Marley and Me: Life and Love With the World's Worst Dog, Page 2

  Lori, on the other hand, was a hobbyist, motivated more by love of the breed than by profit. She owned just one female and one male. They had come from distinct bloodlines, and she had the paper trail to prove it. This would be Lily’s second and final litter before she retired to the good life of a countrified family pet. With both parents on the premises, the buyer could see firsthand the lineage—although in our case, the father apparently was outside and out of pocket.

  The litter consisted of five females, all but one of which already had deposits on them, and four males. Lori was asking $400 for the remaining female and $375 for the males. One of the males seemed particularly smitten with us. He was the goofiest of the group and charged into us, somersaulting into our laps and clawing his way up our shirts to lick our faces. He gnawed on our fingers with surprisingly sharp baby teeth and stomped clumsy circles around us on giant tawny paws that were way out of proportion to the rest of his body. “That one there you can have for three-fifty,” the owner said.

  Jenny is a rabid bargain hunter who has been known to drag home all sorts of things we neither want nor need simply because they were priced too attractively to pass up. “I know you don’t golf,” she said to me one day as she pulled a set of used clubs out of the car. “But you wouldn’t believe the deal I got on these.” Now I saw her eyes brighten. “Aw, honey,” she cooed. “The little guy’s on clearance!”

  I had to admit he was pretty darn adorable. Frisky, too. Before I realized what he was up to, the rascal had half my watchband chewed off.

  “We have to do the scare test,” I said. Many times before I had recounted for Jenny the story of picking out Saint Shaun when I was a boy, and my father teaching me to make a sudden move or loud noise to separate the timid from the self-assured. Sitting in this heap of pups, she gave me that roll of the eyes that she reserved for odd Grogan-family behavior. “Seriously,” I said. “It works.”

  I stood up, turned away from the puppies, then swung quickly back around, taking a sudden, exaggerated step toward them. I stomped my foot and barked out, “Hey!” None seemed too concerned by this stranger’s contortions. But only one plunged forward to meet the assault head-on. It was Clearance Dog. He plowed full steam into me, throwing a cross-body block across my ankles and pouncing at my shoelaces as though convinced they were dangerous enemies that needed to be destroyed.

  “I think it’s fate,” Jenny said.

  “Ya think?” I said, scooping him up and holding him in one hand in front of my face, studying his mug. He looked at me with heart-melting brown eyes and then nibbled my nose. I plopped him into Jenny’s arms, where he did the same to her. “He certainly seems to like us,” I said.

  And so it came to be. We wrote Lori a check for $350, and she told us we could return to take Clearance Dog home with us in three weeks when he was eight weeks old and weaned. We thanked her, gave Lily one last pat, and said good-bye.

  Walking to the car, I threw my arm around Jenny’s shoulder and pulled her tight to me. “Can you believe it?” I said. “We actually got our dog!”

  “I can’t wait to bring him home,” she said.

  Just as we were reaching the car, we heard a commotion coming from the woods. Something was crashing through the brush—and breathing very heavily. It sounded like what you might hear in a slasher film. And it was coming our way. We froze, staring into the darkness. The sound grew louder and closer. Then in a flash the thing burst into the clearing and came charging in our direction, a yellow blur. A very big yellow blur. As it galloped past, not stopping, not even seeming to notice us, we could see it was a large Labrador retriever. But it was nothing like the sweet Lily we had just cuddled with inside. This one was soaking wet and covered up to its belly in mud and burrs. Its tongue hung out wildly to one side, and froth flew off its jowls as it barreled past. In the split-second glimpse I got, I detected an odd, slightly crazed, yet somehow joyous gaze in its eyes. It was as though this animal had just seen a ghost—and couldn’t possibly be more tickled about it.

  Then, with the roar of a stampeding herd of buffalo, it was gone, around the back of the house and out of sight. Jenny let out a little gasp.

  “I think,” I said, a slight queasiness rising in my gut, “we just met Dad.”

  CHAPTER 2

  Running with the Blue Bloods

  O ur first official act as dog owners was to have a fight.

