REX IN THE CITY, Part V - The City Hipsters Discover the Joys of Nature Via Their New Dog

On the slow but steady conversion from city slicker to dog-lady Earth Mother

Wallace photobombing a perfectly good skyline shot and making it a zillion times better :)

HELLO, DEAR READERS! Welcome to this week’s installment of my series Rex and the City, which appeared as a serial column in the late, great Bark magazine in the early Aughts. (You can read the column’s origin story in early Substack posts). This series was eventually published as my memoir REX AND THE CITY (Random House: 2006; Paperback: Diversion Books 2011)

It’s always a surreal experience to re-read pieces one wrote more than 20 years prior. It’s surreal to read about the person I was back then—so very brazen, so very determined, so hopped up on New York City zest, so slightly nuts. (And all potential memoirists should keep this in mind: that the people we were in our twenties might not accurately reflect who we are in our fifties. So just be prepared…I’m not saying it’s a bad thing to share your twenty or thirty-year old self with the world. Growth is good. Change is good. Expansion of consciousness is essential. But once your words are published in books and magazines, a certain aspect of your self may be solidified into readers’ consciousnesses. Just saying… ) To wit: in this piece I describe how I, embolded by my new self-image as a nurturing dog-and-Earth-mother, decided to tell the local drug dealer on our street to clean up his act. And/or to take his business elsewhere. When the man ignored me, I called him a “jerk.”

Holy moly! Reading this piece now, I see so much ignorance in my behavior. And aggression. Please note that I am not now describing my former self with crippling shame or self-recrimination. To paraphrase the great Maya Angelou: We do our best, and when we know better, we do better. But shouting at strangers isn’t something I do anymore. These days I am a Buddhist practitioner and a meditation instructor and I sing mantras and do yoga and play Tibetan singing bowls and read people’s minds and all sorts of spiritual stuff. I’m not perfect, but I don’t call people jerks.

Can I blame that past aggression on New York? Perhaps. People definitely vent at each other all the time on those sidewalks. Can I blame it on my relationship—a dynamic which was already at this point in time starting to slowly unravel my sense of self? [Note—both my Bark editor and my Random House book editor had me pull way back on the relationship issues between the two featured humans of my dog-centric memoir. Both editors wanted me to keep these pieces light—or rather, Lite—and humorous, and they wanted to stay focused on the antics of Wallace rather than on my own inner and outer human conflicts. But I did leave in a few “indicators” which any savvy reader would catch. (And catch they did!)] Can I blame it on simply being human, and therefore susceptible to the Three Poisons of Anger, Ignorance and Attachment? Actually, the true answer is to not to spend any time or energy placing blame on external circumstances, but rather to work with one’s own mind and keep letting go.

Mostly, when I look back at my former life these days, I am so grateful for that moment that I decided, on impulse, to adopt an aggressive dog. (Hey, there’s that word aggression again! Are we seeing some parallels?) That, for me, was such a significant turning point in this lifetime. A necessary change. An opportunity to truly shift the trajectory or my life. Later, much later, I would write a piece for Bark on “getting the dog we need” about how the Universe always pairs us with the dogs who will help us evolve as humans. But back then I didn’t even realize so consciously that, as Ed and I were helping Wallace overcome his fear aggression, we were also helping ourselves overcome our own fear-aggressions. I mean, I knew but I didn’t know. And life is like that. We don’t entirely ever know what we entirely know. Okay, I’ll stop with the cryptic mysticisms. My final point is that when we help one being overcome inner obstacles, we help all beings overcome inner obstacles. And that shouting at others is never the Way.

QUICK CAVEAT ABOUT TRAINING. These days I am all about clicker training and positive reinforcement and gentle operant conditioning; back then Ed and I did now know any better and were following the instructions of trainers who had a more alpha-male approach. I still cringe thinking about it. But, again, we did our best, and when we knew better we did better.

Now, on to this week’s installment of REX IN THE CITY.

This installment of REX IN THE CITY appeared in Bark magazine, Volume 19, Summer 2002, Copyright © Lee Harrington (writing as Lee Forgotson). Additional pages © BARK Magazine

Illustration by Susan Synarski

“You have to realize that people in the city have a little concept of flora and Fana. Seasons are not measured by win the lilacs bloom or when the crocuses pushed their way above the salt and ground, but by what social doyenne Nan Kempner wore to the Metropolitan opera gala last night.”

“Sometimes I don't know that I can measure up,” I said to Ted. “Sometimes I still think this dog would be better off with someone else.” And that you would, too, I thought.

“But you're his mother now,” Ted said