The book "Marley & Me: Life and Love With the World's Worst Dog," has been on The New York Times Bestsellers list since January (21 weeks at No. 1) charming its way into a popular summer read.

	Robin Rombach, Post-Gazette Wendy Murdy of Regent Square was surprised to find out that her 6-year-old Great Dane Axel Rose has a sweet tooth. Click photo for larger image. Related article More readers' dog stories: Watch out for Bacon! Send us your 'worst dog' stories and photos

In this amusing tribute, author John Grogan, a columnist for the Philadelphia Inquirer, chronicles the naughty escapades of Marley, his former yellow Labrador retriever: How he took off with a table in tow from a chi-chi sidewalk cafe in Boca Raton, Fla.; how he gobbled up his wife's 18-karat solid gold necklace (requiring Mr. Grogan to find an inventive way to "retrieve" it.); how he crashed through screen doors, chewed up drywall and got expelled from obedience school. More than 2 million copies of the book (William Morrow, $21.95) have been published.

But are there other dogs out there that can match Marley's antics? We asked Pittsburghers to send in their own doggie tales. If anything, they demonstrate the unconditional love between both person and pooch: Here are their stories:

A contented Axel

It was last November and my friend was visiting from Florida. Excited to show him the fall season in Pittsburgh, I decided that we would go to Hartwood Acres for a festival, hayride and pumpkin pie. The hayride was easy coming, but there was no pie to speak of at Hartwood. We drove to Pajer's Farm Market in Sarver; no pie. Rich's market; no pie. So from Regent Square to Fox Chapel to Sarver there was no pie to be had, so we settled for one in the frozen food section of Giant Eagle. We brought it home and put it on the top of the refrigerator to thaw. After giving my great dane Axel Rose the mandatory Kong chew toy filled with peanut butter, we left to buy whipped cream. We were back in 10 minutes.

Annie O'Neill, Post-Gazette Trey Bubin holds Cutie Pie, a kitten the Bubin's family dog, CoCo, back left, brought home a few weeks ago. Click photo for larger image.

When I opened the door, I saw Axel lying in her bed, asleep and content. Then I looked down: aluminum pie tin -- empty -- except for a thin layer of drool. One can only wonder how Axel got that pie off of the top of the refrigerator, (I imagine her getting the step stool from the closet) and why she couldn't wait for the whipped cream.

-- Wendy Murdy, Regent Square

A good Samaritan

I adopted Coco, a lab mix, when she was 8 weeks old. And like the Energizer bunny, she's been running and barking ever since.

My poor elderly neighbor (yep, you guessed it, an ex-postal carrier) still has not acclimated to Coco.

On one occasion, I took Coco with my three children to visit a friend. My youngest, age 2, was running in and out of the second-floor bedroom of my friend's home. My friend was worried he might fall out an open window in the room, so she went in to shut it. Coco bounded in behind her. She jumped right through the window and kept running.

After Coco flunked out of two training schools, I enrolled her in a seven-day training-boarding school that was extended to 10 days. I got a phone call from the trainer telling me (in disbelief) that Coco was not trainable because she knows what she is supposed to do, but refuses to do it.

	Dan Marsula, Post-Gazette Click illustration for larger image.

Coco is now 3 1/2. A few weeks ago, I was at a Dek hockey tournament with my two oldest children when I received a call that Coco had gotten out and was running in the woods behind our house.

When I returned home, Coco had returned, but had brought with her another animal: a 3-week-old kitten. I tried to find the mother, to no avail.

Why did she bring home a kitten? That question was answered by my ex-postal carrier neighbor, who was watching Coco run in and out of the woods. He said he saw a hawk swoop down and take a cat or kitten. Our theory is that Coco wanted us to protect this kitten and brought it to us to keep safe. My youngest child named her "Cutie Pie Rainbow Bubin" and declared that we have to keep her. And we have.

-- Tracy Bubin, Wilkins

What a gift

My 10-year-old golden retriever, Dodger, stays in the basement when the temperature is excessively high or low. On a recent night, as usual, he was standing at the sliding door waiting to be let in. When I opened the door, he turned his head, grabbed something and ran into the family room. When I checked what he had brought in as his thank-you gift, I found a live opossum at the foot of my favorite chair.

I put on work gloves, picked it up by the tail and deposited it in the woods. I told Dodger that the opossum was not a good gift. Of course he was looking at me like I was crazy. I had just let dinner go.