  It began on the drive home from the breeder’s and continued in fits and snippets through the next week. We could not agree on what to name our Clearance Dog. Jenny shot down my suggestions, and I shot down hers. The battle culminated one morning before we left for work.

  “Chelsea?” I said. “That is such a chick name. No boy dog would be caught dead with the name Chelsea.”

  “Like he’ll really know,” Jenny said.

  “Hunter,” I said. “Hunter is perfect.”

  “Hunter? You’re kidding, right? What are you, on some macho, sportsman trip? Way too masculine. Besides, you’ve never hunted a day in your life.”

  “He’s a male,” I said, seething. “He’s supposed to be masculine. Don’t turn this into one of your feminist screeds.”

  This was not going well. I had just taken off the gloves. As Jenny wound up to counterpunch, I quickly tried to return the deliberations to my leading candidate. “What’s wrong with Louie?”

  “Nothing, if you’re a gas-station attendant,” she snapped.

  “Hey! Watch it! That’s my grandfather’s name. I suppose we should name him after your grandfather? ‘Good dog, Bill!’”

  As we fought, Jenny absently walked to the stereo and pushed the play button on the tape deck. It was one of her marital combat strategies. When in doubt, drown out your opponent. The lilting reggae strains of Bob Marley began to pulse through the speakers, having an almost instant mellowing effect on us both.

  We had only discovered the late Jamaican singer when we moved to South Florida from Michigan. In the white-bread backwaters of the Upper Midwest, we’d been fed a steady diet of Bob Seger and John Cougar Mellencamp. But here in the pulsing ethnic stew that was South Florida, Bob Marley’s music, even a decade after his death, was everywhere. We heard it on the car radio as we drove down Biscayne Boulevard. We heard it as we sipped cafés cubanos in Little Havana and ate Jamaican jerk chicken in little holes-in-the-wall in the dreary immigrant neighborhoods west of Fort Lauderdale. We heard it as we sampled our first conch fritters at the Bahamian Goombay Festival in Miami’s Coconut Grove section and as we shopped for Haitian art in Key West.

  The more we explored, the more we fell in love, both with South Florida and with each other. And always in the background, it seemed, was Bob Marley. He was there as we baked on the beach, as we painted over the dingy green walls of our house, as we awoke at dawn to the screech of wild parrots and made love in the first light filtering through the Brazilian pepper tree outside our window. We fell in love with his music for what it was, but also for what it defined, which was that moment in our lives when we ceased being two and became one. Bob Marley was the soundtrack for our new life together in this strange, exotic, rough-and-tumble place that was so unlike anywhere we had lived before.

  And now through the speakers came our favorite song of all, because it was so achingly beautiful and because it spoke so clearly to us. Marley’s voice filled the room, repeating the chorus over and over: “Is this love that I’m feeling?” And at the exact same moment, in perfect unison, as if we had rehearsed it for weeks, we both shouted, “Marley!”

  “That’s it!” I exclaimed. “That’s our name.” Jenny was smiling, a good sign. I tried it on for size. “Marley, come!” I commanded. “Marley, stay! Good boy, Marley!”

  Jenny chimed in, “You’re a cutie-wootie-woo, Marley!”

  “Hey, I think it works,” I said. Jenny did, too. Our fight was over. We had our new puppy’s name.

  The next night after dinner I came into the bedroom where Jenny was reading and said, “I think we need t
o spice the name up a little.”

  “What are you talking about?” she asked. “We both love it.”

  I had been reading the registration papers from the American Kennel Club. As a purebred Labrador retriever with both parents properly registered, Marley was entitled to AKC registration as well. This was only really needed if you planned to show or breed your dog, in which case there was no more important piece of paper. For a house pet, however, it was superfluous. But I had big plans for our Marley. This was my first time rubbing shoulders with anything resembling high breeding, my own family included. Like Saint Shaun, the dog of my childhood, I was a mutt of indistinct and undistinguished ancestry. My lineage represented more nations than the European Union. This dog was the closest to blue blood I would ever get, and I wasn’t about to pass up whatever opportunities it offered. I admit I was a little starstruck.

