Reilly and me

Last week, Hubby and I finally made it out, alone, to the movies (unlike all the other parents at nine o'clock on a Friday night who apparently consider The Curious Case of Benjamin Button to be a children's movie - "Look! he's an old-man baby! Cute.") to see Jennifer Aniston's new opus, Marley and Me. While we were afraid it was going to be full of madcap dog humor if the commercials were any indication (yes, he's running away again, we get it already), we simply loved the book so much we had to go. Well, and because we have a Marley of our own.

The movie turned out to be amazing. Rather than being a highlights reel from America's Funniest Home Videos audition tapes, the plot centered largely on the trials of a young couple getting married and starting a family. Hubby and I were prepared to see a mildly sentimental comedy, but instead we watched a snapshot of our lives unfold on screen, including an excruciatingly accurate representation of my own miscarriage, and the struggle to accept the roles of financially-burdened-professionally-frustrated-young-father and formerly-career-driven-now-willingly-stay-at-home-mother. We watched these characters change from children to adults and felt like we had seen our lives in fast-forward. Of course, there was the dog. And since, as you can see by the photo above and this posts' title, this movie made me take pause and recognize for the wonderful canine he is, my Reilly.

Like Marley, Reilly is a slightly overweight, food obsessed, perpetually adolescent, yellow Labrador Retriever. And, like Marley, Reilly was our first born. After a year of unsuccessful reproduction attempts, we decided to shelve the whole thing and get a dog. I think the pregnancy test came back positive three days after we sent the check to the breeder.* So I spent the first few months of Reilly's life trying not to vomit for two reasons as I cleaned massive piles of crap. But we were in love with all of his quirks, like the way he slept curled on our pillows, with his bottom on Hubby's and his head on mine (the other way and that set up would not have lasted a week). Especially memorable was the evening I came home to discover he had opened the closet door and ate his way through half a bulk-sized bag of kibble and found him, literally, with his ass sticking up out of the bag as he continued to eat his way south. We took him for long walks in the park and smiled in a self-congratulatory manner when strangers stopped to exclaim over his extreme cuteness.

And then the inevitable happened - our first child was born - and thus began Reilly's rapid descent down the totem pole of our family. What was once cute now drove me to the brink of insanity. The energetic pulls on the leash made it impossible to walk him with the baby. His overly-sensitive bark reflex woke the whole house during naptime with frustrating regularity. There is a scene in the movie that is so true to my life I might sue. Jennifer Aniston has just gotten all three of her kids, including a newborn, down for naps and lies down exhausted on the bed, with the dog, to nap herself, when she hears the beep of the garbage truck backing up. She puts a gentle hand on the dog. "Marley, no", she whispers. Two seconds pass and the dog erupts into a fit of barking, scrabbling down the hallway, across the hardwood floors, to the windows, and immediately, all the children are awake and crying. If I have a dime for every time that has a happened to me, instead of a pathetic blog, you'd be reading the book I had paid childcare-time to write.

Equally as accurate, was Aniston's reaction. She, of course, goes berserk on the dog, and when the husband gets home, threatens the canine's ejection from the family. Hubby almost died when Owen Wilson told the dog, "You gotta cool it. Do you hear her? She's gonna kill you. We're both hanging by a string here, pal." Sadly, Reilly has suffered much verbal abuse for nap-ending barking, stealing neglected bags of Goldfish and, embarrassingly, if I really want to be honest, for simply having needs.

While there have been major transgressions, like the chewing-up-a-purple-gel-pen-all-over-oatmeal-colored-carpeting episode of 2004, watching this movie I realize that my reaction to Reilly is often angry because I simply can not handle one more thing on my plate. I can't handle his whining to go out when the baby is removing every pot from the cabinets and my oldest is trying to do homework all while I am trying to cook dinner. He didn't ask to be a member of such a large family and, although he loves it, he gets the short end of the stick I never have time to throw for him anymore because we are spread so thin. But basically, he is a good dog.

After getting used to the idea that this red, screaming bundle wasn't leaving and was pretty important to us, Reilly grew to love my kids with a ferocity that can best be pictured when he, literally, can not be separated from me when I am walking with the stroller or when we are out with the kids. My father tried to take the dog back to the house one time when we decided to continue up the street to the playground. He had to physically pick Reilly up and carry all one hundred pounds of him. When the kids have playdates with their friends, the majority of whom do not have a large beast living in their homes, Reilly just sits there with a, "Will you please do something about this?" look on his face, as kids straddle him and ride him like a pony. He has endured hours of each of my firs two kids pulling at ears and poking at eyes during varying stages of infanthood and yet he lays still as my last one uses him to reach a standing position.

But the worst is, no matter how angry I get, no matter how many times I forget I have moved his water bowl to the counter because the baby is using it as a wading pool, or feed him an hour late because I'm too busy with the kids, he loves me. He loves us. Last night, I was putting the baby to bed and afterward, could not find the dog. I heard him whining, but he was not outside or stuck behind the closed baby gate in the basement. Distracted by bathing my other two, it wasn't until thirty minutes later I realized he was still in the baby's room. Rather than bark and wake Little Man, he waited. Now that? Is Reilly.

So, thank you, Reilly, for being the dog you are. You definitely don't get the attention you deserve and if anyone is going to open the gates of hell for me, you are. For every missed walk and screamed curse. But here's hoping, Buddy, you live long enough for all the kids to be in school all day and you and I can go back to our beginnings. Long walks, lots of petting and, I promise, you can bark all you want and I won't even yell.

*Yes, we used a breeder. I didn't want some dog the ASPCA swore up and down was half Lab biting my future offspring's face off.