REX AND THE CITY, PART VI: Love is in the Air

As new dog parents, we start to ask ourselves: just who has the separation anxiety here?

Illustration: Susan Synarski

Hello Dear Readers —

Welcome to another installment of “Rex and the City”—a serial column that ran in the late. great Bark magazine for several years in the Aughts. Because Bark was primarily a print publication, very few of these installments made it online. So I decided to re-post them here, in chronological order, for both new and old readers to enjoy. As many of you know, this series was the basis of my memoir REX AND THE CITY, published by Random House in 2006. (Paperback edition was published by Diversion Books).

Part VI of the series (that’s Number 6 for all of you raised in eras blessedly free from having to memorize cryptic Roman numerals) is yet another piece that illustrates how I was slowly becoming a Crazy Dog Lady, in all of the best possible ways. Plus, I was a Crazy City Dog Lady. In New York, there’s a big difference.

In this installment, our aggressive rescue dog Wallace (known as “Rex” in the series for convulted reasons I explain elsewhere) starts to soften toward us, and trust us more, and—as a result—I get my first dog-kiss. (Any dog-lover who ever adopted a shut-down dog will agree when I say that this was a huge turning point and a total thrill.) We also, in this installment, start to grapple with the issue of Wallace’s separation anxiety. And we also start to realize that our social life is about to change, because our hipster friends recognize that Ed and I are changing and becoming dog people.

Now, on to Part VI of the series…This installment of REX IN THE CITY appeared in Bark magazine, Volume 20, Fall 2002, Copyright © Lee Harrington (writing as Lee Forgotson).

Photo: Halil Dorukhan Mercan

“When we first met Rex at the pound, his eyes were dull and unresponsive, and I realized that whoever had had this dog before us had killed something in him—his essense, his soul. And now that something was coming back to life.”

“Sometimes love walks into your life on two legs; sometimes on four.”

“Welcome to the beginning of the end of our social life.”

“Don’t compare our dog to other peoples’ babies,” Ted said on the cab ride home. “People are going to think we’re freaks.”

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