by John Grogan
It was beginning to dawn on me what she was getting at. “Are you trying to tell me—”
“He’s a distraction to the other dogs.”
“—that you’re—”
“He’s just too excitable.”
“—kicking us out of class?”
“You can always bring him back in another six or eight months.”
“So you’re kicking us out?”
“I’ll happily give you a full refund.”
“You’re kicking us out.”
“Yes,” she finally said. “I’m kicking you out.”
Marley, as if on cue, lifted his leg and let loose a raging stream of urine, missing his beloved instructor’s foot by mere centimeters.
Sometimes a man needs to get angry to get serious. Miss Dominatrix had made me angry. I owned a beautiful, purebred Labrador retriever, a proud member of the breed famous for its ability to guide the blind, rescue disaster victims, assist hunters, and pluck fish from roiling ocean swells, all with calm intelligence. How dare she write him off after just two lessons? So he was a bit on the spirited side; he was filled with nothing but good intentions. I was going to prove to that insufferable stuffed shirt that Grogan’s Majestic Marley of Churchill was no quitter. We’d see her at Westminster.
First thing the next morning, I had Marley out in the backyard with me. “Nobody kicks the Grogan boys out of obedience school,” I told him. “Untrainable? We’ll see who’s untrainable. Right?” He bounced up and down. “Can we do it, Marley?” He wiggled. “I can’t hear you! Can we do it?” He yelped. “That’s better. Now let’s get to work.”
We started with the sit command, which I had been practicing with him since he was a small puppy and which he already was quite good at. I towered over him, gave him my best alpha-dog scowl, and in a firm but calm voice ordered him to sit. He sat. I praised. We repeated the exercise several times. Next we moved to the down command, another one I had been practicing with him. He stared intently into my eyes, neck straining forward, anticipating my directive. I slowly raised my hand in the air and held it there as he waited for the word. With a sharp downward motion, I snapped my fingers, pointed at the ground and said, “Down!” Marley collapsed in a heap, hitting the ground with a thud. He could not possibly have gone down with more gusto had a mortar shell just exploded behind him. Jenny, sitting on the porch with her coffee, noticed it, too, and yelled out, “Incoming!”
After several rounds of hit-the-deck, I decided to move up to the next challenge: come on command. This was a tough one for Marley. The coming part was not the problem; it was waiting in place until we summoned him that he could not get. Our attention-deficit dog was so anxious to be plastered against us he could not sit still while we walked away from him.
I put him in the sit position facing me and fixed my eyes on his. As we stared at each other, I raised my palm, holding it out in front of me like a crossing guard. “Stay,” I said, and took a step backward. He froze, staring anxiously, waiting for the slightest sign that he could join me. On my fourth step backward, he could take it no longer and broke free, racing up and tumbling against me. I admonished him and tried it again. And again and again. Each time he allowed me to get a little farther away before charging. Eventually, I stood fifty feet across the yard, my palm out toward him. I waited. He sat, locked in position, his entire body quaking with anticipation. I could see the nervous energy building in him; he was like a volcano ready to blow. But he held fast. I counted to ten. He did not budge. His eyes froze on me; his muscles bulged. Okay, enough torture, I thought. I dropped my hand and yelled, “Marley, come!”
As he catapulted forward, I squatted and clapped my hands to encourage him. I thought he might go racing willy-nilly across the yard, but he made a beeline for me. Perfect! I thought. “C’mon, boy!” I coached. “C’mon!” And come he did. He was barreling right at me. “Slow it down, boy,” I said. He just kept coming. “Slow down!” He had this vacant, crazed look on his face, and in the instant before impact I realized the pilot had left the wheelhouse. It was a one-dog stampede. I had time for one final command. “STOP!” I screamed. Blam! He plowed into me without breaking stride and I pitched backward, slamming hard to the ground. When I opened my eyes a few seconds later, he was straddling me with all four paws, lying on my chest and desperately licking my face. How did I do, boss? Technically speaking, he had followed orders exactly. After all, I had failed to mention anything about stopping once he got to me.
“Mission accomplished,” I said with a groan.
