Patrick was the first to break the news. "I named mine Feathers!" he proclaimed.

"Mine is Tweety," said Conor.

"My wicka Wuffy," Colleen chimed in.

I shot Jenny a quizzical look.

"Fluffy," Jenny said. "She named her chicken Fluffy."

"Jenny," I protested. "What did Digger tell us? These are farm animals, not pets."

"Oh, get real, Farmer John," she said. "You know as well as I do that you could never hurt one of these. Just look at how cute they are."

"Jenny," I said, the frustration rising in my voice.

"By the way," she said, holding up the fourth chick in her hands, "meet Shirley."

Feathers, Tweety, Fluffy, and Shirley took up residence in a box on the kitchen counter, a lightbulb dangling above them for warmth. They ate and they p.o.o.ped and they ate some more-and grew at a breathtaking pace. Several weeks after we brought the birds home, something jolted me awake before dawn. I sat up in bed and listened. From downstairs came a weak, sickly call. It was croaky and hoa.r.s.e, more like a tubercular cough than a proclamation of dominance. It sounded again: c.o.c.k-a-doodle-do! c.o.c.k-a-doodle-do! A few seconds ticked past and then came an equally sickly, but distinct, reply: A few seconds ticked past and then came an equally sickly, but distinct, reply: Rook-ru-rook-ru-roo! Rook-ru-rook-ru-roo!

I shook Jenny and, when she opened her eyes, asked: "When Donna brought the chicks over, you did ask her to check to make sure they were hens, right?"

"You mean you can do that?" she asked, and rolled back over, sound asleep.

It's called s.e.xing. Farmers who know what they are doing can inspect a newborn chicken and determine, with about 80 percent accuracy, whether it is male or female. At the farm store, s.e.xed chicks command a premium price. The cheaper option is to buy "straight run" birds of unknown gender. You take your chances with straight run, the idea being that the males will be slaughtered young for meat and the hens will be kept to lay eggs. Playing the straight-run gamble, of course, a.s.sumes you have what it takes to kill, gut, and pluck any excess males you might end up with. As anyone who has ever raised chickens knows, two roosters in a flock is one rooster too many.

As it turned out, Donna had not attempted to s.e.x our four chicks, and three of our four "laying hens" were males. We had on our kitchen counter the poultry equivalent of Boys Town U.S.A. The thing about roosters is they're never content to play second chair to any other rooster. If you had equal numbers of roosters and hens, you might think they would pair off into happy little Ozzie and Harrietstyle couples. But you would be wrong. The males will fight endlessly, b.l.o.o.d.ying one another gruesomely, to determine who will dominate the roost. Winner takes all.

As they grew into adolescents, our three roosters took to posturing and pecking and, most distressing considering they were still in our kitchen as I raced to finish their coop in the backyard, crowing their testosterone-pumped hearts out. Shirley, our one poor, overtaxed female, was getting way more attention than even the most l.u.s.ty of women could want.

I had thought the constant crowing of our roosters would drive Marley insane. In his younger years, the sweet chirp of a single tiny songbird in the yard would set him off on a frenetic barking jag as he raced from one window to the next, hopping up and down on his hind legs. Three crowing roosters a few steps from his food bowl, however, had no effect on him at all. He didn't seem to even know they were there. Each day the crowing grew louder and stronger, rising up from the kitchen to echo through the house at five in the morning. c.o.c.k-a-doodle-dooooo! c.o.c.k-a-doodle-dooooo! Marley slept right through the racket. That's when it first occurred to me that maybe he wasn't just ignoring the crowing; maybe he couldn't hear it. I walked up behind him one afternoon as he snoozed in the kitchen and said, "Marley?" Nothing. I said it louder: "Marley!" Nothing. I clapped my hands and shouted, "MARLEY!" He lifted his head and looked blankly around, his ears up, trying to figure out what it was his radar had detected. I did it again, clapping loudly and shouting his name. This time he turned his head enough to catch a glimpse of me standing behind him. Marley slept right through the racket. That's when it first occurred to me that maybe he wasn't just ignoring the crowing; maybe he couldn't hear it. I walked up behind him one afternoon as he snoozed in the kitchen and said, "Marley?" Nothing. I said it louder: "Marley!" Nothing. I clapped my hands and shouted, "MARLEY!" He lifted his head and looked blankly around, his ears up, trying to figure out what it was his radar had detected. I did it again, clapping loudly and shouting his name. This time he turned his head enough to catch a glimpse of me standing behind him. Oh, Oh, it's you! it's you! He bounced up, tail wagging, happy-and clearly surprised-to see me. He b.u.mped up against my legs in greeting and gave me a sheepish look as if to ask, He bounced up, tail wagging, happy-and clearly surprised-to see me. He b.u.mped up against my legs in greeting and gave me a sheepish look as if to ask, What's the idea sneaking up on me like that? What's the idea sneaking up on me like that? My dog, it seemed, was going deaf. My dog, it seemed, was going deaf.

It all made sense. In recent months Marley seemed to simply ignore me in a way he never had before. I would call for him and he would not so much as glance my way. I would take him outside before turning in for the night, and he would sniff his way across the yard, oblivious to my whistles and calls to get him to turn back. He would be asleep at my feet in the family room when someone would ring the doorbell-and he would not so much as open an eye.

