Worlds worst, or typical pet? (Marley and Me: Life and Love with the World's Worst Dog - John Grogan)

Name: scuba_angel

Hello doyoo user, You have to be logged in to use these functions... Login or register Close window

Send message to member

Product:	Marley and Me: Life and Love with the World's Worst Dog - John Grogan
Date:	25/09/07 (99 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: beautiful tribute to a family pet

Disadvantages: you need tissues at the end

After reading more than one review of this on here it finally made the jump from supermarket shelf to my shopping basket last week (mostly because it was Dads turn to pay for the main shop and its easy to sneak books in to his trolley from my basket).

Marley is a yellow lab owned by John and Jenny Grogan, as with many pet owners their choice of dog wasnt the best planned but they fell in love with the pup who became Marley and that was that.

Even from the first meeting with Marley the clues to his adult behaviour were there, fearlessness, an eagerness to love them and an enjoyment of simply receiving affection, then of course there was his dad who John and Jenny me in passing.

Most dog owners will recognise the steps towards teaching a pup who is alpha in a household and empathise with Marley's stubborn refusal to believe it (beside me as I write is another dog who has the same problem). Reading you celebrate with the Grogans as Marley's training take its small steps, and feel their heartbreak as they deal with a miscarriage yet their stubbornly stupid dog seems to know the right thing to do and comforts his mistress the best way he knows how.

Although the chapters do jump forward quite quickly the 343 pages cover all the sides to Marley and his long 13 year life. The way John Grogan writes shows you just how much he and his young family love the dog in their care (or should that be the dog who cares for them, since Marley appears to believe that the family are his pets), and how Marley exhibits the patience uncharacteristic when confronted with the small children of the family.

When you start to reach the latter stages of the book and Marley's decline becomes apparent I cried alongside the family when Marley was sick and I recognised all to well the symptoms of old age in a big dog the arthritic hips, failing eye sight as well as they slow realisation in the dog that he cant do as much as he used to (our old Irish Setter went through the same things).

The book was written after the overwhelming response to a column Grogan wrote for his paper (reprinted at the end of the book) after Marley died.

I really would recommend this book to anyone who has ever had a pet they love, the only people I can see not enjoying the book are people who hate all animals and theres not many of those around are there.

As I said above the book is 343 pages long, there are a few pages of critical acclaim for the book, and I bought it as part of Tesco's new 2 for £7 offer (£4 if its the only book you want).

Summary: Most dogs have common sense, meet Marley who doesnt