Jenny peered out the kitchen window at us and shouted, “I’m off to work. When you two are done making out, don’t forget to close the windows. It’s supposed to rain this afternoon.” I gave Linebacker Dog a snack, then showered and headed off to work myself.
When I arrived home that night, Jenny was waiting for me at the front door, and I could tell she was upset. “Go look in the garage,” she said.
I opened the door into the garage and the first thing I spotted was Marley, lying on his carpet, looking dejected. In that instant snapshot image, I could see that his snout and front paws were not right. They were dark brown, not their usual light yellow, caked in dried blood. Then my focus zoomed out and I sucked in my breath. The garage—our indestructible bunker—was a shambles. Throw rugs were shredded, paint was clawed off the concrete walls, and the ironing board was tipped over, its fabric cover hanging in ribbons. Worst of all, the doorway in which I stood looked like it had been attacked with a chipper-shredder. Bits of wood were sprayed in a ten-foot semicircle around the door, which was gouged halfway through to the other side. The bottom three feet of the doorjamb were missing entirely and nowhere to be found. Blood streaked the walls from where Marley had shredded his paws and muzzle. “Damn,” I said, more in awe than anger. My mind flashed to poor Mrs. Nedermier and the chainsaw murder across the street. I felt like I was standing in the middle of a crime scene.
Jenny’s voice came from behind me. “When I came home for lunch, everything was fine,” she said. “But I could tell it was getting ready to rain.” After she was back at work, an intense storm moved through, bringing with it sheets of rain, dazzling flashes of lightning, and thunder so powerful you could almost feel it thump against your chest.
When she arrived home a couple of hours later, Marley, standing amid the carnage of his desperate escape attempt, was in a complete, panic-stricken lather. He was so pathetic she couldn’t bring herself to yell at him. Besides, the incident was over; he would have no idea what he was being punished for. Yet she was so heartsick about the wanton attack on our new house, the house we had worked so hard on, that she could not bear to deal with it or him. “Wait till your father gets home!” she had threatened, and closed the door on him.
Over dinner, we tried to put what we were now calling “the wilding” in perspective. All we could figure was that, alone and terrified as the storm descended on the neighborhood, Marley decided his best chance at survival was to begin digging his way into the house. He was probably listening to some ancient denning instinct handed down from his ancestor, the wolf. And he pursued his goal with a zealous efficiency I wouldn’t have thought possible without the aid of heavy machinery.
When the dishes were done, Jenny and I went out into the garage where Marley, back to his old self, grabbed a chew toy and bounced around us, looking for a little tug-of-war action. I held him still while Jenny sponged the blood off his fur. Then he watched us, tail wagging, as we cleaned up his handiwork. We threw out the rugs and ironing-board cover, swept up the shredded remains of our door, mopped his blood off the walls, and made a list of materials we would need from the hardware store to repair the damage—the first of countless such repairs I would end up making over the course of his life. Marley seemed positively ebullient to have us out there, lending a hand with his remodeling efforts. “You don’t have to look so happy about it,” I scowled, and brought him inside for the night.
CHAPTER 9
The S
tuff Males Are Made Of
E very dog needs a good veterinarian, a trained professional who can keep it healthy and strong and immunized against disease. Every new dog owner needs one, too, mostly for the advice and reassurance and free counsel veterinarians find themselves spending inordinate amounts of their time dispensing. We had a few false starts finding a keeper. One was so elusive we only ever saw his high-school-aged helper; another was so old I was convinced he could no longer tell a Chihuahua from a cat. A third clearly was catering to Palm Beach heiresses and their palm-sized accessory dogs. Then we stumbled upon the doctor of our dreams. His name was Jay Butan—Dr. Jay to all who knew him—and he was young, smart, hip, and extraordinarily kind. Dr. Jay understood dogs like the best mechanics understand cars, intuitively. He clearly adored animals yet maintained a healthy sensibility about their role in the human world. In those early months, we kept him on speed dial and consulted him about the most inane concerns. When Marley began to develop rough scaly patches on his elbows, I feared he was developing some rare and, for all we knew, contagious skin ailment. Relax, Dr. Jay told me, those were just calluses from lying on the floor. One day Marley yawned wide and I spotted an odd purple discoloration on the back of his tongue. Oh my God, I thought. He has cancer. Kaposi’s sarcoma of the mouth. Relax, Dr. Jay advised, it was just a birthmark.
