The Falling Man and the Rising Balloon--PTSD in NYC after 9/11

Hi Everyone! I am going to repost a few of my September 11th related essays this week. A lot of people are already getting re-traumatized by the old images that are reappearing everywhere, on this tenth anniversary. So I hope these essays will provide a soothing counterbalance to those horrific memories.

Below is an essay I wrote in the winter of 2002, when I was still numb from all the 9/11 horror. You can tell by the prose alone just how numb I was. I was so numb I didn't realize I was numb, know what I mean?

All Rise
In the first few months following the attacks of September 11th, I refused to leave New York City. Like a child who has lost one parent, I found myself clinging needily to the surviving parent, and in this metaphoric case, that other parent was Rudolph Giuliani. He was the man who guided us New Yorkers through that horrible first week. He was the man who told us to stay strong, to help one another, and even to grieve. He was the one who attended countless funeral services for fallen firemen; he was the one who escorted that now-fatherless bride down the aisle; he was the one who gave daily press briefings, delivering his updates in a composed and eloquent manner. How could I leave a man like that? I felt I owed it to him to stay in New York—to help him hold our city together.

Thus I began canceling plans. First I cancelled a scheduled trip to New Orleans for Halloween (I wanted and needed to see the Village parade, whose theme that year was “Phoenix Rising from the Ashes”). Then I cancelled our Thanksgiving plans—a trip to gorgeous Santa Fe to visit Ed’s parents). Then I cancelled our Christmas trip—to New Hampshire and Massachusetts to visit my family. Honestly, I was too depressed to get off the sofa, and I could not tear myself away from the television set—the thing which bore the news that depressed me. I also did not want to miss anything Giuliani did or said.

He had become my symbol of hope and strength, my higher power, and I probably would have licked the sidewalks in the fish market section of Chinatown if he had asked me. I needed to give back to him—to someone. So much had been lost.

So when Giuliani started urging us New Yorkers—via televised announcements-- to “get on with life” and “spend money” I had no choice but to listen. He started appearing on those tear-jerking, I Love New York tourism commercials encouraging us to fly, get away, participate once again in the world of commerce. The airlines needed the money, he reminded us. Which of course made us all think of the planes that had been hijacked, and the people who had died. How could we let them down?

It was December by then. Perhaps it was time to acknowledge that I no longer had a valid excuse to sit glued to NY1 and the New York Times' "Portraits of Grief” section. These things only made me cry. I had to obey Giuliani.

So at the end of December my husband I booked a last-minute flight to Acapulco, where some friends of ours had rented a bungalow for the week.

Normally when I travel, I make it a point not to pack anything that will peg me as a tourist. Sometimes I even go out of my way to not look like an American (especially when I go to my second home, France). This meant no t-shirts, or Nike Air Max running shoes, no camera-about-neck, no mom-jeans.

But this post-9/11 trip to Mexico was different. The entire world had changed, and I was a refugee from a proud, fallen city.

Thus, I packed a Brooklyn Dodgers T-shirt, an NYPD T-shirt, a baby blue, baby tee emblazoned with our famous area code: "212." As I packed these New York items, I was reminded of my summers during college, when I waitressed on Cape Cod. I remembered how my fellow waitresses and I—all Bostonians—recoiled every time we saw a car with the Empire State license plate pulling into our restaurant's parking lot. "Oh no!" we would say, truly aghast. "New Yorkers!" To us on the Cape, New Yorkers meant rude, obstinate, pushy people. Those “New Yorkers” seemed to have a huge and obnoxious sense of entitlement that had no place in our conventional New England world. I remember I used to cringe every time “one of them” was seated at my title.

I also actually used to recoil at the sight—or the mere mention—of Mayor Giuliani. Before September 11th, we loathed him: he was arrogant, intolerant, and bombastic. He hated artists and sidewalk-sellers of books. To us artists, he was the Enemy.
And now, as I zipped up my suitcase to leave New York City and our hero/father/mayor, I found myself getting teary-eyed.

"What's wrong?" my husband said when he came into the room.

"We're going to miss Giuliani at the ball-drop on New Year's Eve next week," I said with a quivering frown. "We're going to miss the ringing of the memorial bells for the 3600 fallen at six o’clock."

"In all the years we've lived here you've never once wanted to go to Times Square on New Years Eve," Ed said.

"I know," I said, holding back more tears. "But it’s Giuliani’s last public appearance as the mayor and I'm not going to get to see it."

"It's twenty-five degrees out there on New Year’s Eve in Times Square,” Ed reminded me.

"I know, but, it’s just cold. People died on September 11th. People burned to death. Surely we can take a few hours of being cold."

"We're going to have a great time on this trip” Ed said. “We're going to have sunshine and beaches--"

"I know, but—"

"We're going to have a great time,” Ed said again. “And we haven't left the city since August. It will be good for us to get away."

I turned and looked at him. Ed was a television news producer at one of the major networks. He had witnessed gruesome things in the weeks after September 11th, and had witnessed them first hand. I at least had had the buffer (the slightly unreal buffer) of witnessing the horrors via the television set. Ed was the type of me who held his emotions in check, but I realized he was probably completely traumatized.

"You're right," I finally said. "We've been needing a vacation for a long time." I hugged him and tried not to cry. I pulled an “I LOVE NY” ski cap over my head, put on my coat, and said I was ready to go.

And soon, we found ourselves having been transported to Acapulco; indeed, to another world: one of aquamarine water and sand the texture of talcum powder, one of freshly caught fish and creamy piña coladas and non-traumatized friends. (Meaning, people who were not in NYC on the day the towers well.)

As soon as we landed we drove to a beach-front café. And as we sat there, enjoying our drinks and the sunshine, and the naked, foreign feeling of wearing tank tops and shorts, I realized that here was a place I could actually not think about the World Trade Center. I felt hopeful and almost ready to start life anew.

Winter, in the Northeast at least, makes you close in on yourself, seek refuge inside small apartments and sterile office buildings, and encase yourself constantly in a giant tortoise shell of North Face down. Here in Mexico, though, I felt myself opening up again like a blossoming flower. Sunlight warmed our skin; a breeze tossed the palm fronds of the thatched roof above; and rum, glorious rum, ebbed and flowed through our veins like the tide a few yards away from us, rum that loosed our muscles and unclenched our city jaws.

"Isn't this heavenly?" I said to our friends. They are a fun-loving, easy-going couple who live in California and travel like pros. They agreed that it was heavenly, and we ordered another round of drinks. Feeling relaxed, I leaned back into my chair and gazed at the bluer-than-blue sky.

It was then that I saw a parasailer, gliding noiselessly above the bay.
I flinched and gasped.

The sight horrified me. Even though he was attached to a rainbow colored parachute, he looked like a person falling from the sky. Suspended in the air like that, he had the same rag-doll, caught-in-a-moment look as the people who jumped from the towers—the ones we had seen in countless horrible photographs.

"Are you alright?" my friends asked. I tried to explain my reaction—how I had momentarily believed that the parasailer was falling, just like the Falling Man—and I got teary-eyed as I spoke. My friends remained silent. I don’t think they knew what to say. I don’t think they could relate to my distorted thinking.

And what could they say to a comment like that? Equating a parasailer with a burning mid-air body is not an association most people would make. Unless one is exceptionally morbid. Or a New Yorker. Suffering, I realized years later, from PTSD.

In the ensuing silence—and to hide my tears—I turned my gaze away from the parasailer. I looked instead at the shoreline and the sea, where hundreds of people swam in the water. Then I looked up at the rows of high rise hotels behind us, which lined the entire Acapulco Bay. Each high-rise was painted a beautiful bold color—such as chili pepper red or guacamole green, and each had mirrored windows that reflected the sky. There were rows and rows of balconies lining each side of each building, and then I saw that there were people on many of these balconies, leaning against their railings, admiring the view.

I gasped in horror again. In my traumatized mind I saw that photograph from the Times of all those people hanging from the windows above the burning floors. All those people screaming in terror, waiting to be rescued. And then dying. I got teary eyed again, and I hastily put on a pair of sunglasses so that no one could tell.

Now, I was not in or near the World Trade Center on September 11. In fact, I am so afraid of heights I have not been inside either tower since 1987—the one and only time I could be coaxed onto the observation deck. So what is it that held me there now, while I was thousands of miles away in Mexico? What was it that held me in the past, inside top floors of the North Tower, standing at the windows alongside the 700 doomed Cantor Fitzgerald employees? Why did I feel as if I too were caught in a moment of indecision between burning alive or jumping to the most frightening of deaths?

I don't know. And I guess I will never know because anyone who does know what it was like has disappeared.

But let's get back to the sunshine of Mexico: That evening—which was New Year's Eve—the four of us dined at Las Brisas, a five-star restaurant on the edge of Acapulco Bay. We had to drive through seven gates manned by armed guards to get there, and thus were giddy with expectation and irony by the time we reached the restaurant, and a team of valets swarmed around us to tend to our car. We were led to a beautifully laid table that was positioned between a sea wall and a tidal pool. The pink uniforms of the waitstaff matched the pink tablecloths and the giant bouquets of fragrant pink flowers. They brought us pink lemonade margaritas that matched the pink, sun-setting sky. A few margaritas later, we were greeted by a moon so huge and white it looked like something from a children's book.

"It must be because we're so close to the Equator," my husband explained. But I preferred to think we were in the presence of something magical, a sort of Never-Never land untouched by the rest of the world.

The hours passed pleasantly. We were brought course after course of delicious food and the waiters would never let our wine glasses get below half-full. All that wine, and the food, and the soft air and that huge benevolent moon, seemed to lift us a finger's breath above the table, so that we were suspended in a place of holiday happiness—a realm in which there was no World Trade Center, no trace of disharmony with my husband, and no ill in the world at all.

Just before midnight, the traditional countdown began. There was a cacophony of fireworks and noisemakers and the band played Auld Lang Syne. My husband and friends and I got out of our seats to hug and kiss and dance, and at the stroke of midnight, they released an enormous batch of silver balloons. They were just balloons, yes, but to me—in that magical place—they seemed otherworldly. As they rose, they seemed to move in tandem. And the way their metallic surfaces caught the moonlight as they twisted and turned reminded me of a giant school of fish.

Suddenly I was teary eyed again. "What's the matter?" my husband whispered. He put his arms around me as we both watched the balloons float away.

"Those balloons must be for the World Trade Center," I said. "Don't you think?"

"I don't think so, honey," my husband said. "They're just balloons. I think they do this every year."

