‘World's worst dog’ inspires best-selling book

updated 5:44 p.m. ET Jan. 23, 2006

EMMAUS, Pa. - Marley did his best to live down to his reputation.

The 97-pound Labrador retriever crashed through screen doors with alarming regularity. He went berserk during thunderstorms, destroying everything in his path. He stole food off the dinner table, slobbered incessantly, drank from the toilet bowl, and ate bath towels, sponges, socks, used tissues, plastic toys, furniture, speaker covers, paychecks, even an expensive gold necklace.

He was incorrigible. And utterly lovable.

In a funny and poignant memoir, "Marley & Me: Life and Love With the World's Worst Dog," first-time author John Grogan remembers his late pooch as an irrepressible force of nature and as a faithful companion who taught his human masters a thing or two about loyalty and unconditional love.

Released in October, "Marley" has quickly and quite unexpectedly become top dog in the publishing world. With 650,000 copies already in print, the book sits atop two best-seller lists, ahead of offerings from such heavyweights as David McCullough, Frank McCourt and Joan Didion.

No one is more surprised than the author himself.

"I was pretty confident it was going to do pretty well, but I had no idea it was going to jump to the top of the best-seller list," says Grogan, 48, a columnist for The Philadelphia Inquirer.

Marley died two years ago and Grogan and his family have a new dog now, another yellow Lab named Gracie, who bounds into the author's cozy living room and promptly jumps on a visitor, licking furiously.

"Gracie, down!" Grogan commands. "Settle down. She's going to knock your tape recorder off. She's actually the good one — she's so much easier than Marley was. She'll calm down in a couple minutes."

Gracie does eventually settle down — after a barking fit — and Grogan tries gamely to explain the success of his debut book.

"There's millions of people who clearly understand that a pet is a pet ... and yet still find themselves really falling in love with these animals," says Grogan, a slender man with salt-and-pepper hair and beard. "I think I gave voice to that phenomenon."

'Young and wired'
Grogan's story begins in the early 1990s as he and his new bride, Jenny, buy Marley from a backyard breeder. The breeder avoids questions about Marley's father and offers the puppy at a discount — in retrospect, a clear sign of trouble ahead.

The puppy grew quickly, along with his capacity for mischief.

"Marley strolled like a runaway locomotive strolls," Grogan writes. "(He) was young and wired, with the attention span of algae and the volatility of nitroglycerine."

Marley interrupts sex. He wriggles out of a moving car. He wreaks havoc at a snooty restaurant in Boca Raton, Fla. He gets kicked out of obedience school. He shows amazing skill as an escape artist, literally licking his way out of a locked cage.

Grogan writes of a family friend who had foolishly agreed to care for Marley while he and his wife vacationed in Ireland. When the couple returned home three weeks later, the beleaguered sitter had the "faraway gaze of a shell-shocked soldier after a particularly unrelenting battle."

Part of the book's success might stem from the fact that it is more than the sum of its funny anecdotes. The Grogan family lived quite an eventful life in the 13 years that Marley was with them, and the dog figures in several emotionally gripping episodes that provide insight into why his masters chose to put up with him.

When Jenny suffers a miscarriage, Marley stands at quiet attention, tail between his legs, as she buries her face in his furry neck and sobs. When a young neighbor is stabbed at random in the street, Marley makes like a guard dog until police arrive.

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