  “Let’s say we want to enter him in competitions,” I said. “Have you ever seen a champion dog with just one name? They always have big long titles, like Sir Dartworth of Cheltenham.”

  “And his master, Sir Dorkshire of West Palm Beach,” Jenny said.

  “I’m serious,” I said. “We could make money studding him out. Do you know what people pay for top stud dogs? They all have fancy names.”

  “Whatever floats your boat, honey,” Jenny said, and returned to her book.

  The next morning, after a late night of brainstorming, I cornered her at the bathroom sink and said, “I came up with the perfect name.”

  She looked at me skeptically. “Hit me,” she said.

  “Okay. Are you ready? Here goes.” I let each word fall slowly from my lips: “Grogan’s…Majestic…Marley…of…Churchill.” Man, I thought, does that sound regal.

  “Man,” Jenny said, “does that sound dumb.”

  I didn’t care. I was the one handling the paperwork, and I had already written in the name. In ink. Jenny could smirk all she wanted; when Grogan’s Majestic Marley of Churchill took top honors at the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show in a few years, and I gloriously trotted him around the ring before an adoring international television audience, we’d see who would be laughing.

  “Come on, my dorky duke,” Jenny said. “Let’s have breakfast.”

  CHAPTER 3

  Homeward Bound

  W hile we counted down the days until we could bring Marley home, I belatedly began reading up on Labrador retrievers. I say belatedly because virtually everything I read gave the same strong advice: Before buying a dog, make sure you thoroughly research the breed so you know what you’re getting into. Oops.

  An apartment dweller, for instance, probably wouldn’t do well with a Saint Bernard. A family with young children might want to avoid the sometimes unpredictable chow chow. A couch potato looking for a lapdog to idle the hours away in front of the television would likely be driven insane by a border collie, which needs to run and work to be happy.

  I was embarrassed to admit that Jenny and I had done almost no research before settling on a Labrador retriever. We chose the breed on one criterion alone: curb appeal. We often had admired them with their owners down on the Intracoastal Waterway bike trail—big, dopey, playful galumphs that seemed to love life with a passion not often seen in this world. Even more embarrassing, our decision was influenced not by The Complete Dog Book, the bible of dog breeds published by the American Kennel Club, or by any other reputable guide. It was influenced by that other heavyweight of canine literature, “The Far Side” by Gary Larson. We were huge fans of the cartoon. Larson filled his panels with witty, urbane Labs doing and saying the darnedest things. Yes, they talked! What wasn’t to like? Labs were immensely amusing animals—at least in Larson’s hands. And who couldn’t use a little more amusement in life? We were sold.

  Now, as I pored through more serious works on the Labrador retriever, I was relieved to learn that our choice, however ill informed, was not too wildly off the mark. The literature was filled with glowing testimonials about the Labrador retriever’s loving, even-keeled personality, its gentleness with children, its lack of aggression, and its desire to please. Their intelligence and malleability had made them a leading choice for search-and-rescue training and as guide dogs for the blind and handicapped. All this boded well for a pet in a home that would sooner or later likely include children.

  One guide gushed: “The Labrador retriever is known for its intelligence, warm affection for man, field dexterity and undying devotion to any task.” Another marveled at the breed’s immense loyalty. All these qualities had pushed the Labrador retriever from a specialty sporting dog, favored by bird hunters because of its skill at fetching downed pheasants and ducks from frigid waters, into America’s favorite family pet. Just the year before, in 1990, the Labrador retriever had knocked the cocker spaniel out of the top spot on the American Kennel Club registry as the nation’s most popular breed. No other breed has come close to overtaking the Lab since. In 2004 it took its fifteenth straight year as the AKC’s top dog, with 146,692 Labs registered. Coming in a distant second were golden retrievers, with 52,550, and, in third place, German shepherds, with 46,046.

  Quite by accident, we had stumbled upon a breed America could not get enough of. All those happy dog owners couldn’t be wrong, could they? We had chosen a proven winner. And yet the literature was filled with ominous caveats.

