Marley and Me: Life and Love with the World’s Worst Dog

John and Jenny keep this pregnancy a secret. Jenny is healthy but experiences severe morning sickness. She worries excessively over small things like having baby socks weeks before the baby is born. John pours his attention into training Marley, who learns entertaining tricks but still eats everything. Despite some progress in obedience training, Marley’s “default setting was stuck on eternal incorrigibility” (96). His continuous ingestion of household items makes him throw up regularly on the Grogans’ favorite rug. They still cannot leave Marley home alone without worrying that he will destroy or eat something. John gives Jenny a gold necklace for her birthday, which Marley promptly eats. John and Jenny spend days dissecting Marley’s droppings in search of the necklace. When they do find it, it’s far shinier than before, and every time Jenny wears the necklace John thinks of the four days he spent poking through and washing away dog poop to recover it.

The Grogans arrange for a private birthing suite, but none are available when Jenny enters the early stages of labor. Jenny is taken to a second labor ward where nurses speak in Spanish and “brown-skinned men holding straw hats in rugged hands waited nervously” (104).