'Marley & Me' has a lot to answer for

It's amazing how the modern media can help you improve your life. For example, you can watch TV shows such as "The Dog Whisperer" or "It's Me or the Dog" and learn all kinds of useful pointers on dealing with your misbehaving canine. And then you can trek to the No. 1 movie in America, "Marley & Me," and forget everything you've been taught.

No, I have not come to bury "Marley & Me" for its corny sentimentality and Christmas-card triteness -- many others have already beaten me to that. My beef is that the film based on John Grogan's bestselling book represents a toxic hazard to dog owners as well as anyone who ever comes near a dog -- basically everyone, in other words.

In case you've somehow missed the multimedia phenomenon that is "Marley & Me," its main message is that dogs are essentially furry kids -- lovable members of the family, even (or is that especially?) at their most undisciplined and incorrigible.

The eyes have it

In the movie, the couple played by Owen Wilson and Jennifer Aniston sit by with a kind of bemused helplessness as, down through the years, the yellow Lab they lovingly describe as the "world's worst dog" chews up multiple sofas, terrorizes a pet-sitter, swallows a necklace, eliminates where he pleases, goes berserk during thunderstorms and, maybe most memorably, knocks down a predictably autocratic dog-obedience trainer (played by a weathered-looking Kathleen Turner). Marley supposedly makes up for all this with his beseeching eyes, and also (I refuse to call this a spoiler because anyone over the age of 8 knows what happens before even buying a ticket) by dying a heartbreaking death.

As anyone who watches dog behavior expert Cesar Millan on National Geographic's "Dog Whisperer" knows, this passive attitude to dog ownership is widespread. And it's a chief reason why the world is full of dogs that bark all night, attack small children and mail carriers, and hump houseguests' legs (and also, yes, spawn litigation that helps drive up insurance costs for the rest of us). Sorry, "Marley & Me," but there are no bad dogs, only bad owners. (Interestingly, Grogan himself sought Millan's help in 2007 with his new dog, Gracie.)