I just got over weeping through the end of the movie, "Marley & Me." My youngest son had bought it on DVD for his sweetheart, and the two of them were all settled into the sofa with me for a routine Sunday dinner-and-a-movie night to start the week. They'd seen it. They loved it. They thought I'd love it too. It caught me by surprise.
Let's stay straight off that it's a marvelous movie. A lot deeper and richer than I'd expected, having only seen the movie trailers, which were heavy on the slapstick and nonexistent on the character development. I even knew that **spoiler alert here if you've been living in a cave for the past year the dog dies at the end. Hey, I'm a firm believer that "all dogs go to heaven." It's an okay ending for any dog movie. You get to picture them up there romping in sunny, celestial fields, gnawing on a rawhide bone or chasing a fuzzy yellow tennis ball that never gets dirty or wet with saliva.
But what I didn't count on was the fact that not only did this incredibly destructive yet beloved movie canine look exactly like one of the best dogs I'd ever had...he died of exactly the same thing. It had been twelve years since I'd wept like a baby at the unexpected passing of a dog who drooled like a St. Bernard, slouched like a lion, and stood as tall as a pony. But there I sat on the sofa with two happy but mystified teenagers, surrounded by damp Kleenex, voice cracking and sobs lurching and gasping from my chest, explaining that unlike Marley's owner in the movie...I never got to say goodbye.
Rocket was the third one of my string of uniquely wonderful dogs. Muttsie came first, a beagle/dalmatian mix who strayed into my life, attacking our flock of Leghorn chickens one day when I was home alone on the farm. She sported one brown and one icy blue eye and a combination of spots and patches that made her look uncannily from some angles like Adolph Hitler. She was mine for fourteen years, and the phrase "dogging her master's footsteps" was invented for this dog. Shadow came next, a purebred Flat-coated Retriever with a glossy, silky long black coat and magnificent physique, and a stark deficit in the brains department. In nine years despite the "retriever" in his breed, he never learned to let go of the tennis ball he brought back to you for another throw. He wanted to wrestle you for it instead. I'm a quick learner--a game of "fetch" always started with two balls. The boys grew up using him as a shared pillow while they stretched out on the living room floor and watched cartoons. Shadow loved to run around with a stick in his mouth...though at a hundred pounds, the "stick" could be a tree branch and when he ran up joyfully behind you and accidentally whacked you with it as he flew past, you felt it for a while. If you were still standing.
Shadow eventually passed on after nine years, and there was a four-footed void to be filled. I've never known life without a dog, and I believe deeply in bringing kids up with a canine companion. I look at dogs and see furry, tail-wagging, divine packages of unconditional love. They don't hold grudges, they forgive you everything, and they are always happy to see you. Take two kids growing up in parallel universes--same houses, same yards, same schools, same friends--but give one of them a dog. I guarantee that the kid who has a dog has a richer life. So not getting a new puppy was never an option.
We found Rocket nearby in the neighborhood, one of a litter of gorgeous yellow pups produced by a union of a prim and proper purebred Golden Retriever and a randy neighborhood lab who just didn't respect boundaries. Word of warning for folks relying on a buried electric dog fence--it'll keep your dog in the yard, but it sure won't keep the other dogs out!!
The kids fell in love, and we brought Rocket home as soon as he was weaned at eight weeks. We "crated" him in the kitchen at night, a training tool that had worked well with Shadow as a puppy on the theory that dogs inherently like enclosed spaces where they can retreat and feel safe. This little guy, however, deeply (and loudly) mourned the sudden loss of his mother and siblings, and I spent the first three nights lying on the kitchen floor next to his crate to keep him company. By the end of the first night I figured that if I ever got another puppy at eight weeks, it would kill me. On the up side of things, I saw some truly beautiful sunrises.
The little guy started to grow like Clifford the Big Red Dog. He hit twenty pounds in just a few weeks and got too big to comfortably carry in my arms. Damn!! He kept on growing, and by the time he was six months old he stood tall enough to look over the kids' shoulders at their breakfast cereal on the kitchen table. I swept the contents of the middle kitchen counter to someplace else, and bought a few bar stools so that the kids could eat their meals at a higher dog-free altitude. So life's full of adjustments. We had the perfect dog! He romped, and fetched, and cuddled, and just plain lazed with us without impatience. He was another of what I think of as the "hundred pound club," but tall and rangy. He had grown into his puppy paws that had looked at the time like they belonged on a lion, and he slouched around the yard with a grace that was absolutely feline, accentuated by an extraordinarily long tail that carried and twitched like a big cat. He was the size of a pony, with a deep chest and a deep "woof" and a tawny coat that reminded me of Elsa the lioness in "Born Free."