"But there are thousands of them," I said. "There must be three thousand one hundred and sixteen. For all the missing. Don’t you think?"

My husband must have sensed my desperation, because he kissed the top of my head and said, "I think you're right. I think there are three thousand balloons."

And so, while the rest of the crowd danced, we watched the balloons rising, and prayed three thousand times for the three thousand souls. I wondered, as one always does, where those balloons would end up. Do they pop? Do they disintegrate? Or would some child in New Zealand find them, washed up like anemones on the shore? We watched them soar past that impossible moon.

Six days later, when we returned to New York, I found a slightly different city. Giuliani was gone, the daily "Portraits of Grief" of the New York Times had been discontinued, and the sports section of the Times was no longer upside down. They had also opened up a viewing platform right at Ground Zero and I decided to go there with a balloon. I thought it would be uplifting to see it soar above that charred spot. The line to get to the platform was four blocks long and it took hours to reach the platform. By that point, my Mylar balloon (which said, I'm ashamed to say, said HAPPY BIRTHDAY on it,) had lost quite a bit of its air and its metallic zest.

Thus, when I released the balloon at the platform's railing, it barely took flight. It merely hung in the air in front of me for a few moments and then sunk rather anticlimactically to the ground. People around me were crestfallen, I could tell—I realized we all needed this little symbolic lift.

"Was it someone's birthday?" a woman finally asked. Everyone was listening.

I shook my head and said “not really.” I didn’t know how to explain my need to bring this balloon to this place.

But in those days, in New York after September 11th, people no longer needed explanations. The world no longer made that much sense. But at the same time, we all seemed to understand one another a little better. Without having to say a thing.

So there we all were, looking at that balloon on the ground, bereft. I felt like such a jerk. Maybe death wasn’t like soaring at all, I told myself. Maybe death was just--death.

Then one of the rescue workers came over and picked the balloon up. You could tell by the tired look on his face that he had seen three weeks of non-stop horror; but behind his eyes I saw pure kindness. “Whose birthday is it?” he said to all of us, in a fatherly way. He was just like Giuliani.

A little girl said, “Mine” so he gave her the balloon. Everyone broke into applause. Some broke into tears. But the applause—it was thundering. The sound—and the heart behind it—soared.

Adopting a New Dog Sight Unseen

Occasionally I take time off from writing about my late great dog Wallace to write about my current great dog, Chloe. Let's call this installment "Insight Unseen"

It’s not unusual these days for perfect matches—between humans and humans, animals and humans, even animals and animals—to be made online. Typically (in the Match.com department, at least), the humans actually meet before agreeing to make a full-time/life-long commitment. So is it crazy to adopt a dog you’ve never actually met face-to-face?

I did exactly that. I adopted my dog Chloe before I even met her. Crazy? Read on…

Many of you may be familiar with my previous Bark series (and book): “Rex and the City.” In this series, I chronicled my experiences trying to raise an unruly—but loveable—shelter dog (Wallace) in a 300-square-foot-apartment in New York City with an unruly—but loveable—boyfriend. In 2002, our relationship ended and Wallace died tragically. All within a few hours. I officially left Ted on the morning of November 23; that evening, Wallace was killed in an auto accident. (See “Rex: The Story Ends,” Bark, Jan/Feb ’09).

After that, I cried every day for two years. I stopped writing about dogs for two years as well. In fact, I tried not to think about dogs at all, because thinking about dogs made me miss Wallace, which me feel guilty and sad.


I knew that one day, when I was ready, I would adopt another dog, but “readiness” is such a relative and fickle thing. Sometimes I would log onto Petfinder.com and type “Spaniel” into the search engine just to see who was out there waiting for a home. But none of those 800+ Spaniels ever felt “right.”

I wrote about my new-dog quest in the aforementioned essay, but in a nutshell: after a two-year search, I finally came across a French Spaniel mix on Petfinder. Her name was Buffy, and she was being fostered by an affiliate of an English Setter rescue group in Michigan. She was listed as one year old, sweet and good with other dogs.

What struck me was Buffy’s photograph. She was looking straight at the camera, smiling, rushing forward as if she couldn’t wait to give the taker-of-the-photo a kiss. Finish what you’re doing so that I can love you up! she seemed to be saying. Her big white tail wagged behind her in a blur.

My fantasy crush Pete Townshend once wrote, in his song “Now and Then”: Now and then you see a soul and you fall in love/You can’t do a thing about it. That’s how I felt when I saw Buffy’s photograph. In that instant, my whole body began to tingle with certainty. I knew in my heart that I had found my dog.

My mind, however, disagreed. I had an incredibly wily and cantankerous mind back then, one that constantly tried to talk me out of doing anything fun. I called her “Hulga.” Hulga said, Buffy’s in Michigan, and you’re in NYC, and most rescue groups won’t adopt out beyond certain regions. You know how strict they can be. Why even bother?

Because it feels right, my heart answered. I picked up the phone.

It turned out that the adoption coordinator who answered the telephone—I’ll call her Amy—had heard of me. She’d been a fan of Bark and my column for years. The ease with which we spoke—and the camaraderie that quickly developed—was encouraging.



Amy said that Buffy was very sweet and loving. Her favorite things to do were to chase cats, eat cat poop and run through corn fields. I loved this latter image—a free-and-easy bird dog, galloping through tall green rows of corn, dodging down this row or that, occasionally springing into the air to sight and orient herself. It suggested pure joy and freedom. In NYC, our corn comes from corner delis—those tiny pickled cobs you find at salad bars.



“You should know,” Amy said, “that Buffy does have problems. She barks a lot and whines and paces and chews.”



I knew these to be signs of anxiety—most likely, stress caused by all the shuttling from shelters to foster homes. I also knew some people would label this as “problem behavior” and refuse to take the dog. But I’d been through this anxiety phase with Wallace, and we had worked it out.



“What’s Buffy’s history?”



Amy said Buffy was found wandering on a college campus. She was brought into a local kill shelter, where a woman named Kat discovered her. Kat was a cat person, who visited the shelter daily to rescue Abyssinians for her breed-specific group. When Kat saw cute, friendly Buffy, she contacted a local English Setter rescue group, and within a few days, Buffy’s profile was online. “It’s such a coincidence you called today,” Amy said. “We literally just posted her.”



But I was starting to think there is no such thing as coincidence.



“I have a good feeling about Buffy,” I said. “I believe this was meant to be.”



“Normally we don’t adopt out of state,” Amy said.



See? Hulga said in my mind. I was right.



“But we may be able to make an exception,” Amy added. “I’ll just have to consult the board.”



Oh, no. The Board. Six months earlier, I’d tried to adopt an English Setter puppy from a strict rescue group in Pennsylvania. Their rejection left me traumatized for weeks.



“Buffy’s very destructive and high-strung,” Amy said. “She’s hard to manage. You should think about it for a few days, while I consult my colleagues to see if they’d be willing to relinquish a dog to a strange New Yorker.”



So, I thought. I probably thought too much. Hulga had a field day. I asked myself: what am I doing, taking on another “problem dog”? I’d spent six years with a problem dog, and sometimes, quite honestly, it wasn’t fun. I’d had to contend with dog fights, dog bites and thousands of dollars worth of damage. Minor stuff, I told myself. In comparison to all that dog joy and dog love I received.



Still, Hulga said. Why not get an easy dog? One who’s already trained and well-adjusted? Why are you choosing another difficult relationship? I’d just divorced my difficult relationship. Was I only comfortable when life was hard?



But this is a dog we’re talking about, not one of those men things. I reminded myself.



A dog you haven’t even met, Hulga said. Who sounds dysfunctional.



What if there was more to this dog—more “problems”—that Amy wasn’t elaborating upon? What if it turned out that I couldn’t manage Buffy’s problems alone? I was a single woman, and—at the time—bitter. I planned to remain single for the rest of my life. Would a so-called “easy” dog be easy enough for a singleton in NYC? And what had Amy meant when she called me a strange New Yorker?



The questions were endless. I drove myself crazy. Or rather, Hulga drove me crazy. This is what happens when we think too much—an epic internal battle of mind and heart, logic and intuition (with an unhealthy dose of Hulga thrown in).



Finally, I visited Riverside Park to watch the sun set beyond the Hudson River. The Hudson has always given me perspective; it is the kind of vast, forgiving river that helps one make choices. As I stood there, a woman walked past with a giant Mastiff who loped along with a goofy grace. The dog looked so happy to be outside in the park with his friend. And so did she. In that instant, I knew Buffy was truly meant to be my dog. I decided once and for all to follow my heart.



When I called Amy, I felt fizzy with excitement. Amy said I could have Buffy “whenever I wanted.”



“So the board has approved?”



“What? Oh, yes,” Amy said distractedly. Something seemed off. But I’ll have to save that story for another day. It took four weeks for me to actually get Buffy (another long story involving Buffy actually being adopted—and returned—to five other people in the interim). But soon, I had secured an “arrival date” for Buffy. She would be accompanying a volunteer on a plane to NYC.



I had ten days to prepare.



Rehabilitating Wallace had taught me a lot about dogs. Writing for a dog magazine had too. I now knew what kind of training worked best (clicker, positive reinforcement), what type of diet was healthiest (raw, organic) and which veterinary treatments worked best. I’m not saying I’m an expert on dogs, but at least I wasn’t as clueless as I’d been when I adopted Wallace. I felt confident. I was going to work with Buffy’s anxieties, restore her confidence, provide her with consistent and loving guidance, and gently alter her behaviors.



First, I cleared my calendar, rescheduling any appointments that would take me out of the apartment. I wanted to stay with the dog 24/7 for a solid three weeks. Next I researched how to treat anxiety using holistic methods. I stocked up on flower essences, aromatherapy oils, herbal supplements. I bought marrow bones (an essential ingredient if your anxiety-plagued dog is a chewer) and two pounds of raw chicken to help strengthen her immune system. I also stocked up on music. Yes, music. (See http://www.thebark.com/content/soothing-songs-anxious-pup

As Buffy’s arrival date drew nearer, I purchased other essentials: A cozy, vintage-floral-patterned bed;  a pretty new leash-and-collar set. A soft fleece blanket with which to cover the sofa, which I knew would be covered in dog hair within three hours of the dog’s arrival. All of the above were pink in honor of my new girlie-dog. I bought doggie paw-wipes for rainy days, Musher’s Secret for snowy days, hair brushes (pink!), toys, treats (exotic NYC treats like dried kippers and ostrich skin), even a Halloween costume (more on that later).



