It doesn’t matter what it is or where you place it. They always find it. They know it’s value, whether it be monetary, sentimental or utilitarian…somehow that soft, wet square fuzzy nose that manages to strategically squeeze itself in between the nook of your neck and soft pillow find the most coveted and precious things and manage to lovingly destroy them into useless piles of shredded love and rebellion.
I can say with confidence that my youngest monster Marley “B,” is the only dog on the Fork as well as the face of the universe that possesses a middle name. The B is rightfully his and will always be a part of his namesake for he has an expensive addiction to one hundred dollar bills and the like. To date my dog has changed the value of four hundred dollars and turned hard earned cash into useless digested not so funny warm squishy rather filthy money. Thus on that fateful afternoon when I came home and opened the front door and discovered the massacre of the Benjamin’s he was knighted Marley Benjamin through clinched fists as he is the first dog in my life to ever successfully make change.
Like many pets and pet owners, there are similarities between owner and companion. Yes, we look alike. His coat is perfect and buff (some say “blonde”) in color. His outfit is always together and in place. He stands out in a crowd and is a lover through and through. He croons on demand and then ceases to be silent when politely requested. In all of these ways we are alike. WE are nothing alike when it comes to our handling of money however. True I may be a tad bit spend happy and lack self control when found wide eyed and flustered in a Louis Vuitton store but NEVER would I eat and destroy the currency of others not to mention my own! So imagine my dismay when I come home yet again on another fateful afternoon and find another single one hundred dollar bill lying dead and dismembered, hardly recognizable and lifeless on the kitchen floor. And there’s Marley…sitting upright with his polar bear paws protruding slightly outward with these big brown eyes staring right at me and a piece of Benjamin Franklin’s face stuck in his left ear. In that moment the similarity between Marley B and I could be no more dissimilar and so it seems that indeed we both really do have expensive taste.
So now that we’ve extracted four hundred dollars from the equation, Miss Paige now knows better than to walk around with money stuffed in her jeans or sitting on the coffee table or placed too close to the edge of the kitchen countertops. Not me, definitely not me…I mean come on, think about it, they’re birding dogs, “flushers.” So that’s what Marley B does, he seeks and destroys. Now that money is no longer available for the taking, Mr. Marley B has become highly interested in the United States Postal system version of currency: stamps. So far to date he has eaten two entire rolls of stamps in a three month period. It took a good solid month to rid myself of the half chewed, wrinkled and furry-ed non sticky American flags. I never know what kind of battlefield I am going to be presented with upon entering my house…how quickly it becomes their domain when left alone. I walk in, the evidence is clear and there again is Marely B, front and center surrounded by American flags, one hundred of them to be exact. They’re stuck all over my pup, disheveled, wet…yucky everywhere. Most of them are unusable, some of them unrecognizable. There isn’t one stamp he hasn’t loved on, every single darn one of them received special attention from Marley B.
Despite the mischief and sometimes inconvenient forms of rebellion Marley creates, he is still my pup and dearly loved. I think a perfectly well behaved pup is a falsehood, but also rather boring. There is something comic about my dog prancing down the hallway with a pair of underpants in his mouth, or how a single piece of paper can multiply into a million pieces in a half of a second. I love the way he tortures a stuffed animal, eyes first….then tail then toes. This is my dog, my precious Marley B. I rescued him, but at the end of the day it is he who has truly rescued me. Like all dogs, he has his moderate share of “bad dawg days” but that comes with the territory of being a pup. So from the deepest corners of my heart and tuffest strings that hang from it, comes a silly song composed soley for him:
“Marley B Marley B Marely B…who you are Marley Beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee”
