REX AND THE CITY: Part VIII--Learning How Other City People Handle City Dogs

In which our formerly traumatized rescue-setter discovers his Inner Hunting Dog

illustration by Susan Synarski

It wasn't until we were well into the fifth month of raising a hunting dog in New York City that Ted and I finally realized that...nothing short of four straight hours running at top speed over the rivers and through the woods was going to tire [the dog] out. But we lived in the tenement building on the Lower East Side. The only rivers we could cross required sitting in traffic for hours to drive through a bottle-necked toll booth. And the nearest woods were almost 100 blocks north, in Central Park. So how could we give a dog like Rex what he needed?

Hello Dear Substack Readers!

Welcome to the eighth installment of my old series “Rex in the City”—the basis for the memoir REX AND THE CITY published by Random House way back in 2006. Before social media changed the way we lived our lives. Before “adults” were allowed to join Facebook. Before, even, a large percentage of books being published were e-books. Oh, how I miss those days :)

For those of you who are new to this “Must Love Dogs” sub-Substack: this series appeared in the print edition of the late, great BARK magazine, which folded during the pandemic after twenty years of greatness. Because the Bark never went fully digital, I decided last year to start reposting my older pieces online. I hope you enjoy it.

Final caveat: these pieces were mostly written in the early Aughts, about a period of my life from 1997 - 2001. I am currently now not the same person I was then. Few of us are, I imagine, given all that we have been through.

To wit: in this piece, I (or rather, the then-me) said that I felt that the dog should adapt to our lifestyle, rather than vice versa. I literally cringed when I re-read this, because since 1997 (just a few days or weeks after I uttered those words) I’ve been the sort of person who will shape her lifestyle around her dogs’ needs, rather than the other way around. But when we first adopted our dog Wallace (his name was not Rex, even though he was called that in the column…long story), Ed and I really didn’t know much about how to take care of dogs. Nor did we know that dogs who have suffered from abuse require a particular form of care and training—similar to how one would treat a traumatized child. We relied on books and other people for advice on raising a dog, and many (most?) of the training books of that time stated that dogs should adapt to our human lifestyles. If the dogs did not, it meant they were “disobedient” or that they were “stubborn” and/or had no respect for the human alpha male of the pack, and therefore should be “corrected”—which is just a bullshit euphemism for “punished.” (Yes, toxic patriarchal views even affected how we were encouraged to treat our dogs…but I digress…) The good news is that, fairly early on in our time with Wallace, we discovered a great training book called MOTHER KNOWS BEST —one of the original training systems that encouraged positive reinforcement and also advised humans to work with a dog’s natural tendencies, rather than trying to force all dogs into acting like four-legged humans. Plus, the title says it all. I am so grateful to my sister Mary for recommending this book to me way back when. It changed my course within the dog world. (With Ed (called “Ted” in the series), it took him a bit longer to subscribe to this gentler and more efficient way of dog training—something readers witness in future installments. But he was also a softie at heart. We all are.)

So, long story short: while it was—and still is—a common attitude to assume that dogs must conform to the human lifestyle, we do have choices as to whether we want to force them to conform—through harsh, punitive measures that instill fear and confusion—or gently encourage them to do so through operant conditioning and positive reinforcement. The latter, I assure you, produces a happy, well-adjusted, brilliant, confident and perfectly behaved dog. (My Chloe was proof). As caretakers, our job is to get to know and understand our charges’ natural tendencies and work with those. I highly recommend clicker-training.

As you may have gathered by now, I could stand on this soap box for hours. But now I’ll step back and get back to the essay itself, pasted below. This was another installment that was very fun to read, because it reminded me of all the colorful characters we met during our time as dog people in New York City. In the book version of this chapter, I elaborate on a lot of these friends, and I also elaborate on the famous Mermaid Parade and my misguided decision to take our new dog to that parade so that I could show off my absolutely fantastic mermaid dress which I had purchased at a theatrical thrift store years earlier in Harvard Square. At least I didn’t force the dog to wear a costume. Not yet, anyway. More to come….

Enjoy! This 8th installment of the REX AND THE CITY/REX IN THE CITY series originally appeared in Bark magazine, Volume 22, Spring 2003, Copyright © Lee Harrington (writing as Lee Forgotson). Illustrations copyright Bark and the credited artists. I have no affiliation or agreement with any advertisers shown—those are old ads from the original editions.