Dumb as a Freaking Post

You never want to bring your kids with you when you are picking out a new dog. Nothing good can possibly come from it. You could be looking at a flea infested mutant of a mutt with chewed off ears and a severe limp from the fact that he was missing at least one full apendage, but those kids get up close and look at those cute little puppy eyes and you are stuck taking the little freak home.
Sometimes Kim and I just don't think things through. While we were going through our big move at the end of May, we found that we were so caught up in getting everything done with the house that suddenly Hunter's birthday was upon us and we had yet to come up with a reasonable idea for a present. We choked under the pressure and decided that we would get him a dog of his very own. As we were going to be away for a week in mid-July, we were able to push off the grand purchase until we returned.
We got a paper on the Sunday morning after we got back from Myrte Beach and made a couple of phone calls to find yellow lab puppies in the area. Aparently there is no shortage of lab breeders in the North Texas area, because there must have been at least 20 listings. With no real way to tell them apart, I called one number and found a breeder who was about 30 minutes from here, so we loaded up the family and drove out to the outskirts of the outskirts as it were and into the sketchiest part of town that probably existed within a 500 mile radius. The name of the town was Culleoka and it had long ago been abandoned by any self-respecting being. We had to meet at some convenience/grocery store because they wanted to guide us down the homestretch to the sprawling estate. As the sweet strumming of the banjos from Deliverance echoed in the background, we pulled up to the yelping and barking of a truly magical environment for raising purebred labs.
Realize, of course that we were eschewed in the middle of the second hottest summer on record here in the Dallas area and these puppies were living in the squalor of their own feces, in what could only be described as idyllic in my opinion. Were Kim and I by ourselves, we never stop at the convenience store, never follow this crazy 80 year old inbred freak to her mobile home complex (at least she lived on the cul-de-sac), we never come upon the bizarre brother in law with the garden hose and the creepy eyes, we never listen to how they bathed one of the dogs because we were coming, and we never have to hear about it again. It would have been some sort of crazy story that we would laugh about many years from now. But we had the kids in the car (in fact we had our nephews Tyler and Trevor as well), and when you have the kids in the car and you are picking out a puppy for one of them, you really don't have any recourse. "Hunter, daddy picked a bad phone number out of the paper. We'll call another number and try again tomorrow." I'm going to go out on a limb and say that that strategy might not have held much water and the next 37 minutes of our lives as we bee lined it back to our safe little world would have been filled with the high-pitched screams and shouting that my kids are somewhat famous for on those special occasions.
Instead, we tried to caution the boy with pearls of wisdom like, "You know Hunter, if we don't see the right dog here, we can go and check some of these other places. We don't have to pick one out today. Make sure you really love this dog, because we are going to have him for a long time. . . " We could have told him that these dogs were known to devour their owners in their sleep when they were fully grown and it wouldn't have deterred him. Try telling a kid who is about to get his first real pet of his own that he has to wait another thirty seconds. Let me know how it turns out for you.
So as we exit the minivan, fully realizing that we are entering into the worst possible situation, we come upon the three remaining "puppies" in the litter. The two filthy ones who they didn't want to take the time to clean for us and the one filthy one who they insisted just had a bath. They were flea bitten and skinny, but overall they looked relatively healthy. The parents were both good looking dogs and the puppies were very active. What we were expecting was to find cute little balls of fluff rolling around and chasing each other. When we purchased Wilson, we met him when he was about five weeks old and he (along with all of his brothers and sisters) was just freaking adorable. We brought Lauren to that first meeting, but we didn't need the kids to help pick out Wilson. We were not leaving that house without picking out a dog. These puppies on that hot July afternoon were far from cute, cuddly and adorable. They were big, hulking, rough dogs, who were already 15 weeks old (what we like to call that akward in-between phase). They still had some puppy characteristics, but they were certainly not irresistable. Again, if Kim and I were there alone, we would have politely thanked the inbred hicks and made our way as quickly as humanly possible back up the road to civilization.
Hunter wanted a puppy. In his mind, he had waited since his birthday six weeks ealier, and really since the day he was born. There was no way we were leaving without one. So the marketing strategy ended up working. The less filth-riddled one of the bunch became the obvious choice, even though he kept running away from us, even though the other two were far more playful, we filled out some requisite paperwork. She didn't like dealing with the AKC, so this bohemoth of a mutt is CKC certified. I believe this is some sort of Knights of Columbus affiliation and I am certain that they allow brothers and sisters to breed because those darn AKC people are just hard-headed about such things, so we took our flea-riddled, worm-infested brute of a dog with a two inch overbite and packed the little freak in the car where he spent the next 37 minutes trying to bury himself into the floorboard.
I started asking Hunter what he was going to name the dog. He was deadset on either Jake or Marley. I started offering dozens of great names as did everybody else in the car.