Next, I posted on ManhattanDogChat, announcing the arrival of a new pup in the neighborhood who’d be looking for play-dates.



Already, Buffy was a true New Yorker, I thought. Hip grosgrain collars, lavender shampoo, and dates.



Soon the appointed day came. I arrived at the airport early, my purse loaded with Bach Rescue Remedy and my pockets stuffed with treats. I must say I was nervous. It was like a blind date: Will she like me? Will she think I’m unattractive? Or weird? What if we don’t get along?



Then I saw a woman wheeling a large dog crate toward me. Inside was what looked like a Border Collie mix, panting and pacing and whining. Buffy? This crate had my name on it, printed in large black letters. Beneath my name was a sticker that read: CAUTION LIVE ANIMAL. The dog whined shrilly. For a moment I was dumbfounded—I had myself a new live animal. One who might not be any part Spaniel. Was this going to be another “Rex and the City” ordeal, in which I’d spend months feeling overwhelmed?



I reminded myself that I had followed my heart, and that the heart is always right. So I unlatched the crate.



THIS APPEARED IN THE MARCH 2011 ISSUE OF THE BARK MAGAZINE.Find out what happens next in the September issue of The Bark.

Dear Friends and Kind Readers:



Gosh, I haven't posted since April, because I have been so busy with teaching (I teach creative writing at NYU), writing (a few articles for Bark here and there), performing and writing music (I am lead singer in a rock band and a kirtan band), and lots of other administrative bullocks.



I also had a big setback with my spine, related to gardening, which sucks. One really needs a spine to get around. Literally and figuratively.



Mostly I spend a lot of time not-writing. And you all know how time consuming that can be.



I once had a writing professor who said: the only thing harder than writing is not-writing.



For me, the only thing harder than not-writing is trying to catch up in the digital world. (Which is the primary time-sucker these days, and the sole reason I do not have time to write).

So let's cut to the chase:

I have yet to read an eBook, and yet I am re-issuing an extended eBook of REX AND THE CITY; TRUE TALES OF A RESCUE DOG WHO RESCUED A RELATIONSHIP. The projected launch date is late August, 2011. So one month away, basically.

I am panicked. I am entering new territory with no skills or knowledge whatsoever. It's like climbing Everest in heels and a sundress. Not my terrain.



I am reaching out to you for advice.

What kind of features does an eBook offer--in terms on content, I mean. Links? Photos? Deleted chapters?

What do you enjoy about "expanded" eBooks? How can I engage the reader in a digital way? I mean, to me, books are about content--the story, the prose. Now they're saying I need a soundtrack too, and interactive material. WHat might that be?

What the heck is an eBook at it's core?

I'm still reading yellowed copies of Jane Austen....I am so not "wired". In fact, to me the term "wired" still think that term means hopped-up on Starbucks....

That I am. Techie I am not.

Help!

“THE HYPOCHONDRIAC’S GUIDE TO OVERPROTECTIVE DOG CARE”

“THE HYPOCHONDRIAC’S GUIDE TO OVERPROTECTIVE DOG CARE” (More tales from my serial blog "Rex and the City")

Until I brought a dog into my life, I never considered myself a hypochondriac. And I swear I’m not—for myself that is. If I were, say, bleeding from the palms and the eyeballs, that wouldn't necessarily stop me from being first in line at the semi-annual Barney's sample sale (although whether they would let me into the dressing rooms, or allow me to manhandle the Prada bowling totes is another matter). And don't get me wrong—I like going to the doctor. I like being in the presence of someone who will listen to my problems and pretend he actually cares about them, but the thing is, in New York City, the doctors don’t listen to you. They schedule a new patient every twelve minutes, make you wait two hours in their lushly appointed reception area for your twelve o’clock appointment, then spend a total of ten minutes in your actual presence, during which they shine a light into your ears, tap you on the knees, and call you by the wrong name. (I am often addressed by my primary care specialist as “Irene”). For this you will be charged $600, with the optional consolation prize of a two-week trial sample of Prozac or Viagra (even though you came in to talk about the inexplicable stigmata on your ribs) and/or a referral to see a specialist, who will call you $900 and call you Aileen. At least when I was little I got to choose between a jeweled plastic ring or a lollypop.

So, needless to say, I didn’t go to the doctor much. But then Ted and I adopted Wallace from a New York City shelter. This was back in 1997, for those who are not familiar with my stories. Some of you have already read, in these columns, how we soon learned that Wallace had been abused, and that his spirit had been broken by his previous owner. Because of his behavioral problems, and general fear and mistrust of humans, Wallace was difficult to train and manage in those first few months, but despite the struggles this wonderful dog opened up our lives, and taught us how to be nurturers and lovers of nature, and taught us how to better love ourselves, etc. But now is the time to talk about the dark side of all this, the other, seamier emotions that attach themselves to love like demodectic parasites: worry, over-protectiveness, irrational paranoia, the fear of the loss of love.

All my friends who had birthed human children, who swore they’d never be worry-worts like their mothers, told me of their transformations into paranoid schizos who lay in bed at night obsessing over Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, child molestation, and whether the trees closest to the house should be sawed down, for fear that their branches would shatter the nursery windows during a freak New England storm. And I understood this to be a phase they went through, a Rite of Passage that every parent undergoes with their first born child. But I never imagined that I would undergo the same rites with my dog.

It all started with the instruction manual that came with Wallace when we brought him home from the shelter. It was called something simple, like “You and Your Shelter Dog” and it contained some basic advice—when to feed your dog, what to do if he or she is not housetrained—and recommended, at the end, a list of books for further reading. And because Ted and I were eager for knowledge and eager to be good caretakers, we acquired these books, but it seemed that for every one we ordered there was Amazon.com saying, If you like this book, you may like _____ and _____ and _____, listing at least 75 other books to read as well. So we acquired those additional 75 books, too. You just never knew which one would be the one, which book would explain your dog once and for all, and so, over and over again, we found ourselves clicking “add to cart,” and every night, for the next several years, Ted and I stayed up late in bed, reading side by side, pouring through countless training guides and veterinary manuals, comparing notes, hoping, praying in the meantime that the foreign four-legged creature who menacingly paced our floors would not murder us in our sleep (but who can sleep when you have one hundred and seventeen books to read?). With every book we finished, we would begin the next one, hoping, believing, that here would be the definitive one, the one that would solve the mystery of Wallace, and then we could get on with our lives. (Note: We’re still reading.) I felt like a hopeless smoker who announces he’s going to quit as he lights his next cigarette with the butt end of his current one.

And then there was the internet (which some say exists solely to pray on the paranoias of people like me). At my temp job, I would spend six of my eight hours visiting veterinary websites and recoiling at the graphic images of cocker spaniel with eyes bulging out of their sockets, of unidentified rectal prolapses and hyperestrinism (you don’t want to know), of dogs who had been hit by cars. I’d call Ted in tears, telling him to log on to such-and-such a website as proof as to why Wallace should not be allowed out of doors.

“You’re just upsetting yourself,” Ted would say. “And you’re upsetting me. Can’t you find something more constructive to do with your time?”

But Ted, too, worried about how to best care for our dog in those early days. How could we not? Our friends with human children could at least comfort themselves with the fact that someday their infants would be able speak to them and communicate their wants and needs. Our friends with human children passed through the worrywort phase smoothly, and told their second borns, who might be bleeding from the eyeballs, to “get over it” and leave them alone. But Ted and I, with our dog-child, would never have that advantage. Sure, Wallace was smarter than average—he knew 23 words in the English language (which is more than we could say for then-“President” Bush). But none of those words could be found in my Index of Signs in my Dog Owner’s Home Veterinary Handbook (which Ted soon dubbed the Hyponchondriac’s Guide to Overprotective Dog Care).

So in the beginning we always erred on the side of caution. In our first few weeks of having Wallace we very sincerely took him to the vet for panting, yawning, flatulence, and the weird black discolorations on the bottom of his paws. “Those are spots,” the nice, patient vet told us. “You have a spotted dog.”

“Oh,” I said, “I thought maybe it was tar. We crossed a street the other night that had some freshly filled pot holes and I thought—”

“They’re spots,” the vet said.

Early instances such as that did not dissuade me from always imagining the worst case scenario. In June I worried about heartworm and ringworm; in July it was fractures and fleas. My biggest paranoia, the thing that kept me up most at nights, became foxtails and burrs. Foxtails and other barbed seed-heads, I read, could easily penetrate the skin and travel down the ear canals or up the genital tract, causing irritation, abscesses, serious tissue damage and/or infection. “In extreme cases,” I read, “foxtails have been known to puncture the organs, including the brain.” This was not an image I could easily forget, and it didn’t help that the warning signs—excessive sneezing, scratching at the ears, pawing at the nose, shaking the head—were gestures Wallace made on a regular basis.

So every time my poor dog sneezed (which is a lot if you live in New York City in a ground floor apartment and like to keep your windows open, under the guise of “getting some fresh air”), I insisted that we rush him to the emergency clinic.

“Are you sure a foxtail hasn’t punctured your brain?” Ted began to say. His biggest paranoia was the rising costs of veterinary treatments, and after the seven or eighth office visit it was clear we had divided into two camps. There was sense and then there was nonsense, and in Ted’s opinion I resided in the latter.

When we had had our Wallace about 6 months, I noticed that, well, he was licking himself. A lot. Down there. Now, we have all heard the joke that starts with the question “Why does a dog lick his balls?” and ends with the punch line “Because he can!” but Wallace’s behavior seemed unusual to me. Like, kind of obsessive/compulsive. Plus, Wallace didn’t have balls. He was licking something far more, um, pointed.

I rushed to my Hypochondriac’s Guide to Overprotective Dog Care.

“If your dog begins to lick himself excessively,” I read, “and has a purulent, foul-smelling discharge coming from the prepuce, he may be suffering from balanoposthitis.” My eyes widened and I looked over at Wallace, who sure enough was licking himself again. I read this sentence a few more times, trying to figure out exactly what amount of licking constituted as “excessive.” It didn’t say. So then there was the matter of the discharge. I hadn’t noticed any per se; but then again I hadn’t looked.

Ted walked in the door as I was conducting my prepucal inspection.

“What are you doing?” he shouted, his voice screechy.

I was positioned much like an auto mechanic under a car. Wallace was busy with the task of cleaning out the insides of a Ben and Jerry’s carton that I have given him to keep him occupied, but all that ended when Ted walked in the door.

“I'm looking for a purulent, foul-smelling discharge. Come here, do you think it smells funny?”