Marley's ears had caused him problems from an early age. Like many Labrador retrievers, he was predisposed to ear infections, and we had spent a small fortune on antibiotics, ointments, cleansers, drops, and veterinarian visits. He even underwent surgery to shorten his ear ca.n.a.ls in an attempt to correct the problem. It had not occurred to me until after we brought the impossible-to-ignore roosters into our house that all those years of problems had taken their toll and our dog had gradually slipped into a m.u.f.fled world of faraway whispers.

Not that he seemed to mind. Retirement suited Marley just fine, and his hearing problems didn't seem to impinge on his leisurely country lifestyle. If anything, deafness proved fortuitous for him, finally giving him a doctor-certified excuse for disobeying. After all, how could he heed a command that he could not hear? As thick-skulled as I always insisted he was, I swear he figured out how to use his deafness to his advantage. Drop a piece of steak into his bowl, and he would come trotting in from the next room. He still had the ability to detect the dull, satisfying thud of meat on metal. But yell for him to come when he had somewhere else he'd rather be going, and he'd stroll blithely away from you, not even glancing guiltily over his shoulder as he once would have.

"I think the dog's scamming us," I told Jenny. She agreed his hearing problems seemed selective, but every time we tested him, sneaking up, clapping our hands, shouting his name, he would not respond. And every time we dropped food into his bowl, he would come running. He appeared to be deaf to all sounds except the one that was dearest to his heart or, more accurately, his stomach: the sound of dinner.

Marley went through life insatiably hungry. Not only did we give him four big scoops of dog chow a day-enough food to sustain an entire family of Chihuahuas for a week-but we began freely supplementing his diet with table sc.r.a.ps, against the better advice of every dog guide we had ever read. Table sc.r.a.ps, we knew, simply programmed dogs to prefer human food to dog chow (and given the choice between a half-eaten hamburger and dry kibble, who could blame them?). Table sc.r.a.ps were a recipe for canine obesity. Labs, in particular, were p.r.o.ne to chubbiness, especially as they moved into middle age and beyond. Some Labs, especially those of the English variety, were so rotund by adulthood, they looked like they'd been inflated with an air hose and were ready to float down Fifth Avenue in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade.

Not our dog. Marley had many problems, but obesity was not among them. No matter how many calories he devoured, he always burned more. All that unbridled high-strung exuberance consumed vast amounts of energy. He was like a high-kilowatt electric plant that instantly converted every ounce of available fuel into pure, raw power. Marley was an amazing physical specimen, the kind of dog pa.s.sersby stopped to admire. He was huge for a Labrador retriever, considerably bigger than the average male of his breed, which runs sixty-five to eighty pounds. Even as he aged, the bulk of his ma.s.s was pure muscle-ninety-seven pounds of rippled, sinewy brawn with nary an ounce of fat anywhere on him. His rib cage was the size of a small beer keg, but the ribs themselves stretched just beneath his fur with no spare padding. We were not worried about obesity; exactly the opposite. On our many visits to Dr. Jay before leaving Florida, Jenny and I would voice the same concerns: We were feeding him tremendous amounts of food, but still he was so much thinner than most Labs, and he always appeared famished, even immediately after wolfing down a bucket of kibble that looked like it was meant for a draft horse. Were we slowly starving him? Dr. Jay always responded the same way. He would run his hands down Marley's sleek sides, setting him off on a desperately happy Labrador evader journey around the cramped exam room, and tell us that, as far as physical attributes went, Marley was just about perfect. "Just keep doing what you're doing," Dr. Jay would say. Then, as Marley lunged between his legs or snarfed a cotton ball off the counter, Dr. Jay would add: "Obviously, I don't need to tell you that Marley burns a lot of nervous energy."

Each evening after we finished dinner, when it came time to give Marley his meal, I would fill his bowl with chow and then freely toss in any tasty leftovers or sc.r.a.ps I could find. With three young children at the table, half-eaten food was something we had in plentiful supply. Bread crusts, steak tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs, pan drippings, chicken skins, gravy, rice, carrots, pureed prunes, sandwiches, three-day-old pasta-into the bowl it went. Our pet may have behaved like the court jester, but he ate like the Prince of Wales. The only foods we kept from him were those we knew to be unhealthy for dogs, such as dairy products, sweets, potatoes, and chocolate. I have a problem with people who buy human food for their pets, but larding Marley's meals with sc.r.a.ps that would otherwise be thrown out made me feel thrifty-waste not, want not-and charitable. I was giving always-appreciative Marley a break from the endless monotony of dog-chow h.e.l.l.

When Marley wasn't acting as our household garbage disposal, he was on duty as the family's emergency spill-response team. No mess was too big a job for our dog. One of the kids would flip a full bowl of spaghetti and meatb.a.l.l.s on the floor, and we'd simply whistle and stand back while Old Wet Vac sucked up every last noodle and then licked the floor until it gleamed. Errant peas, dropped celery, runaway rigatoni, spilled applesauce, it didn't matter what it was. If it hit the floor, it was history. To the amazement of our friends, he even wolfed down salad greens.

