Not one in the group who eventually watched this movie actually wanted to. Chi and AA said they did not like dogs while Cate and Gelle thought it would be another typical corny dog flick. But since there was no better movie showing, we sort of had no choice.
So we had dinner at Just Acia where we laughed a lot before we watched this movie which made us laugh at first, but made us cry at the end. It was not at all what we expected!
The story is about how a couple got a Labrador retriever who ends up being the “world’s worst dog.” But unlike your usual dog flicks that revolves around the dog’s antics, this focuses more on how the dog grows with the couple and their family. In the end, this is not just a story about a dog, but about how man’s best friend becomes more than that and becomes man’s family.
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| the girls who cried over Marley |
The movie made me remember all the dogs that we had in the family, most especially the ones who made me cry. When I was a baby, my parents got a dog that they named Scanner, after the movie that was popular at that time. I don’t know what kind of dog she was, but she was kind of big, with shaggy brown hair, and she was kept tethered on a leash and my brother and I were not allowed to go near her lest she bite us. Perhaps my parents were wary because I had been bitten on my leg by the neighbor’s dog at the age of two. Still, since Scanner was my age, I grew fond of her, and by the time I was seven, I was already able to pet her.
It was around this time that my parents decided to get another dog, a cross of a Japanese Spitz and Pekingese that they named Cute. Yeah I know. My parents are terrible namers. Anyway, Cute was so cute that everyone fawned over her, and because she was so small and harmless looking, she was not put on a leash. Scanner saw that and whined her complaints, and so one day, the leash was taken off her, too. She tried to get our attention and affection, only to be shooed away because everyone favored Cute.
One morning, we woke up to find no trace of her and a huge hole on our wall indicating that this was probably how she made her escape. My mom concluded that she had left because she had become jealous of Cute and could no longer stand it. That night my pillow was wet with tears. It was the first remembered moment I had of crying over something that was not related to physical pain or fear.
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| My brother and I with Scanner |
After Cute, we had lots of other dogs, since my parents decided to breed them. I grew attached to some of them. A black and white spotted one named Cobra died when he was barely a couple of months old, and my brother and I mourned his death sitting next to a wash basin and washing our tears away with water from the basin while saying, “mabuhay si Cobra nga ituy!“(long live Cobra the puppy!) in the hopes that somehow, those words would miraculously bring him back. They didn’t.
Many years later, shortly before I entered High School, my parents decided to get another puppy of another breed, unrelated to Cute. She was a black and white little terrier named Candy. She would become the grandmother of all the dogs we had from then until the present. Candy was very gentle and she was my favorite, even after she bore Pepsi, who was everyone else’s favorite because she was half-poodle and looked prettier. So while everyone fussed over Pepsi, I carried Candy around in my arms, pretending that she was a baby.
One day, however, Candy got sick with Parvo and died. I was so devastated that I ended up composing a poem for her which I wrote on my chalkboard. I did not intend for anyone else to see it, but my mom did, and she copied it down, typed it up, and the next time I visited her at her work, there was my poem peeking up from behind the glass on her office table along with a color photo of Candy.
What a turnabout for someone whose earliest recalled memory was that of her being bitten by a dog.