“Stop it!" Ted said. "You're acting crazily.”

I sat up. “I think something’s wrong with him. He won’t stop licking himself.”

Ted folded his arms. “Nothing’s wrong with him.”

“What does purulent mean, anyway?" I asked. "Do you know?”

“I have no idea,” Ted said. “Wallace, come over here. Stay away from your mother.”

I stood and walked over to the bookshelves and reached for the dictionary.

“What are you doing?” Ted hugged the dog protectively.

“I’m going to find out what purulent means.”

“Would you stop it?”

“Why don’t you two go for a walk?” I said. This sent Wallace into a tizzy of barking and spinning, and Ted had no choice but to take him out. That or listen to me talk about purulence.

We had discovered a bright new way to end a discussion.

Over the next few days, Wallace kept up with his licking. And I kept up with my research. I discovered that a small amount of cloudy, yellowish discharge is not unusual in mature males, but “an excessive purulent discharge is associated with overt infection.”

“Well, there’s the word excessive again,” I said to Ted that night. “And purulent. What constitutes a normal amount of discharge?”

Wallace settled onto the sofa and began to lick himself again.

“Don’t look at me,” Ted said.

Then I read: “If the pus-like discharge is dripping directly from the penis opening, the condition is probably more serious. You should look for foreign material, such as foxtails, inside the prepuce of affected dogs.” I put the book down. “Foxtails!”

“He does not have a foxtail stuck up there,” Ted said.

“How do you know?”

“Because we haven’t been anywhere near foxtails. It’s November, for God’s sake. Foxtails are a spring occurrence.”

“Well, it could be something else.”

“But nothing is dripping. You’re overreacting here.”

At this moment, I swear, something green dripped from Wallace’s privates.

“Look!” I shouted to Ted, pointing. “Did you see that?”

Wallace ceased his licking for a moment and stared at me, a somewhat guilty look on his face. Then he looked over at Ted and, I swear, rolled his eyes, and lapped up the evidence. He buried his snout in his crouch and resumed with the licking, making a lewd snuffing sound.

“Something is wrong,” I said. “I know it.” I produced a diagram entitled “how to expose the penis” that illustrated how you were supposed to seize your dog’s privates with both hands and push one part forward (the penis) and pull another part back (the prepuce). Having been raised Catholic, I had a hard time even reading those words.

“Here,” I said to Ted, pushing the book toward him. “You do it.”

“Nothing’s wrong with him. He’s licking himself. He’s a dog.”

“But he has a discharge. And when the discharge is excessive, perhaps greenish or odorous, and the dog licks at his prepuce excessively, these are signs of balanoposthitis.” I was now waving the book in the air as if it were a Bible. “So someone is going to have to extract that prepuce and it’s not going to be me!” Wallace stood, belched, and then lumbered off to the other room.

For reasons we no longer understand or remember, it was Ted who had to take Wallace to the vet that day. This is what transpired, second hand:

DR. MARTER: “So, what seems to be the problem today?”

TED: “Well, my dog is licking himself a lot. On his penis?

DR. MARTER: “He's a male dog, right?”

TED: Yes

DR. MARTER: “Well, that's what male dogs do.”

TED: “Yes, but my wife says she saw—”

DR. MARTER: “Wives (DR PAUSES WEIGHTEDLY) know nothing about licking.”

PAN TO CLOSE UP OF TED’S BURNING FACE.

It took several years for me to live down this story, and for Ted to get over the humiliation of having brought the dog in in the first place. He vowed never to listen to me again.

And they seemed to have the same idea at the veterinary clinic. I noticed that, after that, every time I brought Wallace in for an appointment we got The New Vet, the one who had graduated from Cornell like the week before. And this is not to say Wallace got inferior treatment; it’s just that I started to wonder: was I not being taken seriously? Did they see me as a crazy dog lady?

Or was it the dog? Early on in his career as the English Setter Patient at this particular vet, Wallace had received a written warning of sorts. Someone at the vet’s office had written caution in black magic markers at the top of Wallace’s chart. This is another story, which requires a lengthy explanation, but the point is, I started to wonder if that caution referred to me.

Soon it seemed even Wallace saw me as a Crazy Dog Lady. If I, say, admonished him if he ate his food too quickly, he’d eat even more quickly, attempting to finish off his breakfast before I had even placed the dish squarely on the floor.

Like many dogs, Wallace gulped down his food as if at any moment, six adolescent wolves were going to burst forth from the kitchen cabinets and try to steal it away. (Thus the verb “to wolf”.) But this, I had read, was not healthy. “Wallace, don’t eat so quickly,” I’d say. “You might get volvulus.” He ignored me and continued to wolf. Clearly, volvulus was not one of Wallace’s 23 words.

“If you eat too quickly,” I continued, “your stomach could bloat, and then distend, and then twist on its axis, and that’s life threatening, and we’d have to rush you to the vet. Do you want to have to go to the vet?”

In two more bites he finished his food off, lapped up some water, and then belched. He knew the word “vet” but pretended that he didn’t. The belch I took as an insult. And a secret signal that he sided with Ted.

By the end of the summer, I had pretty much given up on the idea that I would ever be able to properly care for Wallace. And I realized, again, that this is something parents of human children must go through. You must reach a stage of resignation, in which you vow to simply do your best. And pray that no tree branches crash through the windows.

That August, my sister had to go away for a week and she asked me to come look after her two young daughters and their Yellow Lab. (This in itself is another story, for after this visit my sister banished Wallace from both her properties for this and all future lifetimes, but let us not go there.) I was flattered that my sister would entrust her two children to me, and I looked forward to spending a week on the Cape. There would be bike rides to the beach in the morning, blueberry picking at dusk, ice cream and fried clams in the early evenings, and then leisurely walks around the cranberry bog with the dogs.

And it was a lovely week, despite the fact that I felt inadequate as a substitute parent. I had always thought that children loved chaos, loved to defy order, and loved to eat candy for lunch, but not my nieces. They, bless their hearts (and my sister’s) found true stability in the routines my sister had set up for them. So instead of taking delight in the fact that I was not a rule enforcer, that I was a Cool Aunt, they themselves enforced the rules. When I told them the first morning that they could get their own breakfasts (which would have been a thrill to me as a child, as I was not allowed to eat anything but what my father dictated, and that was usually unsweetened wheat squares) they just looked at me with perplexity. “Mom always makes us fruit salad,” they said.

“Mom always gives us lunch at twelve,” they would say at three o’clock with their stomachs rumbling. “Mom always brings sunscreen to the beach,” they would say at high noon, as the sun’s harmful UV rays beat down upon us. Egads.

“It’s a good thing I don’t have children of my own,” I said to my friend that night on the telephone. “Can you believe I forgot sunscreen? My poor nieces. It’s like my sister has left them with a chimpanzee.”

“It’s understandable,” my friend said.

“But how do people do it?” I said. “How do people have children? How many childrearing manuals did you have to read before your first son was born?”

“None,” she said. “It’s just a wisdom we all have within us. You’ll see. It’s there.”

But I didn’t believe her. Take my wisdom with Wallace for instance. He had already burst through a screen door, stolen all the rawhide from his Lab cousin Bailey, and shredded two of my niece’s favorite towels. He played tug-of-war not to win, it seemed, but to kill, as if he had watched one too many episodes of Gladiator, and poor Bailey took to hiding under the porch as soon as we let her out. I wasn’t the Cool Aunt, I realized; I was the Lame Aunt. Not even a houseplant could thrive under my care.

But then, on the final day of my visit, there, I was lying on the lawn, reading a book, and occasionally marveling (as city people will) at the smell and feel and the color of the grass. Nearby, my nieces played on the waterslide and Wallace and Bailey were down by the cranberry bog, traipsing around with a giant Wolfhound puppy (cutely named Chewbacca) who lived down the road. This pup’s goofy presence, or perhaps his size, had sedated Wallace somehow, and he no longer lunged at Bailey. So all was well for the moment, and I kept putting my book down to smile at my nieces and check up on the dogs. The air had a lazy, end-of-day quality to it: soft and supple, and in the distance lawn mowers hummed and the birds had started their evening song. Off and on, my nieces giggled, a musical, uplifting sound that spoke of purity and innocence. Intermittently, the dogs barked.

But then, suddenly my youngest niece ran up to me and said, “Aunt Lee, Wallace is limping.” And sure enough, there was Wallace, hobbling toward me on three legs from the bottom of the hill. His friend Chewbacca ran alongside him, like some bucktoothed neighbor; he had an “I didn’t do it” look on his face. Wallace came right over to me and presented me with his paw. Suddenly I was surrounded by two children and three dogs, all of them panting from the swift climb up the hill, all of them expecting me to somehow know what to do. Never had I been so aware that I was an adult, at least in theory. Never had I felt so inadequate. In the distance, a pair of seagulls cawed, and it sounded mocking. The salt air suddenly felt harsh and abrasive. I took Wallace’s paw in my hand to inspect it, thinking that I had to at least go through the motions of a competent person, and Wallace seemed willing to go with this. But when I turned Wallace’s foot over I saw very clearly that he had a thorn in one of his pads. A rosebush thorn stuck right smack into the center. And so I pulled it out. “There you go,” I said to Wallace. “You’re fine now.” Wallace gave me one wet kiss and then tore off down the hill again with his pals, to menace the seagulls who had dared laugh at me.

“You did it!” my younger niece said. “You fixed him.”

I smiled. “I did!”

I looked down at the thorn in my hand, feeling outlandishly proud and competent. My pride was disproportionate of course, but still I let myself feel it. Then I put the thorn in my pocket so that no one would ever step on it again.

I pulled my niece onto my lap and stroked her sun-warmed hair. Together we watched the Wallace and his pals frolic. Wallace, my formerly broken dog, had been fixed.

Foul Weather Friends - What do to with white dogs on rainy days in NYC

April is the cruelest month. And in New York City, February and March are too. Especially if you have a white dog. Each spring, with the thaw, come the rivers of mud, collecting mostly in those places you need them least: like right on the walking trails of Prospect Park, inside all the dog runs, and in a big, unavoidable puddle right at the bottom of your apartment building’s stoop. City mud, of course, has its own unique accoutrements, including cigarette butts, lottery tickets, and carcasses of the rats poisoned by the parks department every fall. These are not the sorts of things you want your white dog rolling in.

