pamperedpuppy // luxury lifestyles for dogs

Marley & Me

Marley & Me
by Josh Grogan
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Marley & Me, the bestselling novel by John Grogan and much-anticipated film (the film hits theatres on Christmas Day), will no doubt warm the hearts of dog lovers everywhere. The drooling warm-heartedness of John Grogan's writing in the book is deeply engaging from Marley's first lick right up to his last. Even if you thank every star in the heavens that no dog of yours has ever misbehaved as calamitously as Marley, you will almost certainly cry when due to old age, infirmity and an extreme health crisis, Marley is euthanized. Grogan's achievement is immense, for he has done nothing less than to immortalize the humanity of this canine.

The following passage from the book exemplifies the lighter side of Marley's shenanigans: "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."

Grogan uses that anecdote in juxtaposition to another, though, to illustrate Marley's powers of emotional involvement, not to say manipulation. One time when he has completely destroyed a couch cushion, Marley is admonished and hit over and again by Grogan's exasperated wife Jenny. As Grogan tells it, Jenny was hitting Marley out of frustration but not with any great force. "Slap him lightly on the rump with an open palm in anger," Grogan writes, "or even just speak to him with a stern voice, and he acted deeply wounded."

It's not news that a K-9 is no incidental thing in the life of a dog-loving family. Yet in portraying just how tightly interwoven into the Grogan family fabric Marley became, Grogan has surpassed most previous literary depictions of dogs. That isn't to say that you should burn Thomas Mann's Bashan and I or let your current pooch eat that classic book and then regurgitate it on the carpet, as Marley would surely have done were a copy around. (Don't ask what happens to Jenny's gold necklace at one point in this narrative). Marley not only comes exuberantly to life off these pages; he does so in a manner that makes you understand and really feel the complexity of his interactions with his human companions.

John Grogan's capacity for love is exemplary. His devotion to his wife and children and the joy he has from loving them while being loved in return is palpable. His fundamental decency is evidenced when, accompanied by Marley, he rushes to the rescue of a stabbing victim screaming in terror and pain in the night. The scenes involving that young lady in Florida, actually, are among the most compelling in the book. Grogan is somewhat awestruck when Marley in his reactions manifests an instinctive comprehension of the situation's seriousness. Yet let us say it without meaning to offend the sensibilities of cat, bird, fish and lizard or hamster fanciers. Canines have reciprocal relations with humans that compared to those between humans and other animals are the most finely nuanced over the broadest range of emotions. Marley's protectiveness of a baby, his sympathetic commiseration with Jenny in a moment of terrible grief, his fear of thunder, his evident joy in swimming with Grogan and his hiding when he has been bad, oh so bad characterize him as a complex being with a certain intelligence of his surroundings, Grogan's belief that the dog is a "goof" and a "numbskull" notwithstanding. Ultimately, the text is as much a portrait of John Grogan as of Marley, and both are pretty swell.

Still, the book while entertaining should serve as a cautionary tale. After discovering the puppy Marley's inborn perpetual rambunctiousness, Grogan reads in many a guide "Before buying a dog, make sure you thoroughly research the breed so you know what you're getting into." His authorial aside on having neglected to do so is "Oops." Grogan remained devoted to Marley, but plenty of "Oops" have lead to dogs getting abandoned and killed. The human part of the world needs more education about canines and less "Oops" after dogs have been brought into the home.

I asked StarPet author Bash Dibra how he might have trained Marley right from puppyhood. "Grogan has a great story that people love to read. But the reality may be that humans sometimes enjoy the adventure of seeing their dog act out. At some level, they actually want to be like Marley & Me. They engross themselves into that bad doggy personality, wishing they had the right to do those kinds of things. How wonderful to go into the living room and tear the couch apart. What fun! Who wouldn't love to be free to pull and bark? What I tell people is that they have to put dogma into their training. Rules. Society requires us to live within certain limits; we must be responsible about our dogs and see that they respect society's limits too. All bad behavior can be countered from the get-go. The mistake a lot of people make is to think they can spoil the puppy first and train it later. The truth is that you have to train first and only then spoil."

Speaking of spoiled, Grogan more than once expresses a prejudice against small, well-groomed dogs that are conspicuously spoiled rotten. On occasion, though, he will compliment dogs smaller and better-mannered than his own. Of the refined canines in Boca Raton, for example, he writes "They were to Marley what Grace Kelly was to Gomer Pyle." Yet elsewhere, you find him indulging in the unfair presumption that just because a dog is coiffed, dressed and pedicured, its human considers it nothing more than a fashion accessory. Marley to his credit never exhibits this deeply ugly flaw of casting aspersions on the well-heeled four paw set. In fact, he is totally crazy about poodles. Why, he'll drag an outdoor café table crashing past the other café tables by his leash, just to get within sniffing distance of a fluffy whitey.

There's no arguing with the commercial success of this book, but there are passages that make me roll my eyes. Some embellishment of event is too transparently contrived, an unnecessary strategy that waters down the empathic and realistic portrait of Marley and pollutes the water by giving slivers of the portrait a cartoonish feel. In other places, a point is over-explained, or repeated and repeated, as though Grogan were writing for Marley instead of about him.

But the story as a whole is completely redeemed by its tail thumping, food stealing, carnation eating, unfailingly loyal and slobbering Labrador protagonist. Even the descriptions of the physical energy Marley brings to the Grogans' life remind us of the added joie de vivre dogs give us every day. "He pranced on his hind legs by our tiny Toyota Tercel, hopping up and down, shaking, flinging saliva off his jowls, panting, absolutely beside himself with anticipation of the big moment when I would open the back door." Having taken the ride with Marley through Grogan's book, I find myself looking at the photo of the immortal Lab on the cover, feeling like I know him, like I love him. You will too.