Not that food had to make it to the ground before it ended up in Marley's stomach. He was a skilled and unremorseful thief, preying mostly on unsuspecting children and always after checking to make sure neither Jenny nor I was watching. Birthday parties were bonanzas for him. He would make his way through the crowd of five-year-olds, shamelessly s.n.a.t.c.hing hot dogs right out of their little hands. During one party, we estimated he ended up getting two-thirds of the birthday cake, nabbing piece after piece off the paper plates the children held on their laps.

It didn't matter how much food he devoured, either through legitimate means or illicit activities. He always wanted more. When deafness came, we weren't completely surprised that the only sound he could still hear was the sweet, soft thud of falling food.

One day I arrived home from work to find the house empty. Jenny and the kids were out somewhere, and I called for Marley but got no response. I walked upstairs, where he sometimes snoozed when left alone, but he was nowhere in sight. After I changed my clothes, I returned downstairs and found him in the kitchen up to no good. His back to me, he was standing on his hind legs, his front paws and chest resting on the kitchen table as he gobbled down the remains of a grilled cheese sandwich. My first reaction was to loudly scold him. Instead I decided to see how close I could get before he realized he had company. I tiptoed up behind him until I was close enough to touch him. As he chewed the crusts, he kept glancing at the door that led into the garage, knowing that was where Jenny and the kids would enter upon their return. The instant the door opened, he would be on the floor under the table, feigning sleep. Apparently it had not occurred to him that Dad would be arriving home, too, and just might sneak in through the front door.

"Oh, Marley?" I asked in a normal voice. "What do you think you're doing?" He just kept gulping the sandwich down, clueless to my presence. His tail was wagging languidly, a sign he thought he was alone and getting away with a major food heist. Clearly he was pleased with himself.

I cleared my throat loudly, and he still didn't hear me. I made kissy noises with my mouth. Nothing. He polished off one sandwich, nosed the plate out of the way, and stretched forward to reach the crusts left on a second plate. "You are such a bad dog," I said as he chewed away. I snapped my fingers twice and he froze midbite, staring at the back door. What was that? Did I hear a car door slam? What was that? Did I hear a car door slam? After a moment, he convinced himself that whatever he heard was nothing and went back to his purloined snack. After a moment, he convinced himself that whatever he heard was nothing and went back to his purloined snack.

That's when I reached out and tapped him once on the b.u.t.t. I might as well have lit a stick of dynamite. The old dog nearly jumped out of his fur coat. He rocketed backward off the table and, as soon as he saw me, dropped onto the floor, rolling over to expose his belly to me in surrender. "Busted!" I told him. "You are so busted." But I didn't have it in me to scold him. He was old; he was deaf; he was beyond reform. I wasn't going to change him. Sneaking up on him had been great fun, and I laughed out loud when he jumped. Now as he lay at my feet begging for forgiveness I just found it a little sad. I guess secretly I had hoped he'd been faking all along.

I finished the chicken coop, an A-frame plywood affair with a drawbridge-style gangplank that could be raised at night to keep out predators. Donna kindly took back two of our three roosters and exchanged them for hens from her flock. We now had three girls and one testosterone-pumped guy bird that spent every waking minute doing one of three things: pursuing s.e.x, having s.e.x, or crowing boastfully about the s.e.x he had just scored. Jenny observed that roosters are what men would be if left to their own devices, with no social conventions to rein in their baser instincts, and I couldn't disagree. I had to admit, I kind of admired the lucky b.a.s.t.a.r.d.

We let the chickens out each morning to roam the yard, and Marley made a few gallant runs at them, charging ahead barking for a dozen paces or so before losing steam and giving up. It was as though some genetic coding deep inside him was sending an urgent message: "You're a retriever; they are birds. Don't you think it might be a good idea to chase them?" He just did not have his heart in it. Soon the birds learned the lumbering yellow beast was no threat whatsoever, more a minor annoyance than anything else, and Marley learned to share the yard with these new, feathered interlopers. One day I looked up from weeding in the garden to see Marley and the four chickens making their way down the row toward me as if in formation, the birds pecking and Marley sniffing as they went. It was like old friends out for a Sunday stroll. "What kind of self-respecting hunting dog are you?" I chastised him. Marley lifted his leg and peed on a tomato plant before hurrying to rejoin his new pals.

CHAPTER 24.

The Potty Room.

