Marley & Me: Life and Love with the World's Worst Dog: John Grogan

Some 300 pages of author Grogans life with a giant yellow lab. It's clear thru the pages that Grogan and his wife (and later, kids) have a lot to deal with raising Marley the puppy who grows into a 100lb full-of-vim-&-vigor dog.

I've had dogs all my life, and I appreciated the trials and tribulations of owning a dog, especially a big dog that takes a long time to mature. There were a few things about his methods that I didn't particularly like such as: Taking his dad's advice to always get the dog that doesn't scare, who jumps to you when you deliberately try to scare the puppy. Not doing any research at all before you jump into getting a dog, waiting to train a dog when he's *older* and reading how disabled Marley was without trying to find ways to ease his pain from hip dysplaysia.

Much of the book revolved around the Grogan family, early marriage, getting pregnant, having small kids with Marley being the center of attention in that everyone had to work around Marley rather than Marley working around the family.

It was a bit entertaining to see how Marley ran the family. Overall I liked the book because I liked Marley, not because I liked the author. Grogan did capture the doggieness of Marley especially his puppyhood, although his puppylike unbridled energy was only curtailed by getting physically decrepit.

So Marley was a good character, he emanates unconditional love and so too does the family because even tho he was the most destructive dog, the most expensive dog due to the house destruction, they kept with him, always offering him a home and a place with the family.

I wouldn't allow a person who's never had a dog to use this as a guide to having dogs tho. It fails in that regard. But that isn't the intention of the book, or at least I hope it's not.

Don't buy the hardback, borrow it or skip it. Even tho I enjoyed it, it didn't really enrich my life or my 2 dogs lives.