RSS Feed
|
|
|
|
||||||||||||||||||
|
Book Review phia Inquirer. He now lives in Pennsylvania but in 1991 he was a reporter for the Florida Sun-Sentinel and his wife was a feature writer for the Palm Beach Post. They were busy, productive, and doing fine. Then for no reason beyond thinking that perhaps it would be good training for the children who were to come, they decided to acquire a dog. Responding to an ad, they drove off into the country to look at Labrador Retriever puppies. Once at the site they were greeted by big, placid, sweet-natured Lily, proud mother of nine tiny yellow balls of fur. Inquiries about the father resulted in, "Sammy Boy, he's around somewhere," and then a quick suggestion that they look at the puppies. There were five females and four males. The females at $400.00 each were all spoken for. The males were $375.00. One of the males seemed particularly smitten with them. He charged them, rolled somersaults over them, climbed up their shirts to lick their faces, and chewed on their fingers with amazingly sharp baby teeth. "That one there you can have for three-fifty," the owner said. Who could resist a clearance puppy? And though there was no doubt he was the goofiest of the lot, they claimed a puppy. On their way back to their car, something came crashing through the underbrush toward them and with a burst of energy came charging into view - a yellow blur. A big yellow blur covered with mud and burrs, tongue hanging wildly to one side, roared around them and disappeared around the back of the house, expression joyful though slightly crazed. They had just met Dad. When the puppy was old enough they brought him home and after much discussion named him Marley after Bob Marley. And from that day on, life was not the same. Marley grew into a 97-pound "steamroller of a Labrador Retriever" who drooled on guests, crashed through screen doors, ate everything in sight when there was thunder (as there often was in Florida) because storms scared him silly, and tranquilizers did not a whit of good. He was expelled from obedience school at least twice. He was, in short, a hopeless dog, his heart filled with love and adoration, loyal to the core. He was short on acquiring discipline, being a dog of the moment. Between groans of empathy as Marley plays havoc with everything orderly, one cannot resist laughing helplessly. Marley lived 13 years with the Grogans who survived dogonslaughts of love and destruction. What a dog!! What a Dog!!
Marley and Me is available at the Mary Willis Library and is not just a tale for dog lovers. This book has been on the New York Times Book Review section as a bestseller for 45 weeks, currently at the top of the list.
|
for larger version       |
|||||||||||||||||