A person can learn a few things from an old dog. As the months slipped by and his infirmities mounted, Marley taught us mostly about life's uncompromising finiteness. Jenny and I were not quite middle-aged. Our children were young, our health good, and our retirement years still an unfathomable distance off on the horizon. It would have been easy to deny the inevitable creep of age, to pretend it might somehow pa.s.s us by. Marley would not afford us the luxury of such denial. As we watched him grow gray and deaf and creaky, there was no ignoring his mortality-or ours. Age sneaks up on us all, but it sneaks up on a dog with a swiftness that is both breathtaking and sobering. In the brief span of twelve years, Marley had gone from bubbly puppy to awkward adolescent to muscular adult to doddering senior citizen. He aged roughly seven years for every one of ours, putting him, in human years, on the downward slope to ninety. person can learn a few things from an old dog. As the months slipped by and his infirmities mounted, Marley taught us mostly about life's uncompromising finiteness. Jenny and I were not quite middle-aged. Our children were young, our health good, and our retirement years still an unfathomable distance off on the horizon. It would have been easy to deny the inevitable creep of age, to pretend it might somehow pa.s.s us by. Marley would not afford us the luxury of such denial. As we watched him grow gray and deaf and creaky, there was no ignoring his mortality-or ours. Age sneaks up on us all, but it sneaks up on a dog with a swiftness that is both breathtaking and sobering. In the brief span of twelve years, Marley had gone from bubbly puppy to awkward adolescent to muscular adult to doddering senior citizen. He aged roughly seven years for every one of ours, putting him, in human years, on the downward slope to ninety.

His once sparkling white teeth had gradually worn down to brown nubs. Three of his four front fangs were missing, broken off one by one during crazed panic attacks as he tried to chew his way to safety. His breath, always a bit on the fishy side, had taken on the bouquet of a sun-baked Dumpster. The fact that he had acquired a taste for that little appreciated delicacy known as chicken manure didn't help, either. To our complete revulsion, he gobbled the stuff up like it was caviar.

His digestion was not what it once had been, and he became as ga.s.sy as a methane plant. There were days I swore that if I lit a match, the whole house would go up. Marley was able to clear an entire room with his silent, deadly flatulence, which seemed to increase in direct correlation to the number of dinner guests we had in our home. "Marley! Not again!" the children would scream in unison, and lead the retreat. Sometimes he drove even himself away. He would be sleeping peacefully when the smell would reach his nostrils; his eyes would pop open and he'd furl his brow as if asking, "Good G.o.d! Who dealt it?" "Good G.o.d! Who dealt it?" And he would stand up and nonchalantly move into the next room. And he would stand up and nonchalantly move into the next room.

When he wasn't farting, he was outside p.o.o.ping. Or at least thinking about it. His choosiness about where he squatted to defecate had grown to the point of compulsive obsession. Each time I let him out, he took longer and longer to decide on the perfect spot. Back and forth he would promenade; round and round he went, sniffing, pausing, scratching, circling, moving on, the whole while sporting a ridiculous grin on his face. As he combed the grounds in search of squatting nirvana, I stood outside, sometimes in the rain, sometimes in the snow, sometimes in the dark of night, often barefoot, occasionally just in my boxer shorts, knowing from experience that I didn't dare leave him unsupervised lest he decide to meander up the hill to visit the dogs on the next street.

Sneaking away became a sport for him. If the opportunity presented itself and he thought he could get away with it, he would bolt for the property line. Well, not exactly bolt. He would more sniff and shuffle his way from one bush to the next until he was out of sight. Late one night I let him out the front door for his final walk before bed. Freezing rain was forming an icy slush on the ground, and I turned around to grab a slicker out of the front closet. When I walked out onto the sidewalk less than a minute later, he was nowhere to be found. I walked out into the yard, whistling and clapping, knowing he couldn't hear me, though pretty sure all the neighbors could. For twenty minutes I prowled through our neighbors' yards in the rain, making quite the fashion statement dressed in boots, raincoat, and boxer shorts. I prayed no porch lights would come on. The more I hunted, the angrier I got. Where the h.e.l.l did he mosey off to this time? Where the h.e.l.l did he mosey off to this time? But as the minutes pa.s.sed, my anger turned to worry. I thought of those old men you read about in the newspaper who wander away from nursing homes and are found frozen in the snow three days later. I returned home, walked upstairs, and woke up Jenny. "Marley's disappeared," I said. "I can't find him anywhere. He's out there in the freezing rain." She was on her feet instantly, pulling on jeans, slipping into a sweater and boots. Together we broadened the search. I could hear her way up the side of the hill, whistling and clucking for him as I crashed through the woods in the dark, half expecting to find him lying unconscious in a creek bed. But as the minutes pa.s.sed, my anger turned to worry. I thought of those old men you read about in the newspaper who wander away from nursing homes and are found frozen in the snow three days later. I returned home, walked upstairs, and woke up Jenny. "Marley's disappeared," I said. "I can't find him anywhere. He's out there in the freezing rain." She was on her feet instantly, pulling on jeans, slipping into a sweater and boots. Together we broadened the search. I could hear her way up the side of the hill, whistling and clucking for him as I crashed through the woods in the dark, half expecting to find him lying unconscious in a creek bed.

Eventually our paths met up. "Anything?" I asked.

"Nothing," Jenny said.

We were soaked from the rain, and my bare legs were stinging from the cold. "Come on," I said. "Let's go home and get warm and I'll come back out with the car." We walked down the hill and up the driveway. That's when we saw him, standing beneath the overhang out of the rain and overjoyed to have us back. I could have killed him. Instead, I brought him inside and toweled him off, the unmistakable smell of wet dog filling the kitchen. Exhausted from his late-night jaunt, Marley conked out and did not budge till nearly noon the next day.

