Marley & Me Tops at Box Office: Economy Not so Good for Other Dogs

Earlier this year, I finally read Marley & Me. I had bought the book a year earlier, and placed it in the long queue of books to read. I wished I moved the book up the queue faster, but sometimes life gets so busy that you are just lucky if you get the time to read. Now the movie is number one at the box office.

My best friend is a five-year-old, energetic chocolate and yellow mix Labrador Retriever named Kayleigh. Often, I feel like she is the ghost of Marley. She has an amazing sense of smell, which often gets the better of her. Her curiosity creates mess after mess. Last year she dragged my mom across her driveway as she took off after a stray cat, but I still love her. One day, I will have to say goodbye to her, just like John Grogan had to say goodbye to Marley. I'm not looking foward to that day.

Our times with our dogs go by quickly, and the soon become chapters in our lives. My life is full of wonderful dogs like Kayleigh to the occasional dog that never fit it, but we loved them anyway. I have had a fascination with dog stories since I read Where the Red Fern Grows by Wilson Rawls. Through these stories, we easily attach to Dan and Little Ann, to Marley, Marley, and most recently to Mark Levin's rescued dog, Sprite. We know the outcome we read to, and we know the pain the end of the book brings. I always cry, and I have since Billy laid those hound dogs into the ground after a vicious cougar attack in the Ozarks.

Dog stories always teach us how to deal with a loss. Few people affect us in books the way that dogs do. Maybe that's I believe dogs give unconditional love and loyalty through thick and thin, while many friends fail us along the way. I am guilty, so this isn't pointing fingers. I am pointing fingers today at many dog owners throughout the United States.

Too many dogs are being dumped off at Walmart parking lots and other locations because people cannot afford to feed and take care of them. It saddens me every time I see a dog looking for its way along a city street. During the depression, parents often dumped their children off to orphanages for the same reasons. Please give your dog the same chance by taking it to a shelter. This winter has been cold. Your dog and many other dogs deserve better.

Knowing how much joy Kayleigh gives me, I don't even see how it's humanly possible to dump a dog off. Shame on those who do.