Apr 07 2009
Marley and Me
Marley & Me: Life and Love with the World’s Worst Dog by John Grogan has been quite the sensation. Much as I love seeing dogs front and center on the bestseller list, and the movie list, and generally the topic of everyone’s chitchat, I have to admit I’m not going to review this book.
You see, I haven’t read it. I haven’t seen the movie. Why not, when I am a true dog fanatic? I’m also fanatical about communicating with your animal and listening when it tries to communicate with you. Every review I’ve read, every claim the book is hilarious and the movie was a roll on the floor, just makes me cringe and think, “Poor dog, poor people.” Yes, in that order. There’s no communication going on there. These people may have observed a great deal about dogs in their wild state, but they have missed out on a whole lifetime’s worth (the dog’s lifetime, that is) of back-and-forth interaction. The dog trainer that pops up as cited in the Amazon listing of the book is Barbara Woodhouse, who was not a mistress of two-way communication, but rather of the yank-drag-spin school. Marley may have known what he was doing when he refused his “choker collar.”
Poor Marley sounds like he was trying to say a lot while his people utterly failed to Get It. If the previews, reviews and vignettes tell me this much, I can only imagine it as a terribly frustrating read. Over at Nonfiction Lover, Hava has reviewed this book under several tags, including “worst dog in the world.” Her review is delightful, and I did enjoy reading it. Overall, though, even thinking of Marley makes me go hug my dogs. I’ll stick with the reviews for now.
I took Dustin for his first walk in a truly urban downtown environment yesterday. We met people who shouted as they picked up cigarette butts, and people who wanted to know if Dustin was a Nazi, and people who just wanted to say how beautiful he is. We visited doorways and alleyways and we met his first-ever statue. Now he knows that a thing that looks like a giant and smells like pigeon poo is nothing to worry about. And though I may not have been window-shopping or appreciating the architecture as much as I might have with a human companion, I observed all sorts of things I wouldn’t have with that human, too. Dustin tells me if I’ve overlooked something he feels is important, whether it’s a person approaching at a suspicious angle or a cat’s den. Since he’s able to do this, I have the freedom to tell him whether I agree it’s important. He can tell me that the freight train passing overhead sounds dangerous to him, and I can persuade him to turn around and have a good look once we’re where we can see it. There’s some give and take. If I yanked him forward and corrected him harshly whenever he stopped walking at heel, I’d be missing a lot of information, including that there was someone following me for a while. Note: people stop following when the shepherd turns to peer at them in a meaningful way and his human says “Good boy” instead of “Cut that out.” Communication can be a good thing.