Marley's eyesight had grown fuzzy, and bunnies could now scamper past a dozen feet in front of him without him noticing. He was shedding his fur in vast quant.i.ties, forcing Jenny to vacuum every day-and still she couldn't keep up with it. Dog hair insinuated itself into every crevice of our home, every piece of our wardrobe, and more than a few of our meals. He had always been a shedder, but what had once been light flurries had grown into full-fledged blizzards. He would shake and a cloud of loose fur would rise around him, drifting down onto every surface. One night as I watched television, I dangled my leg off the couch and absently stroked his hip with my bare foot. At the commercial break, I looked down to see a sphere of fur the size of a grapefruit near where I had been rubbing. His hairb.a.l.l.s rolled across the wood floors like tumbleweeds on a windblown plain.

Most worrisome of all were his hips, which had mostly forsaken him. Arthritis had snuck into his joints, weakening them and making them ache. The same dog that once could ride me bronco-style on his back, the dog that could lift the entire dining room table on his shoulders and bounce it around the room, could now barely pull himself up. He groaned in pain when he lay down, and groaned again when he struggled to his feet. I did not realize just how weak his hips had become until one day when I gave his rump a light pat and his hindquarters collapsed beneath him as though he had just received a cross-body block. Down he went. It was painful to watch.

Climbing the stairs to the second floor was becoming increasingly difficult for him, but he wouldn't think of sleeping alone on the main floor, even after we put a dog bed at the foot of the stairs for him. Marley loved people, loved being underfoot, loved resting his chin on the mattress and panting in our faces as we slept, loved jamming his head through the shower curtain for a drink as we bathed, and he wasn't about to stop now. Each night when Jenny and I retired to our bedroom, he would fret at the foot of the stairs, whining, yipping, pacing, tentatively testing the first step with his front paw as he mustered his courage for the ascent that not long before had been effortless. From the top of the stairs, I would beckon, "Come on, boy. You can do it." After several minutes of this, he would disappear around the corner in order to get a running start and then come charging up, his front shoulders bearing most of his weight. Sometimes he made it; sometimes he stalled midflight and had to return to the bottom and try again. On his most pitiful attempts he would lose his footing entirely and slide ingloriously backward down the steps on his belly. He was too big for me to carry, but increasingly I found myself following him up the stairs, lifting his rear end up each step as he hopped forward on his front paws.

Because of the difficulty stairs now posed for him, I a.s.sumed Marley would try to limit the number of trips he made up and down. That would be giving him far too much credit for common sense. No matter how much trouble he had getting up the stairs, if I returned downstairs, say to grab a book or turn off the lights, he would be right on my heels, clomping heavily down behind me. Then, seconds later, he would have to repeat the torturous climb. Jenny and I both took to sneaking around behind his back once he was upstairs for the night so he would not be tempted to follow us back down. We a.s.sumed sneaking downstairs without his knowledge would be easy now that his hearing was shot and he was sleeping longer and more heavily than ever. But he always seemed to know when we had stolen away. I would be reading in bed and he would be asleep on the floor beside me, snoring heavily. Stealthily, I would pull back the covers, slide out of bed, and tiptoe past him out of the room, turning back to make sure I hadn't disturbed him. I would be downstairs for only a few minutes when I would hear his heavy steps on the stairs, coming in search of me. He might be deaf and half blind, but his radar apparently was still in good working order.

This went on not only at night but all day long, too. I would be reading the newspaper at the kitchen table with Marley curled up at my feet when I would get up for a refill from the coffeepot across the room. Even though I was within sight and would be coming right back, he would lumber with difficulty to his feet and trudge over to be with me. No sooner had he gotten comfortable at my feet by the coffeepot than I would return to the table, where he would again drag himself and settle in. A few minutes later I would walk into the family room to turn on the stereo, and up again he would struggle, following me in, circling around and collapsing with a moan beside me just as I was ready to walk away. So it would go, not only with me but with Jenny and the kids, too.

As age took its toll, Marley had good days and bad days. He had good minutes and bad minutes, too, sandwiched so close together sometimes it was hard to believe it was the same dog.

One evening in the spring of 2002, I took Marley out for a short walk around the yard. The night was cool, in the high forties, and windy. Invigorated by the crisp air, I started to run, and Marley, feeling frisky himself, galloped along beside me just like in the old days. I even said out loud to him, "See, Marl, you still have some of the puppy in you." We trotted together back to the front door, his tongue out as he panted happily, his eyes alert. At the porch stoop, Marley gamely tried to leap up the two steps-but his rear hips collapsed on him as he pushed off, and he found himself awkwardly stuck, his front paws on the stoop, his belly resting on the steps and his b.u.t.t collapsed flat on the sidewalk. There he sat, looking up at me like he didn't know what had caused such an embarra.s.sing display. I whistled and slapped my hands on my thighs, and he flailed his front legs valiantly, trying to get up, but it was no use. He could not lift his rear off the ground. "Come on, Marley!" I called, but he was immobilized. Finally, I grabbed him under the front shoulders and turned him sideways so he could get all four legs on the ground. Then, after a few failed tries, he was able to stand. He backed up, looked apprehensively at the stairs for a few seconds, and loped up and into the house. From that day on, his confidence as a champion stair climber was shot; he never attempted those two small steps again without first stopping and fretting.