Now, on this afternoon, Jenny and I stood in an exam room with him, discussing Marley’s deepening neurosis over thunderstorms. We had hoped the chipper-shredder incident in the garage was an isolated aberration, but it turned out to be just the beginning of what would become a lifelong pattern of phobic, irrational behavior. Despite Labs’ reputation as excellent gun dogs, we had ended up with one who was mortally terrified of anything louder than a popping champagne cork. Firecrackers, backfiring engines, and gunshots all terrified him. Thunder was a house of horrors all its own. Even the hint of a storm would throw Marley into a meltdown. If we were home, he would press against us, shaking and drooling uncontrollably, his eyes darting nervously, ears folded back, tail tucked between his legs. When he was alone, he turned destructive, gouging away at whatever stood between him and perceived safety. One day Jenny arrived home as clouds gathered to find a wild-eyed Marley standing on top of the washing machine, dancing a desperate jig, his nails clicking on the enamel top. How he got up there and why he felt the urge in the first place, we never determined. People could be certifiably nuts, and as best as we could figure, so could dogs.
Dr. Jay pressed a vial of small yellow pills into my hand and said, “Don’t hesitate to use these.” They were sedatives that would, as he put it, “take the edge off Marley’s anxiety.” The hope, he said, was that, aided by the calming effects of the drug, Marley would be able to more rationally cope with storms and eventually realize they were nothing but a lot of harmless noise. Thunder anxiety was not unusual in dogs, he told us, especially in Florida, where huge boomers rolled across the peninsula nearly every afternoon during the torpid summer months. Marley nosed the vial in my hands, apparently eager to get started on a life of drug dependency.
Dr. Jay scruffed Marley’s neck and began working his lips as though he had something important to say but wasn’t quite sure how to say it. “And,” he said, pausing, “you probably want to start thinking seriously about having him neutered.”
“Neutered?” I repeated. “You mean, as in…” I looked down at the enormous set of testicles—comically huge orbs—swinging between Marley’s hind legs.
Dr. Jay gazed down at them, too, and nodded. I must have winced, maybe even grabbed myself, because he quickly added: “It’s painless, really, and he’ll be a lot more comfortable.” Dr. Jay knew all about the challenges Marley presented. He was our sounding board on all things Marley and knew about the disastrous obedience training, the numbskull antics, the destructiveness, the hyperactivity. And lately Marley, who was seven months old, had begun humping anything that moved, including our dinner guests. “It’ll just remove all that nervous sexual energy and make him a happier, calmer dog,” he said. He promised it wouldn’t dampen Marley’s sunny exuberance.
“God, I don’t know,” I said. “It just seems so…so final.”
Jenny, on the other hand, was having no such compunctions. “Let’s snip those suckers off!” she said.
“But what about siring a litter?” I asked. “What about carrying on his bloodline?” All those lucrative stud fees flashed before my eyes.
Again Dr. Jay seemed to be choosing his words carefully. “I think you need to be realistic about that,” he said. “Marley’s a great family pet, but I’m not sure he’s got the credentials he would need to be in demand for stud.” He was being as diplomatic as possible, but the expression on his face gave him away. It almost screamed out, Good God, man! For the sake of future generations, we must contain this genetic mistake at all costs!
I told him we would think about it, and with our new supply of mood-altering drugs in hand, we headed home.
It was at this same time, as we debated slicing away Marley’s manhood, that Jenny was placing unprecedented demands on mine. Dr. Sherman had cleared her to try to get pregnant again. She accepted the challenge with the single-mindedness of an Olympic athlete. The days of simply putting away the birth control pills and letting whatever might happen happen were behind us. In the insemination wars, Jenny was going on the offensive. For that, she needed me, a key ally who controlled the flow of ammunition. Like most males, I had spent every waking moment from the age of fifteen trying to convince the opposite sex that I was a worthy mating partner. Finally, I had found someone who agreed. I should have been thrilled. For the first time in my life, a woman wanted me more than I wanted her. This was guy heaven. No more begging, no more groveling. Like the best stud dogs, I was at last in demand. I should have been ecstatic. But suddenly it all just seemed like work, and stressful work at that. It was not a rollicking good romp that Jenny craved from me; it was a baby. And that meant I had a job to perform. This was serious business. That most joyous of acts overnight became a clinical drill involving basal-temperature checks, menstrual calendars, and ovulation charts. I felt like I was in service to the queen.
