint.

  “Hey! Hey! Hey!” I shouted, grabbing her wrists. “Come on. Stop. Stop!” She was sobbing and gasping for breath. “Stop,” I repeated.

  I stepped between her and Marley and shoved my face directly in front of hers. It was like a stranger was staring back at me. I did not recognize the look in her eyes. “Get him out of here,” she said, her voice flat and tinged with a quiet burn. “Get him out of here now.”

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

  “Get him out of here and keep him out of here,” she said in an unsettling monotone.

  I opened the front door and he bounded outside, and when I turned back to grab his leash off the table, Jenny said, “I mean it. I want him gone. I want him out of here for good.”

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

  “I mean it,” she said. “I’m done with that dog. You find him a new home, or I will.”

  She couldn’t mean it. She loved this dog. She adored him despite his laundr
y list of shortcomings. She was upset; she was stressed to the breaking point. She would reconsider. For the moment I thought it was best to give her time to cool down. I walked out the door without another word. In the front yard, Marley raced around, jumping into the air and snapping his jaws, trying to bite the leash out of my hand. He was his old jolly self, apparently no worse for the pummeling. I knew she hadn’t hurt him. In all honesty, I routinely whacked him much harder when I played rough with him, and he loved it, always bounding back for more. As was a hallmark of his breed, he was immune to pain, an unstoppable machine of muscle and sinew. Once when I was in the driveway washing the car, he jammed his head into the bucket of soapy water and galloped blindly off across the front lawns with the bucket firmly stuck over his head, not stopping until he crashed full force into a concrete wall. It didn’t seem to faze him. But slap him lightly on the rump with an open palm in anger, or even just speak to him with a stern voice, and he acted deeply wounded. For the big dense oaf that he was, Marley had an incredibly sensitive streak. Jenny hadn’t hurt him physically, not even close, but she had crushed his feelings, at least for the moment. Jenny was everything to him, one of his two best pals in the whole world, and she had just turned on him. She was his mistress and he her faithful companion. If she saw fit to strike him, he saw fit to suck it up and take it. As far as dogs went, he was not good at much; but he was unquestionably loyal. It was my job now to repair the damage and make things right again.

  Out in the street, I hooked him to his leash and ordered, “Sit!” He sat. I pulled the choker chain up high on his throat in preparation for our walk. Before I stepped off I ran my hand over his head and massaged his neck. He flipped his nose in the air and looked up at me, his tongue hanging halfway down his neck. The incident with Jenny appeared to be behind him; now I hoped it would be behind her, as well. “What am I going to do with you, you big dope?” I asked him. He leaped straight up, as though outfitted with springs, and smashed his tongue against my lips.

  Marley and I walked for miles that evening, and when I finally opened the front door, he was exhausted and ready to collapse quietly in the corner. Jenny was feeding Patrick a jar of baby food as she cradled Conor in her lap. She was calm and appeared back to her old self. I unleashed Marley and he took a huge drink, lapping lustily at the water, sloshing little tidal waves over the side of his bowl. I toweled up the floor and stole a glance in Jenny’s direction; she appeared unperturbed. Maybe the horrible moment had passed. Maybe she had reconsidered. Maybe she felt sheepish about her outburst and was searching for the words to apologize. As I walked past her, Marley close at my heels, she said in a calm, quiet voice without looking at me, “I’m dead serious. I want him out of here.”

  Over the next several days she repeated the ultimatum enough times that I finally accepted that this was not an idle threat. She wasn’t just blowing off steam, and the issue was not going away. I was sick about it. As pathetic as it sounds, Marley had become my male-bonding soul mate, my near-constant companion, my friend. He was the undisciplined, recalcitrant, nonconformist, politically incorrect free spirit I had always wanted to be, had I been brave enough, and I took vicarious joy in his unbridled verve. No matter how complicated life became, he reminded me of its simple joys. No matter how many demands were placed on me, he never let me forget that willful disobedience is sometimes worth the price. In a world full of bosses, he was his own master. The thought of giving him up seared my soul. But I had two children to worry about now and a wife whom we needed. Our household was being held together by the most tenuous of threads. If losing Marley made the difference between meltdown and stability, how could I not honor Jenny’s wishes?

  I began putting out feelers, discreetly asking friends and coworkers if they might be interested in taking on a lovable and lively two-year-old Labrador retriever. Through word of mouth, I learned of a neighbor who adored dogs and couldn’t refuse a canine in need. Even he said no. Unfortunately, Marley’s reputation preceded him.

  Each morning I opened the newspaper to the classifieds as if I might find some miracle ad: “Seeking wildly energetic, out-of-control Labrador retriever with multiple phobias. Destructive qualities a plus. Will pay top dollar.” What I found instead was a booming trade in young adult dogs that, for whatever reason, had not worked out. Many were purebreds that their owners had spent several hundred dollars for just months earlier. Now they were being offered for a pittance or even for free. An alarming number of the unwanted dogs were male Labs.

