"Sit, Stay, Heal: One Dog's Response to 9/11"

from the anthology DOG IS MY CO-PILOT (CROWN: 2005)

illustration of Lee and Wallace by Susan Synarski

All that morning—the morning of September 11th—I was paralyzed. I couldn’t do anything except lie on that sofa, staring in disbelief at what I was seeing on the television. Meanwhile, Wallace seemed to sense that I was heading into dangerous territory; he kept inserting himself between me and the television screen, panting and smiling and plying me with a variety of facial expressions, as though trying to get a response.

Hello Beloved Friends!

This week I’m posting an old essay from my “Rex and the City” series, in honor of the anniversary of 9/11. For those of you who are new to my work, my column “Rex in the City” appeared in the late great Bark magazine in the early aughts, from around 2000 - 2004 or thereabouts. In the very beginning I was writing under my married name, Lee Forgotson (I never changed my name legally when I was married, but chose this “pseudonym” to appease my then-husband).  After I left my husband in 2002, I reverted back to publishing under my own name, Lee Harrington--not to be confused with the author Lee Harrington who writes about S&M. Anyway, I digress.  

September 11th, for those of us who lived in NYC at the time of the attacks, is seared into our memories. Some traumatic memories can be hazy, or patchy, or even completely repressed.  But I remember every second of those days--and I especially remember how my dog--of all people--was the one who tried hardest to bring me back.  My dog’s name was Wallace, by the way, not Rex. The book/column title is a bit misleading in that regard. And I seem, in this lifetime, to have a lot of weird karma with names.

This essay, entitled “Sit, Stay, Heal: One Dog’s Response to 9/11” appeared in Bark magazine Issue # Nov 2011, and also in the Bark magazine anthology Dog Is My Co-Pilot: Great Writers on the World's Oldest Friendship (Crown: 2003), and also appears as a bonus chapter in the 10th anniversary edition of REX AND THE CITY, published by Diversion Books: 2016. 

Enjoy.  And please do share and spread the word.  I still haven’t done any promotion for my “new” Substack newsletter - now more than a year in the making. So I appreciate all of you who continue to spread the word. May dog love prevail :)

xxoo,

Lee

PS- I am posting both the extended version, and PDFs of the condensed, edited version that appeared in the magazine. I always felt that a lot was lost in the copy edit phase with my Bark pieces, but who knows?