The spring thaw also reveals all that unscooped poop that people left behind during the winter months. For some reason, even those New Yorkers who are typically conscientious about cleaning up after their dogs will walk away from steaming piles on the snow during the winter. Perhaps because the snow in New York is so offensive anyway (it’s not white, dear readers—it’s gray). Perhaps they think the poop will simply disappear, blanketed by more and more layers of snow, until it disintegrates. But just as a frozen body can last thirty years in the name of science, so can frozen poop. It can last until the thaws of April, the cruelest month, when there it is once again, underfoot. This is proof that you can’t leave the past behind.

So can you blame New Yorkers for being grouchy in the spring? When we were children, spring meant crocuses and daffodils, green grass, budding trees, and the smell of Mother Earth shaking herself off and rising again in all her rich wonder. When we were children, I swear it didn’t rain so much. So where did all this rain come from—the Bush era?

In New York, the spring rain falls so hard that it bounces right off the sidewalks and straight up your skirt. It ricochets off the sides of buildings, pelts you on the neck, and seeps down into your collar, even though you are wearing a giant duck-billed hood and a scarf wrapped thrice around your neck.

Wallace, like many dogs, did not like the rain. At least not city rain. In the country, he would bound across the fields as he always did, occasionally stopping to shake himself, even though he never got dry, but on the Upper East Side he considered rain to be an assault. When we took him out to relieve himself, he’d press his body against the sides of buildings, trying to shelter against the downpour. Sometimes we’d pass under a scrawny awning, and there Wallace would stop. He’d put on his doggie emergency brakes: feet planted, leaning backward, with a look of stubborn solidity on his face—like that of George Washington on Mt. Rushmore.

I always had an umbrella on these occasions, of course. And, good dog-parent that I was, I would hold the umbrella over him rather than myself. I’d follow him along and hold the umbrella over him as he squatted to poop. Last summer I saw a picture of Puff Daddy, or P. Diddy, or whatever he’s called, strolling along the promenade at Cannes looking positively smashing in white linen pants and a white shirt. And a similarly dressed manservant was hurrying alongside him, holding a white umbrella over his boss’s head. I couldn’t help but think of this picture as Wallace lifted his leg on a fire hydrant—he was protected: I was splashed by a passing cab.

The big problem with carrying an umbrella to keep your white dog clean and dry is that when it comes time to pick up his deposit, you need a third hand, because one of your two hands is holding the leash and the other the umbrella. This is why Puff Daddy has a manservant, I guess. My method was to put the umbrella between my knees, but then it would tip over, and both of us would get wet. Wallace, offended at this injustice, would bolt toward another awning, and more often than not, I’d topple over.

I decided to buy the dog a raincoat. Now, on the Upper East Side, most of the dogs wore clothing—expensive garments from Burberry’s and Coach. But Ted refused to pay $300 for a “sissy rain coat.” So I ordered an inexpensive coat from Drs. Foster and Smith. It was a cute yellow slicker, just like the one I’d had as a child, the color of a school bus, or a Crayola crayon. This made me like the idea of a raincoat even better, because I always liked to find yet another way to infantilize the dog. But when the slicker arrived, it was too small. I’d ordered at Extra-Large, but it still didn’t reach all the way to his backside. You were supposed to hook a large elastic band around the dog’s tail, but this coat barely reached the big brown spot on top of his rump. So I had to return it.

“Good,” Ted said. “How are you supposed to shit with a big yellow elastic stretched across your anus anyway?”

“Could you not use the word ‘anus’?” I said.

Then Ted said he had another, less expensive idea. “Remember that dog at the Halloween contest that was dressed like a raisin?”

I did—an Irish Setter had been wearing a big Hefty bag that was stuffed with newspaper. It never occurred to me to wonder how the “raisin” went to the bathroom, but Ted figured we could cut the bag in half lengthwise and fasten the “cinch wrap” around Wallace’s neck.

“What about his anus?” I said. “And that other body part he needs to use?”

“They will be unobstructed,” Ted said. I figured that, when it came to matters of male anatomy, he knew best.

And so Wallace became a raisin. It took an additional 20 minutes to walk him each time it rained, because Ted and I laughed so much at the way he looked in his Hefty bag and his cinched-up face. We didn’t stuff him with newspaper, but still. It seemed to embarrass Wallace to have to walk past all the fancy restaurants on Madison Avenue, and by that Poodle in the pink plaid Burberry raincoat. And he still pressed himself against the awnings, and his belly still got wet and black and coated with that toxic spring mud.

After it had been raining for what seemed like 40 days and 40 nights, and Noah had not yet called to invite us aboard his arc, I decided to keep the dog indoors more often. I bought a book called Caninestein, which showed you how to measure your dog’s intelligence and offered tips on how to increase his IQ. Thus I was inspired to develop a game I called “Find the Kong.” I’d make Wallace sit and stay in one room (remember that we only had three rooms in that apartment: the kitchen/living room combo, the bedroom and the tiny bathroom only big enough for one). Anyway, I’d make him sit in the kitchen and then I’d go “hide” the Kong in one of the other rooms. I used the word hide in quotation marks, because, in the bathroom, the Kong would be “hidden” right on top of the toilet and in the living room it would be “hidden” on the windowsill. In any case, I’d tell Wallace, “Okay, go find it. Find the Kong!” And he’d race off, tail held high in excitement, with that look of fun in his eyes. He always found the Kong, of course, and would bring it back to me, his ears flattened back with pride and his tail wagging. I made a big show of praising him and his cleverness. “Who’s an Einstein? Who’s a Caninestein?” And then I’d hide it again—always in an obvious place—and the game would begin again. Sometimes Wallace would cheat and break his stay. I’d see him peeking at me from the doorway, and make him return to his designated spot. Most of the time he cooperated, because he knew if he cheated too much, I’d stop the game. He was a genius, I tell you. A regular Caninestein.

When Ted came home from work, soaked to the waist even though his umbrella was the size of a table for six, I threw myself on him in excitement and told him I had taught the dog a new game. I was as proud as if I had just typed a full novel in 23 days, which is what they say Stephen King always does.

“What a good mother you are,” Ted said, “teaching him a rainy-day game. Most mothers would just plunk him down in front of the television set.”

When we moved to the Upper East Side, our repertoire of rainy-day activities increased. This is a neighborhood where, starting at age three, all the children are sent to riding school at the Claremont Riding Academy, impressionistic painting classes (in oils) at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, then to flute lessons with a man who used to play with the New York Symphony. After a short break for toast and tea with their etiquette instructor, the children would be on to French lessons at the Alliance Française.
On the Upper East Side your dog could have a quadruple pedicure at Lolly’s Pet Salon, or go for a temperature-controlled swim at Biscuits and Bath. Then, after being washed, dried and fluffed by an aesthetician at the club, your dog could accompany you to the Regency Hotel, where waiters in white gloves would pour chilled Evian into a silver dog dish, and then serve him a warm dish of chicken, broccoli and rice. Twenty bucks if just the dog ate. Forty if you treated yourself. But you can’t do any of this wearing a plastic bag.

Luckily, Petco was just a few blocks away from our apartment. And, as you all know, “well-behaved” dogs are allowed inside the store, provided they are on a leash. Petco doesn’t even mind those dogs who leap up onto the biscuit bar and steal a couple of treats, because there are always security guards around who will narc on you and you will be forced to pay for the treats. This is a New York thing, I think—the security guards in a pet store. I heard that one time an Akita peed on one of them—a quick squirt to the pant leg—and the dog was banished for life. But then people on Manhattan Dog Chat got word of the banishment and threatened to sue Petco for breed-specific discrimination.

Anyway, my dog did not pee on anyone at Petco; nor did he jump onto the breakfast bar. He seemed to know that those biscuits, in their unnatural colors of orange and green, were not fit for canine consumption. Plus, I had told him that most commercial dog food was made of euthanized animals, elephant carcasses and baseball gloves, and reminded him that such food was beneath him. “Remember, you are a French Spaniel, and as a Frenchman, you must value your food.”

Instead, he would pull me to the second floor, where all the fish, birds and rodents were kept. It always smelled to me like sawdust up there, and indoor/outdoor carpeting; but to Wallace, with his heightened sense of smell, it must have smelled like the rainforests of Costa Rica, or the hedgerows of England. As we walked past the sealed terrariums full of gerbils, hamsters and tiny white mice, his nose quivered, his eyes narrowed into pinpoints, and his right foreleg rose into a hunting point. His face was focused and full of anticipation, and I realized this was the same look I had as I walked though the shoe section at Barneys: I want one of those, and one of those, and two of that pair...

Wallace would rush up to each terrarium and press his face against the glass. Oddly enough, the rodents never noticed him. They would continue spinning on their little wheels, or nibbling on grass, their little pink noses twitching and their tiny red eyes focused on the task at hand. If they had noticed him I would have taken Wallace away, because I don’t like to frighten other living creatures, but I never saw them blink or shiver. I wondered if they were sedated. Or if their cages were sealed so tightly they got no real air.

Once we had said hello to all 36 gerbils and hamsters, Wallace would pull me on to the bird section. This was a small, glassed-in room, like a squash court, full of cockatoos and parrots and one splendid African Gray. They were kept in cages, in neat rows, except for that Gray, who stood in a bird cage the center of the room, suspended from the ceiling like a chandelier. This was Wallace’s favorite room. The birds were not encased in glass, so the smell was more acute. Wallace would jump toward their cages and send them squawking in various notes. I’d always pull him off, make him sit and tell him to be quiet. “If the security guards hear us, they’ll kick us out,” I said.

But the security guards never said anything. Which I thought was weird. I’ve noticed that sometimes the people who work in pet stores seem to have little compassion for the animals they sell. But here, I guess, as long as you didn’t pee on them, you were okay.

I found a way to calm the birds down. I am now officially a crazy dog lady, remember, so why not talk to birds? I’d cluck and whistle and explain that, although technically Wallace was a bird dog, he wasn’t really all that that “birdy.” This wasn’t true, but I wanted to reassure the birds, let them know we meant no harm. Wallace would sit there, all beady-eyed, his body tense, with just the tip of his tail moving. Anyone with a bird dog knows what this means. But I explained to the birds that we lived in a tenement apartment building, and that there were no trees on our street, so we really didn’t get that much exposure to wildlife. “Plus, it’s raining cats and dogs out there,” I said, which sent them squawking again, I guess because I mentioned cats.

At that point we’d leave; Wallace reluctantly (at having to leave his own private aviary and head back into the dreadful rain) and I, satisfied (knowing that my dog got to hone his instincts and exercise his brain). Caninestein said this was essential. At Petco, Wallace got to practice what he did best: plotting how to kill all these hapless creatures. In his dreams, he actually did kill them. I could tell by the way he woofed triumphantly and flexed his lips and his paws. I knew he dreamed of open fields and sunny days. None of this rainy-day-in-a-Petco crap.