Dan Marsula, Post-Gazette Click illustration for larger image.

-- James Wood, East Liverpool, Oh.

What a report card

When my husband and I first got married in 1990, I brought home a shepherd mix mutt from the pound. Her name was Molly. Molly was pretty devious, sneaky and willful and got into all kinds of trouble. Usually eating/chewing things that weren't food: the insulation off the water heater, a bottle of wood glue, countless rolls of duct tape, my mother-in-law's jacket -- you get the picture. So I took Molly to obedience school.

The first night was a disaster. She wouldn't listen. She pulled on the leash. She barked at everything. She growled at every Pomeranian in the room. She was possessed. I called her "devil dog" for weeks after that. My husband gave it a go for the remainder of the six-week course. He thought he was making progress.

A few days after the class concluded, a letter came from the school. "Look Molly your grades!" I said to her.

I opened the letter. Molly had failed the class. I shook the paper at the dog's face. "You failed! You're a disgrace! Look at this!"

Molly jumped up, snatched the letter from my hand, ran over to the other end of the room and shredded the letter, spitting out little pieces of paper and shaking her head violently. Then she spun around and waltzed past me, head high, pretty much saying, "Yeah that's what I think of your stupid class." We never went back to obedience school.

-- Cindy Marszal, formerly of Turtle Creek, now living in Austin, Texas

Too nosy

I came home one day shortly before Christmas to find my refrigerator door open and the food all over the floor. I eventually learned that Posy, my then 11-month old pit bull, was responsible. I was very angry because I had just bought food for a party and it was now half-gone. That was just the beginning. I placed chairs in front of the fridge to block the dog, but Posy just bypassed them. I complained to a friend who recommended a tab used to safeguard toddlers, which could Velcro the refrigerator door shut. But Velcro meant nothing to Posy.

I then bought a baby gate to keep her out of the kitchen, but Posy went right over it. I put a sweeper in front of the gate because Posy was afraid of the sweeper, but she wasn't that afraid. I put chairs and a sweeper in front of the gate. No go. I got bungee cords, wrapped them through the handle and attached them to a hook on the wall beside the refrigerator. Posy jumped the baby gate, ripped the seal off the refrigerator and the handle off the door. Replacing the seal cost more than $150. From a pet catalog I ordered a 4-foot-high gate that I had to affix to the wall. Posy got over it. Day after day I came home to an open refrigerator door. One day there was an empty carton of milk in the bedroom along with other food wrappers. Finally, having exhausted all other options, I paid $400 to have a solid wood door put on the kitchen. One day I came home and she had somehow opened the door and gotten into the refrigerator again. I put a hook on the door and she is finally thwarted.

I never actually saw Posy open the door. Then one day after all of this, I sat in the kitchen talking to Betsy Crouse, my dog trainer, who was facing the refrigerator that I had my back toward. Betsy got a funny look on her face. Posy had opened the refrigerator door right in front of her trainer. Apparently she just sticks her nose in the crack and pushes like it's the most natural thing in the world.

-- Julie Wahl, McCandless

Her heroes

I have two 6-year-old dogs that are litter mates named Homer and Maggie (after "The Simpsons" characters on TV). Homer is exactly like his namesake. Clumsy, lovable and weighs more than 100 pounds, yet thinks he is the size of a small lap dog. His sister is the serious one.

As puppies, they both were very bad. They ate everything under the sun, from bricks and tables to shoes and soda cans to walls and knives. One day I came home from work to find a disaster in the kitchen. All of my bills, which had been on the counter, were chewed up and strewn all over the floor. They chewed a hole in my wall and there were pieces of plaster everywhere. Molly got into a bottle of acrylic nail glue -- her gums were covered in crusty, dried glue. They chewed batteries and all of my birth control pills. I immediately called the vet. Sobbing I told them about the batteries, and they said if they were fine now not to worry. I then told them about my pills and they started to laugh. "Don't worry, the pills won't hurt them and to look on the bright side, if you haven't had them fixed at least you won't have to worry about them having any puppies this month," they said.

Needless to say, their puppy years felt very long. However, they are worth their weight in gold. Three years ago they protected me from two guys that tried to break into my house. One guy was at my back door and the other was climbing the roof toward my bedroom window. Homer and Maggie barked in a way I had never heard before and have never heard since, scaring the guys off. For months afterward, Maggie slept no farther than 5 feet from me and Homer slept at the back door where one of the intruders tried to get in.