  The ads were in almost every day, and were at once heartbreaking and hilarious. From my insider’s vantage point, I recognized the attempts to gloss over the real reasons these dogs were back on the market. The ads were full of sunny euphemisms for the types of behavior I knew all too well. “Lively…loves people…needs big yard…needs room to run…energetic…spirited…powerful…one of a kind.” It all added up to the same thing: a dog its master could not control. A dog that had become a liability. A dog its owner had given up on.

  Part of me laughed knowingly; the ads were comical in their deception. When I read “fiercely loyal” I knew the seller really meant “known to bite.” “Constant companion” meant “suffers separation anxiety,” and “good watchdog” translated to “incessant barker.” And when I saw “best offer,” I knew too well that the desperate owner really was asking, “How much do I need to pay you to take this thing off my hands?” Part of me ached with sadness. I was not a quitter; I did not believe Jenny was a quitter, either. We were not the kind of people who pawned off our problems in the classifieds. Marley was undeniably a handful. He was nothing like the stately dogs both of us had grown up with. He had a host of bad habits and behaviors. Guilty as charged. He also had come a great distance from the spastic puppy we had brought home two years earlier. In his own flawed way, he was trying. Part of our journey as his owners was to mold him to our needs, but part also was to accept him for what he was. Not just to accept him, but to celebrate him and his indomitable canine spirit. We had brought into our home a living, breathing being, not a fashion accessory to prop in the corner. For better or worse, he was our dog. He was a part of our family, and, for all his flaws, he had returned our affection one hundredfold. Devotion such as his could not be bought for any price.

  I was not ready to give up on him.

  Even as I continued to make halfhearted inquiries about finding Marley a new home, I began working with him in earnest. My own private Mission: Impossible was to rehabilitate this dog and prove to Jenny he was worthy. Interrupted sleep be damned, I began rising at dawn, buckling Patrick into the jogging stroller, and heading down to the water to put Marley through the paces. Sit. Stay. Down. Heel. Over and over we practiced. There was a desperation to my mission, and Marley seemed to sense it. The stakes were different now; this was for real. In case he didn’t fully understand that, I spelled it out for him more than once without mincing words: “We’re not screwing around here, Marley. This is it. Let’s go.” And I would put him through the commands again, with my helper Patrick clapping and calling to his big yellow friend, “Waddy! Hee-O!”

  By the time I reenrolled Marley in obedience school, he was a different dog from the juvenile delinquent I had first shown up with. Yes, still as wild as a boar, but this time he knew I was the boss and he was the underling. This time there would be no lunges toward other dogs (or at least not many), no out-of-control surges across the tarmac, no crashing into strangers’ crotches. Through eight weekly sessions, I marched him through the commands on a tight leash, and he was happy—make that overjoyed—to cooperate. At our final meeting, the trainer—a relaxed woman who was the antithesis of Miss Dominatrix—called us forward. “Okay,” she said, “show us what you’ve got.”

  I ordered Marley into a sit position, and he dropped neatly to his haunches. I raised the choker chain high around his throat and with a crisp tug of the lead ordered him to heel. We trotted across the parking lot and back, Marley at my side, his shoulder brushing m
y calf, just as the book said it should. I ordered him to sit again, and I stood directly in front of him and pointed my finger at his forehead. “Stay,” I said calmly, and with the other hand I dropped his leash. I stepped backward several paces. His big brown eyes fixed on me, waiting for any small sign from me to release him, but he remained anchored. I walked in a 360-degree circle around him. He quivered with excitement and tried to rotate his head, Linda Blair–style, to watch me, but he did not budge. When I was back in front of him, just for kicks, I snapped my fingers and yelled, “Incoming!” He hit the deck like he was storming Iwo Jima. The teacher burst out laughing, a good sign. I turned my back on him and walked thirty feet away. I could feel his eyes burning into my back, but he held fast. He was quaking violently by the time I turned around to face him. The volcano was getting ready to blow. Then, spreading my feet into a wide boxer’s stance in anticipation of what was coming, I said, “Marley…” I let his name hang in the air for a few seconds. “Come!” He shot at me with everything he had, and I braced for impact. At the last instant I deftly sidestepped him with a bullfighter’s grace, and he blasted past me, then circled back and goosed me from behind with his nose.

  “Good boy, Marley,” I gushed, dropping to my knees. “Good, good, good boy! You a good boy!” He danced around me like we had just conquered Mount Everest together.

  At the end of the evening, the instructor called us up and handed us our diploma. Marley had passed basic obedience training, ranking seventh in the class. So what if it was a class of eight and the eighth dog was a psychopathic pit bull that seemed intent on taking a human life at the first opportunity? I would take it. Marley, my incorrigible, untrainable, undisciplined dog, had passed. I was so proud I could have cried, and in fact I actually might have had Marley not leapt up and promptly eaten his diploma.