Reading Journal

John talked about how interesting his career was as a reporter, which sounded like a lot of fun. He had the freedom to write about anything he wanted to, which sometimes meant taking advantage by saying he has to do some "further investigation" on the hottest spot in town. In this chapter that was the unofficial dog beach where he spent the day "investigating" with Marley. It was very amusing how much fun Marley seemed to have at this place that he had never been to before. However, since he was having so much fun, Marley didn't have time to drink the fresh water that John brought for him, and he drank about a half a gallon of sea water. This resulted in an unpleasant mess of throw-up and diarrhea. This reminded me of what I learned about over the summer called flavor aversion which is "when an animal recognizes that a food item is harmful to their health (causes nausea or diarrhea). The function of flavor aversion learning is so that the animal’s health or life will not be in jeopardy when a certain food is ingested." (From a homework assignment.) With that knowledge I thought that it would be better the next time Marley went to dog beach. Unfortunately, John never took Marley back to dog beach, even though he enjoyed it so much.

Although John enjoyed his job immensely, he had a career change so that he could live in the country side where he spent his childhood. His new job was being an editor for a magazine that he subscribed to called Organic Gardening and it reminded me of Edible San Diego. So, John moved his family to Pennsylvania which his sons weren't particularly ecstatic about. The boys were disappointed to discover that Pennsylvania didn't actually have giant pencils everywhere, which I found amusing. They were also very frustrated when Christmas and New Years passed and there wasn't even a hint of snow. Then, after the boys had already returned to school, they not only had their first snow day, but they also saw snow for the first time in their lives. This must have been really cool to see something that they have never experienced before.

With their new home, they welcomed new pets, chickens, and that is when they discovered that something was wrong with Marley. The male chicken would make its' morning sounds at 5 a.m. and Marley would continue sleeping unalarmed. Unfortunately, he wasn't just sleeping through the noise, he simply couldn't hear it. This made me very sad because that signaled that not only could he not hear, but that also probably means that he will be dying soon, and I feel like I know Marley from reading this book.