Josh "What do you think about calling him 'Mr. Derrick Brooks?' That's a pretty cool name, don't you think?"
Hunter "Uh. No Dad--that's a horrible name."
Josh "How about Gruden? Doesn't that sound like a tough name. Come here Gruden. Good boy, Gruden. It's got a great ring."
Hunter "I like Marley or Jake"
Kim "You should call him Jake Marley or Marley Jake."
Josh "Isn't Jacob Marley that guy from a Christmas Carol that is dead?"
Kim "Oh yeah, maybe something else."
Hunter "I'm calling him Marley."
Josh "Just because you liked that Marley and Me book doesn't mean you need to call him Marley. How about Dungy? That sounds awesome."
Hunter "Daaad."
Kim "I like Dungy. That does sound cool."
Tyler "How about green?"
Hunter "No Tyler."
Tyler "How about red?
Josh "Those are great names Tyler. I think Hunter might want to stay away from the color wheel for name choices."
Kim "Hunter, it's your dog--you name it whatever you want."
Josh "As long as it's not Marley. Unless of course you're choosing that name to pay homage to Bob Marley. We can listen to some reggae and smoke some spleef---"
Kim "All right--that's enough of that. Hunter. You name the dog whatever you want."
Josh "Old pirates just a robber. Stole I from the merchant ship."
Lauren "Daddy. Stop singing!!"
Hunter "I'm going with Marley."
Kim "Marley it is then."

And thusly, Marley Wilson was christened that day on the 37 minute jaunt from the mobile home hell that we left behind in Culleoka to our home in Frisco. The next 48 hours were pleasant. I went to Petsmart to find some flea medicine and while I was there, my phone rang and I was instructed to purchase some tapeworm medicine as well. Aparently living in the feces of your brothers and sisters for 15 weeks does not necessarily translate into a healthy living environment. Who knew? He refused to eat for the first day and ate very little for the next two days.
We took him to the vet on Monday morning and we got the proper tools for deworming him, got him caught up on his shots and got the stronger flea medication. We were picking off fleas from his body for what seemed like days, but he started to come around after a while. He began to eat with some regularity, much to the dismay of Abby who was enjoying getting the second helping of much needed nutrients twice daily. Abby was busy mauling the runt while she still had the chance, as we kept looking at his enormous meathooks that pretended to be paws knowing full well that within a couple of months, Abby was destined to be his bitch. His peculiar personality began to percolate to the surface. He was very shy and subdued most of the time, but as his appetite started to come back and this got his energy kick started. We realized very quickly that sometimes it is better to have a sweet, shy, intimidated puppy than to have a crazy, revved-up hell child.
Marley started to grow. He greets everybody with his immense paws, usually with his dew claws cutting your thighs and forearms like a boxcutter through packing tape. He has grown to the point that he is as tall as Abby already and obviously still has a way to go. He is still very sweet and will constantly look for human comfort. He has developed a deep, rich bark that he enjoys showing off when it echoes in his kennel at two in the morning.
My favorite aspect of Marley is that he absolutely doesn't get it. You can catch him in the act doing something like peeing in the house (a good gallon at a time usually), grab him by the scruff of the neck, show him what he did, yell "No! Marley. Bad Dog," take him outside, and he still looks at you like its playtime. He'll get up on the couch in the living room only to be removed by myself or Kim (the kids can't get him off of anything at this point). Tell him no. He'll look at you and jump back on the couch with his tail wagging and he'll get himself right back into the same cozy position. After about 10 removals, he starts to look at you as though you are really beginning to annoy him. If there is anything within his reach (which continues to expand on a daily basis), he will help himself and do whatever he can do destroy it. He is especially a fan of undergarments and shoes. Fortunately, that huge overbite of his makes it more difficult for him to do any real damage too quicky, but you always have to be on the alert. Any of the things that are supposed to help deter/train your dog don't seem to resonate with him. You can yell, catch him in the act, smack him in the nose, grab him by his collar, beat him with a stick, poke him with a cattle prod, attach his testes to a car battery, jab him in the eye with a pencil, bash his skull with a bowling pin--nothing seems to work. Pretty soon we will have to start taking drastic measures.
He is also a bull in a china shop at all times. When you open the door from the backyard to let him in, you had better hold the knob because he will rush the door and knock it through the kitchen wall on his way in. The same goes for his kennel. As soon as he hears you jiggling with the latch, he gets into full sprinter mode and shoots out like the gunpowder on his ass just went off. He has discovered that human food tastes pretty damn good and usually when people are sitting in the breakfast nook, this human food is pleniful if he just sticks his head above that flat wooden thing and helps himself. While he once faced the stairs with a certain trepidation and we had to coax him to walk from one side of our bridge to the other, he now prowls the house with reckless abandon and anything in his way is fair game. He continues to be dopey and sweet and as I look behind me, I can hear him mauling Kim's face with his sloppy wet tongue and his giant paws. She has been gone for 30 minutes after all, and he didn't know when he might see her again.
Every night when we put him in his kennel, he flops down with all his weight and insists that you lug his carcass into the cage. Kim sits there patiently with his treat, encouraging him to make the ten short steps to his nightly bed, but as you might expect, I don't necessarily have the patience for such things. You would think that at some point, he might pick up on his role as a dog--learn the ins and outs of what is acceptable behavior and what constitutes being bad. It's tough to get too mad at him as he akwardly makes his way through life. Hunter has been pretty good about being involved in raising his dog. He feeds him whenever he is home and he walks him and plays with him as often as he can. He is yet to clean up one of his accidents, but knowing our son, he would just throw up everywhere and Kim or I (who am I kidding? It would definitely be Kim) would have to clean up his mess as well. For a mentally challenged, inbred, flea bitten, worm-infested doofus, that Marley has grown on us after all.