For the first time I could remember, we had a problem-free pooch. No tendency to wander off like Muttsie, no fondness for chewing on us and the furniture and the cabinets like Shadow...Rocket was good-natured, and lovable, and well-behaved, and housebroken, and above all, cuddly. Maybe if we'd had him longer this honeymoon phase would have worn out. But after only a year, we would never get to find out.
He seemed suddenly in distress one night, wanting to go out repeatedly, unsure of what to do when he got there. In the circle cast by the yard's floodlight, I noticed that his sides seemed oddly distended. It was nine at night, but I called the vet and described Rocket's symptoms and appearance. "Don't even bother to bring him here," the vet advised. Take him as quickly as possible, he said, to an animal emergency center in Milwaukee, thirty miles away. This was serious.
We packed a layer of blankets into the back of the minivan, settled Rocket in, and I set off on a desperate mission. I'm sure that the statute of limitations has run on speeding tickets from twelve years ago, and these days with the job I hold I'm sworn to uphold the law and the Constitution. So let's just say vaguely that if there had been a cop that night equipped with a radar gun as I flew past edging close to triple digits, I would have been in big, big trouble. The expressway was virtually empty, though, and Rocket and I made it to the clinic without incident or arrest.
He was unloaded, and examined, and the diagnosis was that he had suffered a "gastric torsion." In other words, his stomach had twisted in that deep ribcage of his, cutting off the blood supply to his intestines. Surgery was an option, but it was expensive and most dogs would not survive anyway. What did I want to do? I pulled out the charge card and authorized a preliminary look around. The news was bad, one of the worst cases they'd dealt with. What did I want to do? I called my husband. Could we afford this? We took the charge card out again and said "go ahead." I spent part of the night at the clinic, part of it catching a few winks of uneasy sleep on my friend Judy's sofa in Milwaukee.
By morning Rocket had made it through $3,700 worth of surgery, and I stopped by the clinic to see him before heading home. He was bandaged, and hooked up, and looked like he'd been through a hell of a lot. But he was young, and incredibly strong, and as I stroked his head before leaving, I felt sure that he would turn out to be among the small but lucky percentage of dogs who could survive this. I would have stayed longer, and held him more, but my younger son's birthday party was set for that morning, and in another couple of hours a dozen little boys would be showing up in our backyard to paint a "teepee" made of scrap lumber and scrap bedsheets and put on little feathered headdresses and run around noisily and eat hot dogs and scarf down birthday cake.
The clinic called about twenty minutes before the first guests arrived. They were very sorry, but Rocket hadn't pulled through. I blinked back tears and told no one the news as I put on a headband with a blue feather myself and went out to greet the guests and their parents. Two hours later, the party was over and it was time to drive back down to bring home our dog.
I brought my oldest daughter with me. It was a silent drive to the clinic. We couldn't claim Rocket right away. The clinic was bustling that morning and we had to wait our turn. We sat side by side as dogs and cats and their owners came and went. A big yellow lab sat directly across from us, beside his master. Black, liquid eyes, golden coat, sturdy shoulders just asking to be hugged. My eyes started to mist up. Beside me, I could hear my daughter fight back a sniffle. We looked at each other, then back at the dog. I caught his owner's eye, and made a special request. Our dog just died...and he looked exactly like yours. Could we pet him please? The lab's owner graciously said yes, and we wrapped our arms around our new friend, who stood stoically as our tears fell and dried on his yellow fur.
Rocket's buried in the yard, with a lilac bush to mark his final resting place. In the movie, Marley's spot is marked with some large rocks, but I like the idea of something growing, and blooming, above my old companions. Muttsie has a lilac bush of her own, and Shadow rests beneath a rose bush.
I don't think I could possibly watch "Marley & Me" again. But for the first time in quite a few years, my mind is again enjoying the memory of a big, friendly yellow dog who graced our lives and passed much, much too soon.
Let's stay straight off that it's a marvelous movie. A lot deeper and richer than I'd expected, having only seen the movie trailers, which were heavy on the slapstick and nonexistent on the character development. I even knew that **spoiler alert here if you've been living in a cave for the past year the dog dies at the end. Hey, I'm a firm believer that "all dogs go to heaven." It's an okay ending for any dog movie. You get to picture them up there romping in sunny, celestial fields, gnawing on a rawhide bone or chasing a fuzzy yellow tennis ball that never gets dirty or wet with saliva.
