REX AND THE CITY, Part XXIV - "Board Approval"

In which I learn a lot of NYC dog owners will dose-up their dogs with calming agents in order to pass the necessary condo-board interviews....

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Hello Dear Readers!

Today, as usual, I am posting yet another installment (shared as PDFs below) of my “Rex in the City'' series from the late, great BARK magazine. For those of you who are new subscribers: BARK was primarily a print magazine, so a lot of these pieces never appeared online. That’s why I am sharing this series. You can also find most of these pieces—in revised form—within chapters of my memoir REX AND THE CITY, published by Random House in 2006 with a 10th anniversary paperback edition published by Diversion Books in 2016. 

This is one of the essays from Bark magazine that did not make it into the final cut for the book. I can understand why…it’s a very lite piece without much of the usual “conflict, climax or resolution” that are necessary components of a compelling written piece….but I still hope someone out there enjoys it :) Plus, I remember that the series was starting to wind down at this point in time—meaning the point in time in which I wrote this piece. It was 2006. Wallace had already died at this point in time, and my editor Claudia had had a hard-and-fast rule that BARK would not publish any pieces about dead dogs. She had made an exception for me, because the REX series was so popular (thank YOU, beloved readers), but I was still required to write about him—my dog—as if he were still part of the living continnuum rather than a long-past continuum. (If you understood what I just said, you get an A+!) I wasn’t to write any odes to my dead dog, in other words. Just humorous essays about his vibrant and ever-shifting New York City dog life. And I respected BARK’s terms. And still do. Still, it wasn’t as easy to write about Wallace* with the same sense of wonder and immediacy and verve with which I used to write about him. As I re-read this piece, I can definitely feel—at an energetic level—a shift in my own tone.

Anyway, in this 24th REX essay, I write about the time Ed* and I hosted our first dinner party at our newest (but still extremely small) apartment in New York City and were worried that Wallace might terrorize our guests.

*And if you are questioning my use of the names “Ed” vs “Ted” and/or “Wallace” vs “Rex,” please note that our dog was actually named Wallace, not Rex. To read more about why we changed the dog’s and peoples’ name for the Bark series, read here.

I hope you enjoy reading the piece. Through Substack. I’ve been enjoying this opportunity to re-connect with readers who were long-time fans of Bark and of Rex and the City for so many years. We all share the same love of dogs. And sharing what we love is an uplifting practice.

And please comment and share! I still need to convince the Great Algorithm that I am not the Lee Harrington author who writes about bondage. Totally different person, my friends. And yet Google keeps merging me and him into one “entity” who writes about S&M and dogs. I am just a dog-lady, my friends. Nothing more :) The more you share, the more you’ll support my effort to reclaim my own online identity. This is the world we live in.

Sending you and your dogs so much love!

Lee

This 24th installment of the REX AND THE CITY/REX IN THE CITY series—“BOARD APPROVAL” —originally appeared in Bark magazine, Volume 41, March/April 2007, Copyright © Lee Harrington (writing as Lee Forgotson and E. M. Harrington). Illustrations copyright Bark and the credited artists. NOTE: I have no affiliation or agreement with any advertisers shown—those are all old ads from the original print edition.

IT'S ALWAYS STRESSFUL TO THROW YOUR FIRST ADULT party, and it can be even more stressful if you have a really hyper,poorly trained (or rather, imperfectly trained) dog. It was the year 2000, and Ed and I had just moved to a 350-square-foot apartment in Brooklyn. This was a big step up for us, given that our previous apartment was only 300 square feet. You might be shocked at that number, but we were overjoyed to have a bedroom door that could actually close (or slam, as the case may be) because there were no bureaus or beds blocking the way. It was indeed cause to celebrate. So we decided to throw a housewarming party….