Anyway, I always allowed Wallace to pick out one toy on our way out of the store as a reward for not lunging at any of the birds. Wallace liked the fuzzy-wuzzy toys, especially those that resembled a squirrel, because he liked to practice the art of snapping spines. He also liked to pick out a greenie bone or a piggy ear and carry it home himself. With his tail up and a spring in his step, he’d hurry home, anxious to get out of the rain and eat his treat. His lips stretched around his prize into a dog-smile, big a goofy grin. And even though it was raining, and even though rain puts all New Yorkers into the foulest of moods, everyone we passed would smile at him as. He seemed to suggest that May would come, that spring really was just around the corner, and that the cruelest month would soon come to an end.

On Being a Slightly Overweight Woman with a Slightly Overweight Dog

Chunky Canines & Portly Pooches

January is the month, as we know, of New Year’s resolutions. Take one look at the covers of dozens of womens’ magazines at the local newspaper kiosk and you will see that most resolutions—in fact, 90%--involve Losing Weight. My resolutions, however, have nothing to do with losing my own weight. It’s my dog who needs to shed some pounds.

My niece likes to tell the story of the time I stayed at their house for Christmas a few years ago, and brought along my dog—a jolly little spaniel mix named Chloe. As we pulled up to my sister’s driveway in suburban Massachusetts (“we” being the dog and I), and stepped out of the car, my niece and brother-in-law were watching from their living room window. It was snowing; I think they wanted to make sure I didn’t slip.

“Wow, she’s put on weight,” my brother-in-law said as they watched us make our way up the walkway.

“Dad!” my niece replied in horror. “How can you say that about Auntie Lee? She looks great. She always looks great.”

“I mean the dog,” John said.

I get this a lot. People telling me my dog is fat. But is this true? I mean really and truly true? Read on...

The words Chloe’s critics (and my friends) use to describe her are myriad: plump, chunky, well-fed, sturdy, a linebacker, no-stranger-to-the-meatloaf. My favorite description comes from the sweet Austrian librarian at our local library. “My, my, aren’t you getting portly,” she’ll say to Chloe, when Chloe comes forth for her daily treat.

On the one hand it’s cute; on the other it’s not. I’ve become The Woman With the Fat Dog. Perhaps I am even known as the Crazy Dog Lady with the Crazy Fat Dog.

It seems so unfair, especially given that I take her out on walks at least five times a day. In the country these are full-out romping walks, and Chloe gets to run on miles and miles of wooded trails. In this city, we walk through Greenwich Village and play in Washington Square Park. She is not a sedentary dog and I am not a sedentary person. So. Mr. Cesar-Macho Male Milan can’t call me on that one.

I also feed my dog the best possible food one can provide. Most of her diet is of the BARF variety—an unfortunate acronym for what is otherwise a superb food system. It means Bones And Raw Food and it follows the theory that dogs, in the wild, would eat bones and raw food. Simple as that.

I personally find this BARF dog diet most convenient for me, the provider, because I don’t have to open any cans or lug around large bags of kibble. And who knows what’s in some of that low-quality kibble anyway? Beyond the preservatives and genetically modified corn meal I mean. Old baseball gloves and work boots, ground to a fine oily powder? Sawdust? Old elephant hide? One study found traces of—get this—euthanized dogs in dog food. Can you imagine? Anyway, let’s get back to BARF, because thinking of dogs eating dog meat, or animal shelters selling this meat to manufacturers, makes me want to barf...

As I was saying, feeding your dog raw meat is very easy. You just have the butcher chop up the chicken or beef or whatnot to designated sizes, and then you just throw the meat on the floor (or outside) for your dog to chow down. “There, go pretend your feral,” I always say to Chloe when I toss her her meat. I don’t think she quite gets the joke, but she eats happily, and that’s all that counts. That girl ain’t got a feral bone in her body. And neither do I.

Feeding raw, by the way, is less expensive than purchasing commercial manufactured dog food. Go look at the per-pound price of the kibble and/or wet food you are buying. And see the light.

When I am traveling, and/or visiting family I do not feed Chloe raw, mostly because it grosses people out. Once my step-brother, as a joke, started to spread a rumor among family that I fed Chloe raw meat on his bed. That part was funny. It was not, however, funny when I found out the rest of the family believed it was true! That’s when I realized I better work hard to change their opinion of me and my ways :)

So, no raw meat at the homes of my hosts. Instead, I cook Chloe’s food. This is a hot new trend, by the way, but I’ve been doing it for years. My previous dog, Wallace, had food allergies, so I prepared his meals as well. Beef and vegetables mixed with oatmeal, or a bit of yogurt, and funny things like kelp, krill oil, lentils, kale....the kinds of things people who buy kibble like to make fun of. They find us excessive. And who knows?

The funny thing is, I technically don’t cook. Not for myself. I eat like a bachelor (frozen burritos and Indian entrees) and my only saving grace is that I buy organic bachelor-food. And I don’t microwave it. I use the stove—less chemical mutation that way. So my “cooking” consists of buying pre-made thing and pushing buttons. But the dog gets the whole shebang: stews prepared in large soup pots, vegetables pureed in a food processor, grains fluffed up in rice cookers, and then a hundred pots to wash. And I’m the one who has to wash them. This, to me, is a solid reason not to cook.

So sometimes, when I am in a rush, and/or camping, I do buy canned food. But it’s always no-grain organic food. PetGuard or Wellness. Nothing but the best for my dog.

And, despite giving her the best with my best, she’s still fat.

Would you like to hear my excuses?

EXCUSE #1: HYPOTHYROIDISM - A VALID MEDICAL REASON
For the record, Chloe has thyroid issues, and that’s why we have trouble keeping her weight down. It’s true—you can call my vet and ask her. And I have a thyroid problem too (hypo, just like Chloe). So cut us some slack.

In fact, one might say that my dog has thyroid problems because I do. You’ve all heard how some animals “take on” our physical ailments, i.e.: the heroic cat who developed throat cancer just after her human went into remission for the same thing. But is another topic for another day....in the meantime we have heroic Chloe taking on my propensity to gain weight.

Not a day goes by in which people do not tell me she is fat. I mean, I find it cute when Pia the librarian calls Chloe portly. Or when Clayton, my ten-year old nephew, calls Chloe “Miss Chubs” or “Chunky Monkey” or “Honker-Wonker.”

But when other unnamed people offer their habitual “your dog is overweight” comment, I get pissed. I get offended. I take it personally. I hear in their benign, offhand observations decades of latent criticism: you’re a failure; you don’t have a real job; you don’t know how to take care of yourself, let alone your dog; you’re a f—ck up—look! Your dog is going to die of heart failure, or suffer through a lifetime of hip problems and arthritic needs, all because YOU ARE A FAILURE!!

Do they actually say these things?
No

Do they actually think these things about me?
Probably not.
Okay, definitely not.

Then why do I react so negatively to being told my dog is overweight? Why do I take it so personally?

For one thing, it’s rather bad manners, don’t you think? Children are taught that it is rude to shout “Mommy, look at that fat man!” in the supermarket aisles. Aren’t they? Or is this permissible now?
But then again, some people these days spend most of their days flaming other people anonymously on the internet....perhaps children are more apt to flame to peoples’ faces now.

Anyway, I guess people think it’s okay to insult a dog’s weight because some people think dogs don’t have feelings. Or that they don’t hold grudges. The latter is true. And Chloe, she’s just as friendly and loving and goofy with the strangers who call her a Fatty-Fat as she is with the people who call her a Cutie-Cute. She, likes all dogs, loves the attention.

I suppose I like attention too, as long as it’s positive. Criticism crushes me.
In the interest of full disclosure: I used to be very self-conscious about my weight, and about the way I looked. I cared so much about looking “good” that I starved myself into near-oblivion. They called it anorexia back then and they still do. I remember well the feeling of starvation, of insatiable hunger, coupled with an intense self-loathing that had somehow convinced me I didn’t deserve food. At that time in my life I guess I thought I didn’t deserve to live. It was a horrible belief, a horrible sensation.

Now, thankfully, I don’t really care how I look. I could stand to lose five pound, but I don’t care enough to spend the time or effort accomplishing this. I just don’t eat crap, or high fructose corn syrup, or anything with exclamation points or cartoons on the packaging. I don’t eat anything genetically modified, artificially colored, or brewed in a test tube. Simply put: When I am hungry I eat and I eat when I am hungry. In behavioral therapist terms, this is called a “healthy relationship to food.”

So does my dog. She has an extremely healthy, well-functioning, vigorous relationship to food.

EXCUSE #2 – IT’S GENETIC! SHE’S GOT CHOCOLATE LAB IN HER BLOOD!
Chloe is part Lab, however, and it is said that Labs will eat and eat and eat until they explode. I cannot prove this, having never seen a dog explode.

But once, when I was staying at a friend and fellow band-member’s house (a friend who serves her dog kibble), we came home late from a music gig and found Chloe lying sideways on the floor. She seemed stiff and uncomfortable, and didn’t get up to greet us when we walked in the door. This is unusual Chloe, who always regards the occasion of a human entering a room as a cause to celebrate.

I rushed over and knelt before her, to check her breathing and feel her heart. I even checked for blood and felt for broken bones. “What’s wrong?” I said to the dog. Her posture was that of a dog with a twisted intestine.

“I think I found the answer,” my friend called from the kitchen. She led me into the pantry, where we beheld a tipped-over bag of kibble, more than half of it gone. And we’re talking one of those thirty-pound bags.

“Chloe, how could you?” I said to her, back in the living room. But she didn’t acknowledge me. She was practically passed out on the braided rug, sleeping off her kibble-induced stupor like a drunk.

She farted all night, by the way. Which is why I personally never give my dog kibble.

So. Here was proof that any animal with a drop of Labrador Retriever in her portly body will at least try to eat until she explodes. But she will not actually explode.

Chloe remained comically bloated for the next day or two, and even seemed somewhat chagrined...the way a college freshman might be after one of those nights of too-much-to-drink, and “Oh, God, I don’t remember what I said.”

During those two days I was a bit more lax in my reaction to those people who happened to call her fat. I had a perfect excuse.

And why are the called Chocolate labs, by the way? Isn’t chocolate often associated with food addiction? I’m just saying...