But what I didn't count on was the fact that not only did this incredibly destructive yet beloved movie canine look exactly like one of the best dogs I'd ever had...he died of exactly the same thing. It had been twelve years since I'd wept like a baby at the unexpected passing of a dog who drooled like a St. Bernard, slouched like a lion, and stood as tall as a pony. But there I sat on the sofa with two happy but mystified teenagers, surrounded by damp Kleenex, voice cracking and sobs lurching and gasping from my chest, explaining that unlike Marley's owner in the movie...I never got to say goodbye.
Rocket was the third one of my string of uniquely wonderful dogs. Muttsie came first, a beagle/dalmatian mix who strayed into my life, attacking our flock of Leghorn chickens one day when I was home alone on the farm. She sported one brown and one icy blue eye and a combination of spots and patches that made her look uncannily from some angles like Adolph Hitler. She was mine for fourteen years, and the phrase "dogging her master's footsteps" was invented for this dog. Shadow came next, a purebred Flat-coated Retriever with a glossy, silky long black coat and magnificent physique, and a stark deficit in the brains department. In nine years despite the "retriever" in his breed, he never learned to let go of the tennis ball he brought back to you for another throw. He wanted to wrestle you for it instead. I'm a quick learner--a game of "fetch" always started with two balls. The boys grew up using him as a shared pillow while they stretched out on the living room floor and watched cartoons. Shadow loved to run around with a stick in his mouth...though at a hundred pounds, the "stick" could be a tree branch and when he ran up joyfully behind you and accidentally whacked you with it as he flew past, you felt it for a while. If you were still standing.
Shadow eventually passed on after nine years, and there was a four-footed void to be filled. I've never known life without a dog, and I believe deeply in bringing kids up with a canine companion. I look at dogs and see furry, tail-wagging, divine packages of unconditional love. They don't hold grudges, they forgive you everything, and they are always happy to see you. Take two kids growing up in parallel universes--same houses, same yards, same schools, same friends--but give one of them a dog. I guarantee that the kid who has a dog has a richer life. So not getting a new puppy was never an option.
We found Rocket nearby in the neighborhood, one of a litter of gorgeous yellow pups produced by a union of a prim and proper purebred Golden Retriever and a randy neighborhood lab who just didn't respect boundaries. Word of warning for folks relying on a buried electric dog fence--it'll keep your dog in the yard, but it sure won't keep the other dogs out!!
The kids fell in love, and we brought Rocket home as soon as he was weaned at eight weeks. We "crated" him in the kitchen at night, a training tool that had worked well with Shadow as a puppy on the theory that dogs inherently like enclosed spaces where they can retreat and feel safe. This little guy, however, deeply (and loudly) mourned the sudden loss of his mother and siblings, and I spent the first three nights lying on the kitchen floor next to his crate to keep him company. By the end of the first night I figured that if I ever got another puppy at eight weeks, it would kill me. On the up side of things, I saw some truly beautiful sunrises.
The little guy started to grow like Clifford the Big Red Dog. He hit twenty pounds in just a few weeks and got too big to comfortably carry in my arms. Damn!! He kept on growing, and by the time he was six months old he stood tall enough to look over the kids' shoulders at their breakfast cereal on the kitchen table. I swept the contents of the middle kitchen counter to someplace else, and bought a few bar stools so that the kids could eat their meals at a higher dog-free altitude. So life's full of adjustments. We had the perfect dog! He romped, and fetched, and cuddled, and just plain lazed with us without impatience. He was another of what I think of as the "hundred pound club," but tall and rangy. He had grown into his puppy paws that had looked at the time like they belonged on a lion, and he slouched around the yard with a grace that was absolutely feline, accentuated by an extraordinarily long tail that carried and twitched like a big cat. He was the size of a pony, with a deep chest and a deep "woof" and a tawny coat that reminded me of Elsa the lioness in "Born Free."
For the first time I could remember, we had a problem-free pooch. No tendency to wander off like Muttsie, no fondness for chewing on us and the furniture and the cabinets like Shadow...Rocket was good-natured, and lovable, and well-behaved, and housebroken, and above all, cuddly. Maybe if we'd had him longer this honeymoon phase would have worn out. But after only a year, we would never get to find out.