  Labs were bred as working dogs and tended to have boundless energy. They were highly social and did not do well left alone for long periods. They could be thick-skulled and difficult to train. They needed rigorous daily exercise or they could become destructive. Some were wildly excitable and hard for even experienced dog handlers to control. They had what could seem like eternal puppyhoods, stretching three years or more. The long, exuberant adolescence required extra patience from owners.

  They were muscular and bred over the centuries to be inured to pain, qualities that served them well as they dove into the icy waters of the North Atlantic to assist fishermen. But in a home setting, those same qualities also meant they could be like the proverbial bull in the china closet. They were big, strong, barrel-chested animals that did not always realize their own strength. One owner would later tell me she once tied her male Lab to the frame of her garage door so he could be nearby while she washed the car in the driveway. The dog spotted a squirrel and lunged, pulling the large steel doorframe right out of the wall.

  And then I came across a sentence that struck fear in my heart. “The parents may be one of the best indications of the future temperament of your new puppy. A surprising amount of behavior is inherited.” My mind flashed back to the frothing, mud-caked banshee that came charging out of the woods, the night we picked out our puppy. Oh my, I thought. The book counseled to insist, whenever possible, on seeing both the dam and the sire. My mind flashed back again, this time to the breeder’s ever-so-slight hesitation when I asked where the father was. Oh…he’s around here somewhere. And then the way she quickly changed the topic. It was all making sense. Dog buyers in the know would have demanded to meet the father. And what would they have found? A manic dervish tearing blindly through the night as if demons were close on his tail. I said a silent prayer that Marley had inherited his mother’s disposition.

  Individual genetics aside, purebred Labs all share certain predictable characteristics. The American Kennel Club sets standards for the qualities Labrador retrievers should possess. Physically, they are stocky and muscular, with short, dense, weather-resistant coats. Their fur can be black, chocolate brown, or a range of yellows, from light cream to a rich fox red. One of the Labrador retriever’s main distinguishing characteristics is its thick, powerful tail, which resembles that of an otter and can clear a coffee table in one quick swipe. The head is large and blocky, with powerful jaws and high-set, floppy ears. Most Labs are about two feet tall in the withers, or top of the shoulders, and the typical male weighs sixty-five to eighty pounds, though some can weigh considerably more.

  But looks, according to the AKC, are no
t all that make a Lab a Lab. The club’s breed standard states: “True Labrador retriever temperament is as much a hallmark of the breed as the ‘otter’ tail. The ideal disposition is one of a kindly, outgoing, tractable nature, eager to please and non-aggressive towards man or animal. The Labrador has much that appeals to people. His gentle ways, intelligence and adaptability make him an ideal dog.”

  An ideal dog! Endorsements did not come much more glowing than that. The more I read, the better I felt about our decision. Even the caveats didn’t scare me much. Jenny and I would naturally throw ourselves into our new dog, showering him with attention and affection. We were dedicated to taking as long as needed to properly train him in obedience and social skills. We were both enthusiastic walkers, hitting the waterfront trail nearly every evening after work, and many mornings, too. It would be just natural to bring our new dog along with us on our power walks. We’d tire the little rascal out. Jenny’s office was only a mile away, and she came home every day for lunch, at which time she could toss balls to him in the backyard to let him burn off even more of this boundless energy we were warned about.

  A week before we were to bring our dog home, Jenny’s sister, Susan, called from Boston. She, her husband, and their two children planned to be at Disney World the following week; would Jenny like to drive up and spend a few days with them? A doting aunt who looked for any opportunity to bond with her niece and nephew, Jenny was dying to go. But she was torn. “I won’t be here to bring little Marley home,” she said.

  “You go,” I told her. “I’ll get the dog and have him all settled in and waiting for you when you get back.”

  I tried to sound nonchalant, but secretly I was overjoyed at the prospect of having the new puppy all to myself for a few days of uninterrupted male bonding. He was to be our joint project, both of ours equally. But I never believed a dog could answer to two masters, and if there could be only one alpha leader in the household hierarchy, I wanted it to be me. This little three-day run would give me a head start.