EXCUSE #3 – YOU’D LOOK FAT TOO IF YOU WERE WEARING A FOUR INCH THICK FUR COAT.
I like to joke that Chloe is part Wooly Mammoth. She has very long, very course, very thick white fur on certain parts of her body—mostly her back. I don’t know where this fur comes from—I mean, what part of her DNA would produce such thick, abundant fuzz, that is wiry in some areas of her body, long and smooth in others, and short and coarse underneath?

But this fur honestly does make her look bigger than she is. Go ahead and call my groomer if you don’t believe me—he’ll vouch for us.

In the summer time I get the dog groomed—a “spaniel cut,” they call it—shaved down to a buzz cut on the top half of her body, and fringed on the lower half. Thus, in the summer time, everyone says: “Wow, Chloe has lost a lot of weight.”

People say that to me too, in the summer time, by the way: that whole “Wow, you’ve lost weight! You look great!” thing.

“It’s because I’m no longer wearing seven layers of sweaters, four layers of woolen leggings, and a North Face full-body ski suit on top of it all,” I tell them. Rather irritably. Because inside I’m thinking: so this whole time you’ve been thinking I’m a fat cow?

It’s true that in the winter I look like the Michelin man. In the winter I do not get asked on dates. But who cares? Looking bloated is better than being cold, I always say.

But when people start to exclaim in the summer how great I look, it makes me suspect that I must look absolutely wretched and bloated in the winter.
How shallow people are, to judge a book by her covers like that. Her many, many covers. I’ll see you next June.

EXCUSE #4 – SHE WAS A SHELTER DOG, AND MALNOURISHED; I CAN’T JUST LET HER STARVE, CAN I?
Yes, yes, I know it is unhealthy for a dog—or anyone—to remain overweight. It’s not like I’m trying to have an unhealthy dog.
Let’s recap my excuses thus far:
1) She has low thyroid function.
2) She is a part Lab. Chocoholic Lab.
3) She is part Wooly Mammoth.

Plus, I want her to be happy and comfortable. Starving is not at all comfortable. I know this first-hand. I starved myself for about four years when I was a teenager. It was horrible.

One of my friends once told me that his vet told him that dogs are always supposed to be in a state of hunger. It’s in their nature, this vet says.

Always in a state of hunger.

When I was anorexic I was like a ghost. I used to think of food all day and dream of food all night—I used to consume trays of macaroons and French baguettes and almond croissants in my dreams, and then wake up aghast at the thought that I might have actually truly eaten something. I rarely ate anything. Food was the enemy. Food equaled fat and fat made me detestable, corrupt, hideous, etc. I don’t think I had a genuinely happy or healthy thought for about ten years.

In my twenties, when I moved beyond the affliction of eating disorders, I made a vow to myself: I would never go hungry again. So now we must ask: Am I somehow transferring this vow, this fear of starvation, onto my dog?

When she is hungry she lets me know it. She pokes me with her snout and leads me, like a gallant Lassie, into the kitchen, toward the refrigerator, and then goes en pointe, like an elegant, hard-working bird dog. It’s so cute I just have to feed her. Even if it’s just a small morsel of something. But usually she does this only twice a day—at her usual feeding times. She reminds me to feed her, you see. Because she knows that I am a spacey artist who needs to be reminded to tend to practical things. I forget a lot of things these days. I need a service dog to remind me to feed the dog.

Years ago, a very famous article appeared in Atlantic Magazine, entitled “Why Your Dog Pretends to Love You.” I can’t remember the author’s name, and I don’t have time to Google it, but the author’s theory was that dogs have learned that acting affectionate and cute and loving will result in the reward of food. But that they don’t actually really love you. Or even like you. They’re just in it for the food.

Hmmm. My ex-husband once accused me of the same thing....

I wouldn’t be surprised to find scientific proof that my dog Chloe is manipulating me, and that she goes en pointe at the refrigerator because she knows it will make me laugh and because she knows she will get a small morsel of hotdog or a larger morsel of sliced turkey breast, or perhaps even a full-fledged dinner, even though it’s technically not dinner time. We call it the “early bird special”: her 6:00 pm dinner meal, served at 4. All because she is cute. And please note that she always gets her thyroid supplements with her meals.

Okay. So perhaps we could say that it is my dog’s fault that she is so fat. Or portly. Or chunky, chubby. A Mack-truck-in-fur...whatever you want to call her.

Perhaps we could say I am wimp with former eating disorders and self-worth issues, who is afraid that her dog won’t love her if she doesn’t feed her “enough.”

Or perhaps we could say I’m just a softie, with a kind heart, who wants her sweet middle-aged dog to have a happy, comfortable life.
I prefer to think of it this way.

Years ago, when I was married, and had another life, and another dog, the dog named Wallace, who had a perfectly functioning thyroid, we used to spend our summers up in Wisconsin. My former mother-in-law had a place there--an old family compound belonging to her husband and his siblings. My husband, dog and I had the grandmother’s old cabin (Oh, that place was heaven!) and my step-father-in-law’s step-brother F____ had the cabin next door.

F___ and his wife had an old Labrador Retriever. I forget his name but I remember his girth, and his sweet grey muzzle, and his vaguely clouded eyes. I also remember that he was—and remains—the fattest dog I have ever seen.

Two images stay in my mind: One is of this old dog lying on the dock, in such a manner that his entire body covered the width of the dock. He was the sort of dog who wouldn’t, or couldn’t, move much, so once he spread himself on the dock he was there for the day. We’d step over him on our way out to the kayaks, and step back over him to retrieve the coolers and the sun block, etc. This was easy and simple enough for us humans. But I remember my dog Wallace did not quite know what to do. He was the younger dog, clearly not the leader of any pack, and also clearly a guest at this compound. Wallace seemed to know that it would not be cool for him, the Gamma, to jump over the Alpha dog. So he used to leap off the dock and swim up to the kayaks, or back to shore.
This was my first experience with fat-dogs-as-roadblocks.

The other thing I remember about that fat old lovely lab is that, at meal times, he would plant himself next to his Mum—a jolly woman named M.—and rest his head on the table, and basically receive treats all night long. Like a slot machine.

M. too was a softie. Older than me. I always saw her as someone I might become.

Ben was the dog’s name—I remember now! We all used to joke about how, well, obscenely obese Ben was, but we never said that in front of M. Or in front of Ben for that matter. What we would say—and mean—is that “Ben has a good life, eh?” And he did. He lived eighteen years as a canine slot machine.

So back to Chloe. Chloe of the Big Appetite and the Low Thyroid. You may call her portly or flabby or Chunky-Monkey. But you can’t call her unloved.

Perhaps that is why I get so offended when strangers—and family members—make those off-hand comments. Perhaps I worry that at some level, another person is challenging my own personal version of love. But that’s just is—love is so personal. And we I’m just trying to love my dog the way I think she deserves to be loved.

And so, I give her her thyroid medication (when I can afford it, which lately has not been often). I dose her up with homeopathic remedies and herbs. I groom her in the summer and call her a Mammoth in the winter. I give her plenty of off-leash exercise in the acres of mountain trails behind our house.

And when she eats, I watch her wag and wag and wag her tail and think about an Alice Walker quote I read in Oprah magazine: “You do your best, and when you know better, you do better.” And in the meantime, let us eat and be merry.

If you, dear readers, have any input as to how you handle your portly pooches, we welcome it. Cheers!

PS - That sweet fat dog pictured above is not Chloe. Here she is. Ain't she cute?

Rex and the City, Part 4 - The Country Dog Acclimates to City Life

Here is the (very belated) fourth installment of my little series about my beloved dog Wallace. In the previous installment, my boyfriend Ted and I were on the verge of taking this dog back to the shelter, because he had turned out to be more than we could handle (wild, aggressive, untrained, hostile to all dogs and humans, and slightly dangerous). But then we took the dog camping and finally saw his (Wallace’s) potential as a normal happy dog. We decided to keep him no matter what. We decided we were willing to face the hardships because we knew that beyond the hardships we would find a beautiful, rehabilitated dog, ready to accept our love.



So here is a continuation of that story:



Rex and the City, Part 4

It had been two months since we adopted our shelter dog Wallace, and in that time he had shown us affection exactly once. But when it comes to love, isn’t once sometimes enough? Last night, Wallace had pressed his body against mine while we slept at a campsite. And those few hours of closeness was enough to give Ted and me hope.

On the way home from the Catskills that fateful weekend, Ted and I stopped at a small-town diner for a late lunch and left Wallace in the car. He howled, of course, and the three customers in the restaurant turned around to stare.

“That a bird dog you got there?” one of the men at the counter asked.

“Yes,” we said sheepishly. And then we went into our now-familiar spiel about how we had just rescued him and that we suspected he had been abused because he was so hard to deal with, but we loved him nevertheless, etc., etc., etc. The waitress, one of those gruff, big-bosomed, grandmotherly types, smiled at us and said, “Yep. Dogs is harder than kids. But you gotta love ’em. Look at that face!” She walked over to the window and tapped on it and began to coo. “Aw, what a sweetheart!” she said. “Look at that brown and white puppy wuppy face!”

This sent Wallace into a froth of snarls and barking and scratching maniacally at the windows.

“Looks like you got a live one there,” the man said.

“That we do,” we said, but when Ted and I exchanged a look, I saw that something had changed in our attitude. Yes, we had a live one, but he was our live one and we knew from that moment on we would be fully committed to him.

Once we got back to New York City, Ted and I began to work doubly hard on turning Wallace into the Dog He Was Meant to Be. First we hired a private trainer—an eager young woman from neutral Switzerland who managed to strike a workable balance between my coddle-and-nurture training methods and Ted’s sock-it-to-'em New Skete.

Now, before we go any further, let me remind you—gentle readers—that I am currently an avid (Ted would say “rabid”) supporter of clicker-training, which is a brilliant, effective, and impeccable easy system of training that uses positive reinforcement. I have now been working with and writing about dogs for eleven years, and I see no reason why anyone should have to resort to shouting, alpha rolling, and/or choke-chaining their dogs to get their dogs to behave in certain ways. We don’t need to choke our dogs every time they try to walk in a certain direction. I’ve seen men yank harshly on their dogs’ leashes if the dog so much as looks in a certain direction. This damages our dogs’ throats, necks, and vocal cords, my friends. We do not need this Cesar Milan negative-reinforcement bullocks. Clicker training is easy, safe, fool-proof and pleasurable for your dog. This sort of positive reinforcement training is crucial when working with shelter dogs, who may have experienced abuse, neglect, or heedless cruelty at the hands of humans. So enough of the soapbox (before I get flamed!)

