Here? Smack in front of the picture window? 1 страница

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

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