No doubt about it, getting old was a b.i.t.c.h. And an undignified one at that.

Marley reminded me of life's brevity, of its fleeting joys and missed opportunities. He reminded me that each of us gets just one shot at the gold, with no replays. One day you're swimming halfway out into the ocean convinced this is the day you will catch that seagull; the next you're barely able to bend down to drink out of your water bowl. Like Patrick Henry and everyone else, I had but one life to live. I kept coming back to the same question: What in G.o.d's name was I doing spending it at a gardening magazine? It wasn't that my new job did not have its rewards. I was proud of what I had done with the magazine. But I missed newspapers desperately. I missed the people who read them and the people who write them. I missed being part of the big story of the day, and the feeling that I was in my own small way helping to make a difference. I missed the adrenaline surge of writing on deadline and the satisfaction of waking up the next morning to find my in-box filled with e-mails responding to my words. Mostly, I missed telling stories. I wondered why I had ever walked away from a gig that so perfectly fit my disposition to wade into the treacherous waters of magazine management with its bare-bones budgets, relentless advertising pressures, staffing headaches, and thankless behind-the-scenes editing ch.o.r.es.

When a former colleague of mine mentioned in pa.s.sing that the Philadelphia Inquirer Philadelphia Inquirer was seeking a metropolitan columnist, I leapt without a second's hesitation. Columnist positions are extremely hard to come by, even at smaller papers, and when a position does open up it's almost always filled internally, a plum handed to veteran staffers who've proved themselves as reporters. The was seeking a metropolitan columnist, I leapt without a second's hesitation. Columnist positions are extremely hard to come by, even at smaller papers, and when a position does open up it's almost always filled internally, a plum handed to veteran staffers who've proved themselves as reporters. The Inquirer Inquirer was well respected, winner of seventeen Pulitzer Prizes over the years and one of the country's great newspapers. I was a fan, and now the was well respected, winner of seventeen Pulitzer Prizes over the years and one of the country's great newspapers. I was a fan, and now the Inquirer Inquirer's editors were asking to meet me. I wouldn't even have to relocate my family to take the job. The office I would be working in was just forty-five minutes down the Pennsylvania Turnpike, a tolerable commute. I don't put much stock in miracles, but it all seemed too good to be true, like an act of divine intervention.

In November 2002, I traded in my gardening togs for a Philadelphia Inquirer Philadelphia Inquirer press badge. It quite possibly was the happiest day of my life. I was back where I belonged, in a newsroom as a columnist once again. press badge. It quite possibly was the happiest day of my life. I was back where I belonged, in a newsroom as a columnist once again.

I had only been in the new job for a few months when the first big snowstorm of 2003 hit. The flakes began to fall on a Sunday night, and by the time they stopped the next day, a blanket two feet deep covered the ground. The children were off school for three days as our community slowly dug out, and I filed my columns from home. With a s...o...b..ower I borrowed from my neighbor, I cleared the driveway and opened a narrow canyon to the front door. Knowing Marley could never climb the sheer walls to get out into the yard, let alone negotiate the deep drifts once he was off the path, I cleared him his own "potty room," as the kids dubbed it-a small plowed s.p.a.ce off the front walkway where he could do his business. When I called him outside to try out the new facilities, though, he just stood in the clearing and sniffed the snow suspiciously. He had very particular notions about what const.i.tuted a suitable place to answer nature's call, and this clearly was not what he had in mind. He was willing to lift his leg and pee, but that's where he drew the line. p.o.o.p right here? Smack in front of the picture window? You can't be serious. p.o.o.p right here? Smack in front of the picture window? You can't be serious. He turned and, with a mighty heave to climb up the slippery porch steps, went back inside. He turned and, with a mighty heave to climb up the slippery porch steps, went back inside.

That night after dinner I brought him out again, and this time Marley no longer could afford the luxury of waiting. He had to go. He nervously paced up and down the cleared walkway, into the potty room and out onto the driveway, sniffing the snow, pawing at the frozen ground. No, this just won't do. No, this just won't do. Before I could stop him, he somehow clambered up and over the sheer snow wall the s...o...b..ower had cut and began making his way across the yard toward a stand of white pines fifty feet away. I couldn't believe it; my arthritic, geriatric dog was off on an alpine trek. Every couple of steps his back hips collapsed on him and he sank down into the snow, where he rested on his belly for a few seconds before struggling back to his feet and pushing on. Slowly, painfully, he made his way through the deep snow, using his still-strong front shoulders to pull his body forward. I stood in the driveway, wondering how I was going to rescue him when he finally got stuck and could go no farther. But he trudged on and finally made it to the closest pine tree. Suddenly I saw what he was up to. The dog had a plan. Beneath the dense branches of the pine, the snow was just a few inches deep. The tree acted like an umbrella, and once underneath it Marley was free to move about and squat comfortably to relieve himself. I had to admit, it was pretty brilliant. He circled and sniffed and scratched in his customary way, trying to locate a worthy shrine for his daily offering. Then, to my amazement, he abandoned the cozy shelter and lunged back into the deep snow en route to the next pine tree. The first spot looked perfect to me, but clearly it was just not up to his sterling standards. Before I could stop him, he somehow clambered up and over the sheer snow wall the s...o...b..ower had cut and began making his way across the yard toward a stand of white pines fifty feet away. I couldn't believe it; my arthritic, geriatric dog was off on an alpine trek. Every couple of steps his back hips collapsed on him and he sank down into the snow, where he rested on his belly for a few seconds before struggling back to his feet and pushing on. Slowly, painfully, he made his way through the deep snow, using his still-strong front shoulders to pull his body forward. I stood in the driveway, wondering how I was going to rescue him when he finally got stuck and could go no farther. But he trudged on and finally made it to the closest pine tree. Suddenly I saw what he was up to. The dog had a plan. Beneath the dense branches of the pine, the snow was just a few inches deep. The tree acted like an umbrella, and once underneath it Marley was free to move about and squat comfortably to relieve himself. I had to admit, it was pretty brilliant. He circled and sniffed and scratched in his customary way, trying to locate a worthy shrine for his daily offering. Then, to my amazement, he abandoned the cozy shelter and lunged back into the deep snow en route to the next pine tree. The first spot looked perfect to me, but clearly it was just not up to his sterling standards.