It was all about as arousing as a tax audit. Jenny was used to me being game to go at the slightest hint of an invitation, and she assumed the old rules still applied. I would be, let’s say, fixing the garbage disposal and she would walk in with her calendar in hand and say, “I had my last period on the seventeenth, which means”—and she would pause to count ahead from that date—“that we need to do it—NOW!”
The Grogan men have never handled pressure well, and I was no exception. It was only a matter of time before I suffered the ultimate male humiliation: performance failure. And once that happened, the game was over. My confidence was shot, my nerve gone. If it happened once, I knew it could happen again. Failure evolved into a self-fulfilling prophecy. The more I worried about performing my husbandly duty, the less I was able to relax and do what had always come naturally. I quashed all signs of physical affection lest I put ideas in Jenny’s head. I began to live in mortal fear that my wife would, God forbid, ask me to rip her clothes off and have my way with her. I began thinking that perhaps a life of celibacy in a remote monastery wouldn’t be such a bad future after all.
Jenny was not about to give up so easily. She was the hunter; I was the prey. One morning when I was working in my newspaper’s West Palm Beach bureau, just ten minutes from home, Jenny called from work. Did I want to meet her at home for lunch? You mean alone? Without a chaperone?
“Or we could meet at a restaurant somewhere,” I countered. A very crowded restaurant. Preferably with several of our coworkers along. And both mothers-in-law.
“Oh, c’mon,” she said. “It’ll be fun.” Then her voice lowered to a whisper and she added, “Today’s a good day. I…think…I’m…ovulating.” A wave of dread washed over me. Oh God, no. Not the O word. The pressure was on. It was time to perform or perish. To, quite literally, rise or
fall. Please don’t make me, I wanted to plead into the phone. Instead I said as coolly as I could, “Sure. Does twelve-thirty work?”
When I opened the front door, Marley, as always, was there to greet me, but Jenny was nowhere to be found. I called out to her. “In the bathroom,” she answered. “Out in a sec.” I sorted through the mail, killing time, a general sense of doom hovering over me, the way I imagined it hovered over people waiting for their biopsy results. “Hey there, sailor,” a voice behind me said, and when I turned around, Jenny was standing there in a little silky two-piece thing. Her flat stomach peeked out from below the top, which hung precariously from her shoulders by two impossibly thin straps. Her legs had never looked longer. “How do I look?” she said, holding her hands out at her sides. She looked incredible, that’s how she looked. When it comes to sleepwear, Jenny is squarely in the baggy T-shirt camp, and I could tell she felt silly in this seductive getup. But it was having the intended effect.
She scampered into the bedroom with me in pursuit. Soon we were on top of the sheets in each other’s arms. I closed my eyes and could feel that old lost friend of mine stirring. The magic was returning. You can do this, John. I tried to conjure up the most impure thoughts I could. This was going to work! My fingers fumbled for those flimsy shoulder straps. Roll with it, John. No pressure. I could feel her breath now, hot and moist on my face. And heavy. Hot, moist, heavy breath. Mmmm, sexy.
But wait. What was that smell? Something on her breath. Something at once familiar and foreign, not exactly unpleasant but not quite enticing, either. I knew that smell, but I couldn’t place it. I hesitated. What are you doing, you idiot? Forget the smell. Focus, man. Focus! But that smell—I could not get it out of my head. You’re getting distracted, John. Don’t get distracted. What was it? Stay the course! My curiosity was getting the better of me. Let it go, guy. Let it go! I began sniffing the air. A food; yes, that was it. But what food? Not crackers. Not chips. Not tuna fish. I almost had it. It was…Milk-Bones?