REX AND THE CITY series Part 15 - "What Kind of Dog Is This?"

On trying to figure out what kind of breed/s your rescue dog is, from the Winter 2004 issue of Bark magazine

Hello Dear Substackers —

First of all, I apologize for the long delay since my last post. To say life got in the way is an understatement. I seem to have gone through several of the classic “life-changing events” in a span of a few months, ranging from death of a parent, death of a sibling, illness, moving, etc., and—in my overtaxed, passing-of-time-challenged mind—it still feels as though it should be February, because it still feels at some strange level that only a few months have passed since my father died. But it’s actually July as I write this. Go figure.

Part of the reason my sense of time has shifted is that I have been completely flattened by grief. Grief changes our sense of time, too, because—in my case at least—it lodges me in the past. The other reason is that, since the pandemic, most of us have realized how malleable and subjective time is.

I also think that a lot of us have, since the pandemic, have also figured out how to turn challenges and obstacles into gifts. If we believe in an essentially benign Universe (and I do), then any obstacle that is placed on our path is there to help us continually grow, evolve, expand, learn, accept etc.

There will be a lot of “etc’s” in this post. Fair warning. [Also, feel free to skip all of this prelude and go straight to the PDFs.]

One obstacle that has flipped into a gift is that move I mentioned. (Which was the usual hellish, exhausting, panic-inducing, etc, but also beneficial from an organizational standpoint.) Remember I mentioned in one of my first Substack posts that I wanted to digitize all my old REX IN THE CITY essays that appeared in our beloved, late, great BARK magazine from 2000 - 2010ish? And remember that I mentioned that this would be a hellish, labor-intensive, anxiety-producing endeavor, because said endeavor would involve having to reorganize my storage space and hire several men to lug several (several DOZENS of) boxes of files into a temporary office so that I could sort through the files? [And please do keep in mind that most things are, at first, considered hellish and insurmountable for an Avoidant.] Well, I’m happy to say I’ve been reunited with the boxes of files, which means I have made it through the first in a series of seemingly insurmountable tasks I’ve been avoiding for several years. This is a cause for rejoicing :)

Now, of course, this Avoidant has to properly scan all the files—and I am talking about at least 100 essays, which will involve pulling physical tear sheets from physical magazines, and then finding some scanning service (because I don’t have a scanner myself) and organizing all the files in chronological order, etc. And keep in mind even the verb “organize” is triggering for a person with a disorganized attachment style, but hey, within every problem is the cure. That is what the Wise Ones keep telling me.

This installment of my REX IN THE CITY series originally appeared in the Winter 2004 issue of BARK magazine. The piece was illustrated, as usual, by Susan Synarski, who had an odd, slightly Cubist style that was unflattering to the cartoon-me but was always true to what my dog Wallace looked like. I always told her that what was most important that my dog look like my dog.

And speaking of names:

I keep restating this, but the “REX” of my columns [and subsequent book"] was actually my dog Wallace. I called him Rex in the Bark to protect his identity (seriously!) and also because my then-editor liked the pun of SEX AND THE CITY, which was popular at that time. So in a way, I became a victim of my own pun. To this day, people still ask me about my dog Rex and I have to explain that his name was Wallace, and it just feels so illogical when I try to explain. That’s because it IS illogical.

When I first started writing for Bark, I wrote as “Lee Forgotson” as a concession to my then-husband. But by the time this piece came out in Bark, I was writing as Lee Harrington again. I never changed my name legally, but I did take on Ed’s name in the literary world. And, to further confound the name issue, I actually had about three different pen names at Bark—including E.M Harrington—because so few of us wrote so many pieces for the magazine. But that’s another long story. (As is the story about how I am now constantly being algorithmed into another Lee Harrington’s identity).

Please enjoy the piece. I haven’t even re-read it fully, so please forgive me if there is anything in there that is dated or cringey. I am happy to say that I am no longer the person I was in 2003 :)

PS - I just realized I wrote a subsequent Chloe Chronicles piece for BARK with the same subtitle—What’s In a Name?—but they are quite different. I suppose we English majors can never entirely erase old Shakespeare quotes from our minds.