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A Trip To Dog Heaven
Marley & Me Life and love with the
World’s Worst Dog
Who was this Marley? After 19 weeks, it was on the top of the list and the bookseller called to say that he has a book called Marley and Me. Would it be of interested for me? Of course it would. After all, one was a great fan of dog stories of the Yorkshire vet James Herriot. And so impressed had I been that on my first trip to England in 1987 I had made my way up to Yorkshire and met James Herriot in person and invited him to India. So he had sent me the book. Its cover had a lovely yellow labrador with soft brown eyes looking at you compassionately with the legend on top. Life and love with the world’s worst dog. And it certainly did not look like the world’s worst dog by a long shot. What about all the pit bulls in the world? He is just being called the world’s worst dog like you call your brother – the world’s worst brother or your friend the world worst friend or your wife the world’s worst wife. You say it lovingly. You say it with affection. You say it meaning exactly the opposite. And how right this was. The author admits it towards the end of the book. " So many people remake their pets in death, turning them into supernatural, noble beasts that in life did everything for their masters except fry eggs for breakfast. I wanted to be honest. Marley was a funny, bigger-than-life pain in the ass who never quite got the hang of the whole chain- of-command thing. Honestly he might well have been the world’s worst-behaved dog. Yet he intuitively grasped from the start what it meant to be man’s best friend". How to best describe Marley? The right words come from the author himself in the column he wrote for the Philadelphia Inquirer after Marley died. "No one ever called him a great dog or even a good dog. He was as wild as a banshee and as strong as a bull. He crashed joyously through life with a gusto most often associated with natural disasters. He’s the only dog I’ve ever known to get expelled from obedience school." He continued: "Marley was a chewer of couches, a slasher of screens, a slinger of drool, a tipper of trash cans. As for brains, let me just say he chased his tail till the day he died, apparently convinced he was on the verge of a major canine breakthrough." There was more to him than that, however, and I described his intuition and empathy, his gentleness with children, his pure heart". It’s really a charming story. A very Middle America story. Of a young reporter and his wife who are newly married and buy a labrador puppy as a training for bringing up babies. And the dog becomes as much part of their lives as their two boys and girl as they move from Miami to Baton rouge to Pennsylvania, dog and babies in tow. The cute little pup which was named after Bob Marley, the reggae genius whose chilled out music belies the dog’s character, becomes not only a part of their lives but the centre of their existence. The story is told with great humour and in a self-deprecating tone—in all modesty —recording an ordinary life of an ordinary man who just happens to own an extraordinary dog. A book that not only tells you what is best about America but one that you will find uplifting and thoroughly enjoyable. |
ONE watched enthralled as Marley
& Me bounded up the New York Times hard cover non-fiction
bestseller list like a yellow labrador, it was intriguing.