He seemed suddenly in distress one night, wanting to go out repeatedly, unsure of what to do when he got there. In the circle cast by the yard's floodlight, I noticed that his sides seemed oddly distended. It was nine at night, but I called the vet and described Rocket's symptoms and appearance. "Don't even bother to bring him here," the vet advised. Take him as quickly as possible, he said, to an animal emergency center in Milwaukee, thirty miles away. This was serious.
We packed a layer of blankets into the back of the minivan, settled Rocket in, and I set off on a desperate mission. I'm sure that the statute of limitations has run on speeding tickets from twelve years ago, and these days with the job I hold I'm sworn to uphold the law and the Constitution. So let's just say vaguely that if there had been a cop that night equipped with a radar gun as I flew past edging close to triple digits, I would have been in big, big trouble. The expressway was virtually empty, though, and Rocket and I made it to the clinic without incident or arrest.
He was unloaded, and examined, and the diagnosis was that he had suffered a "gastric torsion." In other words, his stomach had twisted in that deep ribcage of his, cutting off the blood supply to his intestines. Surgery was an option, but it was expensive and most dogs would not survive anyway. What did I want to do? I pulled out the charge card and authorized a preliminary look around. The news was bad, one of the worst cases they'd dealt with. What did I want to do? I called my husband. Could we afford this? We took the charge card out again and said "go ahead." I spent part of the night at the clinic, part of it catching a few winks of uneasy sleep on my friend Judy's sofa in Milwaukee.
By morning Rocket had made it through $3,700 worth of surgery, and I stopped by the clinic to see him before heading home. He was bandaged, and hooked up, and looked like he'd been through a hell of a lot. But he was young, and incredibly strong, and as I stroked his head before leaving, I felt sure that he would turn out to be among the small but lucky percentage of dogs who could survive this. I would have stayed longer, and held him more, but my younger son's birthday party was set for that morning, and in another couple of hours a dozen little boys would be showing up in our backyard to paint a "teepee" made of scrap lumber and scrap bedsheets and put on little feathered headdresses and run around noisily and eat hot dogs and scarf down birthday cake.
The clinic called about twenty minutes before the first guests arrived. They were very sorry, but Rocket hadn't pulled through. I blinked back tears and told no one the news as I put on a headband with a blue feather myself and went out to greet the guests and their parents. Two hours later, the party was over and it was time to drive back down to bring home our dog.
I brought my oldest daughter with me. It was a silent drive to the clinic. We couldn't claim Rocket right away. The clinic was bustling that morning and we had to wait our turn. We sat side by side as dogs and cats and their owners came and went. A big yellow lab sat directly across from us, beside his master. Black, liquid eyes, golden coat, sturdy shoulders just asking to be hugged. My eyes started to mist up. Beside me, I could hear my daughter fight back a sniffle. We looked at each other, then back at the dog. I caught his owner's eye, and made a special request. Our dog just died...and he looked exactly like yours. Could we pet him please? The lab's owner graciously said yes, and we wrapped our arms around our new friend, who stood stoically as our tears fell and dried on his yellow fur.
Rocket's buried in the yard, with a lilac bush to mark his final resting place. In the movie, Marley's spot is marked with some large rocks, but I like the idea of something growing, and blooming, above my old companions. Muttsie has a lilac bush of her own, and Shadow rests beneath a rose bush.
I don't think I could possibly watch "Marley & Me" again. But for the first time in quite a few years, my mind is again enjoying the memory of a big, friendly yellow dog who graced our lives and passed much, much too soon.
1 comments:
I'm so sorry to hear of your dog's passing from GDV. I too saw Marley & Me (just last night) and cried like a baby. My dog Nelson (Yellow Lab) was stricken with GDV 2 years ago, and I broke similar speed records getting him to Memphis. He had the surgery and was fine. He was 9 years old then.
I do have to say, and I screamed it at the TV last night, that surgery to correct GDV is about 90%
effective with surgery. It is not a small percentage who survive. It is the other way around. I don't know who told you that, but they were wrong.
I also took issue with the movie when the vet said she had put a tube down his throat and "untwisted" his stomach. That is impossible. The ONLY way to do that is with surgery. Period. Then, when they brought him back to the vet the second time, she said something like, "...his stomach is still twisted..." There is no way the dog would have survived the night the first visit to the vet without surgery.
I find it very unfortunate that the movie didn't study this condition before putting that on screen.
Again, I am sorry for your loss. My dogs are my babies. I completely understand.
Sincerely,
Tammy
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