-- Carolyn Rychcik, South Side

Change in diet

When I was a teenager living in Dormont, we had a mix named Gretchen, She was a beautiful dog, most likely a cross of German shepherd and husky. She chewed her way through an artificial Christmas tree -- with lights and decorations -- clothes from the clothesline, three wooden steps from the stairs in our cellar, a fiberglass heat pad from an electric double boiler, my father's wallet (and most of its contents), tin flashing from a garden border, Crayola crayons and numerous toys and odds and ends.

At age 3 she quit chewing almost cold turkey. She was the catalyst that got me interested in training dogs because my father always threatened to get rid of her. Of course he never did. I trained her to do basic obedience with hand signals, and she could do lots of tricks. She lived to be almost 14 from June 1979 to March 1993.

-- Gina Gross, Brookline

A fortunate switch

I have three dogs in my home, two of which are beagles (brothers), Brutus and Buddie, and a shephard mix named Madison. I have never taken my dogs to a kennel when taking a family vacation (Madison is too shy and the cost is prohibitive). I have been fortunate to have my mother spend those days in my home, bringing along her dog.

One particular vacation to the Outer Banks is the story loved by all. After cleaning her dentures, my mother put them in their little cup on the bathroom sink, which is where she always puts them at her house. Unfortunately, my mother did not know that was the wrong place to put them at my house. Brutus took her upper denture off the sink and ran out to the yard. By the time my mother caught him, her denture was in four pieces (we never did find the front teeth). My husband and I couldn't believe it.

My mother didn't have dental coverage and an upper denture costs almost $1,000. We called our homeowner's insurance company to see if it would cover this loss. At first it said no, since she was an invited guest and the dog did not attack her and take her teeth. Later that same day, however, they called to say that they had taken the claim to a different department and decided to cover it under the medical portion of our policy. I think they just had a good laugh about it at their office like we did at my office and they felt sorry for my mom.

-- Kathy Wolf, Ingram

A voracious reader

When Jasmine, my 3-year-old yellow Lab, was about 8 months old, she was in my car as we ran errands. I had to pick up a prescription at the local pharmacy. I left Jasmine seat-belted in the back seat in a doggy seat belt/harness with the windows partially down. Houdini, as I liked to call her, could somehow manage to get out of the harness and climb into the front seat. I knew this, but I ran into the store anyway, hoping that I would be back to my car in a very short time. As luck would have it, there was a large line and I was gone 15 minutes.

As I approached my car, I noticed a man on his cell phone pointing at my car and laughing. This could not be good. He then walked away, still laughing. There was Jasmine, sitting in the front passenger seat, surrounded by shredded paper, with a piece of paper hanging from her mouth. Not only had she escaped from her seat harness, but she had climbed into the front seat, found a book I had hidden under the front seat, and shredded it to pieces. Paper was all over the floor, dashboard, and seats. The minute she saw me she spit out the piece of paper and leaped to the back seat. I later discovered she had chewed through a seat belt and the soft foam on the gearshift handle.

Yet another reason to never leave a dog in the car alone.

-- Rebecca Cernick, Moon

Locked up

This past winter, on the way home from my parent's farm in Clarion County, we stopped for gas on a very cold day. My husband left the truck idling to pump, my 2-year-old twin boys were buckled in their car seats in the backseat and old Gunner, our 40-pound beagle was (yes) sitting on my lap. I decided to go into the gas station and get a coffee. No sooner had I closed the door than Gunner put his face to the window, put his paws on the door arm rest and stepped right on the automatic locks. With a "click" he locked himself and my children into an idling truck.

My first instinct was to try to have the dog click back on the door lock to unlock it. I quietly -- trying not to look completely insane -- tried to excite Gunner to jump up to unlock the doors. Of course, all I heard for 10 minutes was his barking and the re-clicking of the locking mechanism. We had no idea what to do. Luckily, the kids thought all of the gawking into the truck and Gunner's tail wagging and baying was great fun -- they weren't crying and they were warm! I didn't want to call the authorities because I feared a big state cop trying to break into the truck would scare the kids.

As our last resort before a 911 call, we asked my son closest to the back window to do something that we had told him 100 times not to do: to click open that little window in the back of the extended cab truck. Unbelievably, he did this. After that, it took us several too-short broom sticks and some help from the gas station staff to reach in -- around an excited Gunner -- to unlock the doors.

Everyone's fine, but my husband can't yet find the humor in it.

-- Allison Sciullo, Friendship