With difficulty he reached the second tree, but again, after considerable circling, found the area beneath its branches unsuitable. So he set off to the third tree, and then the fourth and the fifth, each time getting farther from the driveway. I tried calling him back, though I knew he couldn't hear me. "Marley, you're going to get stuck, you dumbo!" I yelled. He just plowed ahead with single-minded determination. The dog was on a quest. Finally, he reached the last tree on our property, a big spruce with a dense canopy of branches out near where the kids waited for the school bus. It was here he found the frozen piece of ground he had been looking for, private and barely dusted with snow. He circled a few times and creakily squatted down on his old, shot, arthritis-riddled haunches. There he finally found relief. Eureka!

With mission accomplished, he set off on the long journey home. As he struggled through the snow, I waved my arms and clapped my hands to encourage him. "Keep coming, boy! You can make it!" But I could see him tiring, and he still had a long way to go. "Don't stop now!" I yelled. A dozen yards from the driveway, that's just what he did. He was done. He stopped and lay down in the snow, exhausted. Marley did not exactly look distressed, but he didn't look at ease, either. He shot me a worried look. Now what do we do, boss? Now what do we do, boss? I had no idea. I could wade through the snow to him, but then what? He was too heavy for me to pick up and carry. For several minutes I stood there, calling and cajoling, but Marley wouldn't budge. I had no idea. I could wade through the snow to him, but then what? He was too heavy for me to pick up and carry. For several minutes I stood there, calling and cajoling, but Marley wouldn't budge.

"Hang on," I said. "Let me get my boots on and I'll come get you." It had dawned on me that I could wrestle him up onto the toboggan and pull him back to the house. As soon as he saw me approaching with the toboggan, my plan became moot. He jumped up, reenergized. The only thing I could think was that he remembered our infamous ride into the woods and over the creek bank and was hoping for a repeat. He lurched forward toward me like a dinosaur in a tar pit. I waded out into the snow, stomping down a path for him as I went, and he inched ahead. Finally we scrambled over the s...o...b..nk and onto the driveway together. He shook the snow off and banged his tail against my knees, prancing about, all frisky and c.o.c.ky, flush with the bravado of an adventurer just back from a jaunt through uncharted wilderness. To think, I had doubted he could do it.

The next morning I shoveled a narrow path out to the far spruce tree on the corner of the property for him, and Marley adopted the s.p.a.ce as his own personal powder room for the duration of the winter. The crisis had been averted, but bigger questions loomed. How much longer could he continue like this? And at what point would the aches and indignities of old age outstrip the simple contentment he found in each sleepy, lazy day?

CHAPTER 25.

Beating the Odds.

When school let out for the summer, Jenny packed the kids into the minivan and headed to Boston for a week to visit her sister. I stayed behind to work. That left Marley with no one at home to keep him company and let him out. Of the many little embarra.s.sments old age inflicted on him, the one that seemed to bother him most was the diminished control he had over his bowels. For all Marley's bad behavior over the years, his bathroom habits had always been sure-fire. It was the one Marley feature we could brag about. From just a few months of age, he never, ever, had accidents in the house, even when left alone for ten or twelve hours. We joked that his bladder was made of steel and his bowels of stone.

That had changed in recent months. He no longer could go more than a few hours between pit stops. When the urge called, he had to go, and if we were not home to let him out, he had no choice but to go inside. It killed him to do it, and we always knew the second we walked into the house when he had had an accident. Instead of greeting us at the door in his exuberant manner, he would be standing far back in the room, his head hanging nearly to the floor, his tail flat between his legs, the shame radiating off him. We never punished him for it. How could we? He was nearly thirteen, about as old as Labs got. We knew he couldn't help it, and he seemed to know it, too. I was sure if he could talk, he would profess his humiliation and a.s.sure us that he had tried, really tried, to hold it in.