I am ashamed to say that, back in 1997 when we first got Wallace, I knew nothing of clicker training. Therefore I brought needless, heedless suffering upon my already traumatized dog. I am so sorry, Wallace, wherever you are. Now, back to the story:

So we had hired a trainer. And each morning Ted and I would meet her at East River Park and work with Wallace on a forty-foot lead. We worked on sit, heel, come, stay, and if Wallace’s attention strayed she encouraged us to yank violently on his choke collar and then offer praise. None of us paused to consider the incongruity of these mixed messages, and how that would affect an already confused do. No one took into consideration how hard it would be for us non-prey animals to keep the attention of a hunting dog: or, for that matter, how hard it would be for me, at that hour, to stay focused myself.

I’d always said I wanted to be a morning person--out there at dawn with the joggers, the go-getters, the high-metabolism Wall Street freaks who made gobs of money. But now that I was required to get up before seven and stand inside an abandoned soccer field, I wished I was still in bed. While the trainer talked to Ted about, say, the importance of always heeling the dog on his right side vs. left, I’d find my attention drifting off toward the other dog people, who passed beyond the fence with their well-trained dogs.

There was the tall, sleek Icelandic woman gliding by on Rollerblades with her ice-blue Weimaraner. There was the hipster East Village dude racing his Ridgeback on his bike. And then there was the perfect blond yuppie couple with their perfect blond baby and a matching yellow Lab. Every day they would appear through the morning mist like aliens from Planet Future with their high-tech stroller and their crisp, seize-the-day clothes. The Lab trotted along side them happily with a ball in his mouth, his leash slack, his focus on them. They would park the stroller under a willow tree and throw the ball for the dog exactly 30 times. The baby never cried; the dog never pooped. Then they were off again, off to their bright, promising days. I would stare after them in wonder. How did she manage to push the stroller, drink a Starbucks Caramel Macchiato and hold the dog’s leash all at the same time? How did she find the time to have a dog and a baby? Or even just a dog?

Ted would yank on my sleeve and tell me to “Pay attention!” All in all, Wallace caught on quickly to the training. He learned that for one hour every day we would take him to a certain spot on a certain leash in the presence of a certain woman and require him to be obedient. The rest of the time he still pulled on his leash as much as ever. I honestly was not enjoying this. Walking a dog, at that point in my selfish city life, felt like work. And I wanted so much for everything in life to be easy and breezy and light. And I wanted to look good doing it.

But that was not to be. Five times a day I was getting yanked through the city streets by a dog who didn’t even seem to really like me.

“Faster than a speeding bullet,” our super, Sander, would say as I got yanked down the stairs of our apartment building in the morning. “More powerful than a locomotive,” Sander would add in his deliciously ironic tone. “Able to leap out of car windows in a single bound.”

“You heard about the car window incident?” I asked, surprised. In New York, one cannot keep secrets. Especially if one lives in an old tenement building on an un-gentrified street in the not-yet-hip portion of the Lower East Side. We were a building full of young white artists, dreamers, and public school teachers in a predominantly Puerto Rican neighborhood. We did not quite fit in, and that made us all band together in familial ways.

“Oh, I heard all about that dog, all right,” Sander said with a wink.

I should point out that our super was not your ordinary gray-haired Mr. Fixit with 800 keys on his belt and stained workman’s pants. No, our Sander was a hot young poet/playwright/Marxist with a Mohawk and his own printing press. He had a piano in his kitchen and held poetry readings in his bedroom and was so über-cool that in his presence even Lou Reed might shake in his combat boots. At night we could hear him singing show tunes through the air shaft, his warm voice curling into our windows like an appetizing scent. Ah, Sander.

Secretly I had a crush on him, so in his presence I got tongue-tied and turned red. In his presence Wallace always took gigantic poops on the sidewalk, which I then I had to stoop down and pick up using a plastic bag. (This made Ted laugh for hours on end, for he knew of my crush and loved to tease me about it).

Once, just as I was carrying a bag of poop to the outside trash can, Sander appeared, wearing a pair of workman’s gloves, a white tanktop, and a pair of overalls, with one of the straps sexily undone. I felt bad that I was placing shit into a barrel that he would be required to empty.

“Things seem much better,” Sander said to me that day.

“What seems better?” I asked, a bit alarmed. You see, in New York City, all your neighbors can hear your arguments, and for the past few weeks Ted and I had been having huge ones about how best to handle the new dog. But we hadn’t argued for at least two days which seemed magnanimous.

“Your new dog,” Sander said. He seems like he’s chilling out.”

I smiled, relieved. It was true. As the weeks passed, Wallace was becoming more and more dog-like. He stopped to sniff more often on our walks through the neighborhood and began to mark. Up until then he would squat to pee, and let it all out in one sitting, as if this were the one and only chance he’d get. Now he lifted his leg like a boy-dog and took his time. I can’t tell you how joyful that made me feel. Just that one tiny change meant to me that whatever we were doing was working.

And even though it still wasn’t easy to walk him, he at least began to acknowledge that we were there at the other end of his leash. That in itself—just the fact that he would turn his head toward me sometimes while I walked him, began to make dog-walking more fun.

I wouldn’t say Wallace had taken a total liking to us yet, but his seething, misguided hatred of us had definitely toned down. Sometimes, in the apartment, he would allow us to pet him and praise his patrician good looks; but he still wouldn’t look at us, nor offer any affection in return. But at least he wasn’t cowering so much. Slowly, we seemed to be earning his fractured trust.

And sometimes, when I paused from writing at the computer, I’d feel him watching me, as if trying to figure out exactly what my role was in his life. “I think you’re starting to like me,” I’d say, my eyes still on the screen. “Yes, I think you are.” But when I turned to smile at him he’d quickly look away and pretend to be consumed with licking his paws.

And while Wallace was becoming a dog, we were becoming dog people. The city was full of them—I had just never really noticed before. And now they all gravitated toward us and stopped us on the sidewalk to say hello. They’d address Wallace first, and after he recoiled from their outstretched hands or barked at them or their dogs and/or lunged at their throats, we would go into the “he’s a rescue dog” spiel and nine times out of ten it would turn out their dog was a rescue too. Or liberated from a junkyard. Or abandoned on the streets.

We found, in our neighborhood, an entire support group of young and old people who had gone through what we were going through. And most of them were visibly insane. One such neighbor—a weathered man in his fifties—wore marching-band jackets and painted his fingernails pink. He rejoiced every time Wallace barked at him. “What a wonderful dog!” he would shout from across the street. His three dogs—whom he called his children—would bark back at us, and everyone would have to shout to continue the conversation. “My children bark at everybody and Mother of Mary I prefer it that way,” our neighbor would say. “I got mugged back in the Seventies when this place was a festering drug pit, and then I went straight to the ASPCA and adopted my children and that, thank the Blessed Mother, was the end of that. Your dog was definitely abused.”

“How can you tell?” I said.

“Look at him! He has no hair around his neck. It’s all worn away.”

Ted and I looked at each other guiltily. “We did that,” I said. “It’s from his choke collar.” I waited for this dear man to curse me for being cruel.

But instead he said: “Ah, you’re good people, I can tell.” He paused to wheeze. “It took one of my children three years to figure out this leash-walking ordeal. Patience is all it takes. Patience and a no-pull harness.”

Ted and I smiled as we walked away. A stranger had called us good. Could it be true?

I thought about how rapidly our lives had been changing since we got Wallace. Up until then both Ted and I had been devotedly, almost rabidly pursuing our careers and following our bliss. Now we were following some mad dog’s rump.

I was so encouraged by the Marching Band Man’s compliment I decided to take our relationship to a new level.

“Let’s take Wallace to a café,” I said to Ted.

I had always wanted a café dog—a dog who would sit placidly under the table while my lover and I nibbled each other’s earlobes and sipped white wine. You know, like in Paris.

“I don’t think he’s quite ready for that yet,” Ted said. He was always the voice of reason. Blast him.

“Oh, come on,” I said. “Please? We’re good people.”

“Well....”

I finally convinced Ted to take us to Benny’s Burritos—a Mexican restaurant with sidewalk tables that faced a relatively quiet street. Our waitress had the innocent, pouty-lipped look of Liv Tyler, and when she saw Wallace she gasped in sweet, childlike wonder and sunk down to her knees. “What a beautiful dog!” she said. I started to tell her that Wallace had been abused as a pup, that he was afraid of people, that he might bite, but hers was the sort of beauty that healed wounds and opened doors, and Wallace melted beneath her touch. He spread himself beneath the table, head on paws. I was so proud of our beautiful dog. And proud of us for having chosen him.

“He likes you!” Ted said giddily to the waitress.

When I saw Ted sneaking a peek down the waitress’s shirt, I said, rather testily, “Could we order some drinks?”

, Ted felt we should order our food right away as well. “Just in case. Wallace is being good now, but I don’t want to push our luck.” So we put in our orders for giant stuffed burritos.

Our drinks came first—big, salty Margaritas on ice—along with a bowl of tortilla chips with salsa, and as I took a sip of my drink I had one of those moments when you realize you are exactly where you want to be at that particular time. I was at a sidewalk café on a beautiful summer evening with my handsome boyfriend and our handsome dog in the most magnificent city in the world.

“I’m happy,” I said, meaning it. How glorious it was to finally have a cafe dog after all these years! But then a homeless man came up to our table asking for change. Ted said we didn’t have any. All we had was a fifty-dollar bill with which we planned to dine. The man continued to beg of us however. And thus. Wallace’s fur began to rise. Ted noticed and shouted, “Hold on to him, Lee!” but before I could, Wallace had already sprung into action, tipping the table over as he lunged. Immediately Ted caught Wallace by the collar, and the homeless man shuffled away, but still. Our complimentary bowl of tortilla chips had crashed onto the pavement, our drinks had spilled, and a bottle of hot sauce had rolled off the curb, making its way up First Avenue as if fleeing the scene.

“Oh dear,” our waitress said, arriving with our order. “Should I wrap this up to go?”

~

Ted and I didn’t speak on the long walk home, but I know we were both thinking the same thing: “He’s your dog.” Once again I was unhappy with my choice and with my life. And yet, when we turned the corner that was our block, there was the marching-band man out walking his children. He looked so content, so deliriously happy. Like a true New Yorker. “Have a fabulous evening!” he shouted from across the street. “And God bless you for saving that beauuuuutiful dog!”

Ted and laughed and joined hands. Sometimes, in New York, you need someone else to tell you who you really are. And we were ready to listen.