Jenny bought a steam cleaner for the carpet, and we began arranging our schedules to make sure we were not away from the house for more than a few hours at a time. Jenny would rush home from school, where she volunteered, to let Marley out. I would leave dinner parties between the main course and dessert to give him a walk, which, of course, Marley dragged out as long as possible, sniffing and circling his way around the yard. Our friends teasingly wondered aloud who was the real master over at the Grogan house.

With Jenny and the kids away, I knew I would be putting in long days. This was my chance to stay out after work, wandering around the region and exploring the towns and neighborhoods I was now writing about. With my long commute, I would be away from home ten to twelve hours a day. There was no question Marley couldn't be alone that long, or even half that long. We decided to board him at the local kennel we used every summer when we went on vacation. The kennel was attached to a large veterinarian practice that offered professional care if not the most personal service. Each time we went there, it seemed, we saw a different doctor who knew nothing about Marley except what was printed in his chart. We never even learned their names. Unlike our beloved Dr. Jay in Florida, who knew Marley almost as well as we did and who truly had become a family friend by the time we left, these were strangers-competent strangers but strangers nonetheless. Marley didn't seem to mind.

"Waddy go doggie camp!" Colleen screeched, and he perked up as though the idea had possibilities. We joked about the activities the kennel staff would have for him: hole digging from 9:00 to 10:00; pillow shredding from 10:15 to 11:00; garbage raiding from 11:05 to noon, and so on. I dropped him off on a Sunday evening and left my cell phone number with the front desk. Marley never seemed to fully relax when he was boarded, even in the familiar surroundings of Dr. Jay's office, and I always worried a little about him. After each visit, he returned looking gaunter, his snout often rubbed raw from where he had fretted it against the grating of his cage, and when he got home he would collapse in the corner and sleep heavily for hours, as if he had spent the entire time away pacing his cage with insomnia.

That Tuesday morning, I was near Independence Hall in downtown Philadelphia when my cell phone rang. "Could you please hold for Dr. So-and-so?" the woman from the kennel asked. It was yet another veterinarian whose name I had never heard before. A few seconds later the vet came on the phone. "We have an emergency with Marley," she said.

My heart rose in my chest. "An emergency?"

The vet said Marley's stomach had bloated with food, water, and air and then, stretched and distended, had flipped over on itself, twisting and trapping its contents. With nowhere for the gas and other contents to escape, his stomach had swelled painfully in a life-threatening condition known as gastric dilatation-volvulus. It almost always required surgery to correct, she said, and if left untreated could result in death within a few hours.

She said she had inserted a tube down his throat and released much of the gas that had built up in his stomach, which relieved the swelling. By manipulating the tube in his stomach, she had worked the twist out of it, or as she put it, "unflipped it," and he was now sedated and resting comfortably.

"That's a good thing, right?" I asked cautiously.

"But only temporary," the doctor said. "We got him through the immediate crisis, but once their stomachs twist like that, they almost always will twist again."

"Like how almost always?" I asked.

"I would say he has a one percent chance that it won't flip again," she said. One percent? For G.o.d's sake, One percent? For G.o.d's sake, I thought, I thought, he has better odds of getting into Harvard he has better odds of getting into Harvard.

"One percent? That's it?"

"I'm sorry," she said. "It's very grave."

If his stomach did flip again-and she was telling me it was a virtual certainty-we had two choices. The first was to operate on him. She said she would open him up and attach the stomach to the cavity wall with sutures to prevent it from flipping again. "The operation will cost about two thousand dollars," she said. I gulped. "And I have to tell you, it's very invasive. It will be tough going for a dog his age." The recovery would be long and difficult, a.s.suming he made it through the operation at all. Sometimes older dogs like him did not survive the trauma of the surgery, she explained.

"If he was four or five years old, I would be saying by all means let's operate," the vet said. "But at his age, you have to ask yourself if you really want to put him through that."

"Not if we can help it," I said. "What's the second option?"

"The second option," she said, hesitating only slightly, "would be putting him to sleep."

"Oh," I said.

I was having trouble processing it all. Five minutes ago I was walking to the Liberty Bell, a.s.suming Marley was happily relaxing in his kennel run. Now I was being asked to decide whether he should live or die. I had never even heard of the condition she described. Only later would I learn that bloat was fairly common in some breeds of dogs, especially those, such as Marley, with deep barrel chests. Dogs who scarfed down their entire meal in a few quick gulps-Marley, once again-also seemed to be at higher risk. Some dog owners suspected the stress of being in a kennel could trigger bloat, but I later would see a professor of veterinarian medicine quoted as saying his research showed no connection between kennel stress and bloat. The vet on the phone acknowledged Marley's excitement around the other dogs in the kennel could have brought on the attack. He had gulped down his food as usual and was panting and salivating heavily, worked up by all the other dogs around him. She thought he might have swallowed so much air and saliva that his stomach began to dilate on its long axis, making it vulnerable to twisting. "Can't we just wait and see how he does?" I asked. "Maybe it won't twist again."

"That's what we're doing right now," she said, "waiting and watching." She repeated the one percent odds and added, "If his stomach flips again, I'll need you to make a quick decision. We can't let him suffer."

"I need to speak with my wife," I told her. "I'll call you back."