She's Very Happy To See You

Barley, a dog, tromps her way through a large shrubby patch of plants with long, black leaves. I often chatter a bit when walking Barley, giving her a running commentary on whatever it is that she’s doing. She doesn’t pay me a lot of directed attention when I do so, since she’s mostly exploring her surroundings, but I have the sense that she likes that I’m paying attention. As I was taking this picture, I asked her out loud, in a slightly sing-song voice, “Aren’t these leaves a weird color?” Immediately, I realized the folly of the question. Being color-blind, Barley probably doesn’t even think this plant looks unusual.

Barley, a dog, stands amid mulch and shrubbery on a sunny winter’s day. We’ve had some downright pleasant winter days this last week, provided the walks aren’t too long and sufficient layers have been donned. While it’s been cold, there’s also been a lot of direct sunlight, without too much wind to spoil things. At these temperatures, Barley seems more invigorated by the cold than anything else, lively and light on her feet. This is a far cry from this time last year, when Barley was having Bad Times facing wicked cold snap and subsequent ice storm. Here’s hoping we’re past the worst of it, although I wouldn’t be at all surprised if we got ambushed by freezing rain some time in February.

Barley, a dog, lies flopped onto a sofa, awake but seeming rather bored. There was a widespread “funny because it’s true” joke that went around during lockdown about how the group that was happiest about that state of affairs were the pets whose owners were suddenly working from home all week. In Barley’s case, however, my good fortune in being able to bring her to work (where she has tons of friends) means that staying at home is a significantly more boring options for her. Add in cold, wet weather to the mix, and “winter vacation” (during which I’m mostly staying home and working hard) is probably the dullest part of Barley’s year. Fortunately for her, I’ll be headed back to work very soon, and she’ll get to see her workplace friends for the first time in the New Year.

Barley, a dog, scans the surface of a residential leafscape, collating olfactory data about the neighborhood’s goings-on. Since October, each neighborhood I explore with Barley presents its own flavor of a stark contrast: The leaf-botherers and the laissez-leafers. Some folks are truly fine with their yards remaining covered by a thin crust of leaves, a delightful crème brûlée of smells for Barley to enjoy, while others insist on keeping their lawns uncovered like a fragile, quivering flan. It’s clear which Barley prefers from which yards she insists on investigating: The leaves offer, by far, the superior sniff experience.

Juniper, a dog, is photographed in a fenced yard, caught in mid-turn as she returns a tennis ball to the photographer. As much as Juniper loves a game of fetch, her excitement to play sometimes results in a disorganized approach. She may, for example run about midway into the yard holding the ball, then circle back, but still be too wound up to drop it and wait, so she’ll go for a second lap, and even a third, before finally realizing that she can’t chase the ball when she already has it.

Barley, a dog, is deep in her comfy feels as she sleeps atop a heap of soft bedding. “‘Cause girl, I think you might be an angel.” (whispers) “Angels leave impact craters, right? I didn’t think this metaphor through.”

Barley, a dog, trots along a fringe of moss growing near the edge of the sidewalk. About a year ago, I wrote about these distinctive strips of moss that I sometimes find on steep sidewalks. I suppose their reappearance now in my photo roll reflects our being deep in the drizzly season. Insofar as Barley seems to favor them, it’s probably more an accident of her following her nose, but it nevertheless pleases me to think that the winter has rolled out the carpet for her.

Barley, a dog, is photographed from up close as she turns toward the lens, producing a palpable fisheye effect that makes her big noggin look even bigger. Barley didn’t spend nearly as much time in the living room during this most recent visit, on account of the weather being generally chilly, but when she did so, she generally stayed close to whomever was on the couch. Photographed at these snuggly distances, the focal length of a phone camera really becomes noticeable, all the more so because Barley’s already got such a big pitty head.

Barley, a dog, snoozes while fully wedged in between a human and the inner corner of a sofa. This was probably Barley’s most relaxed New Year’s to date. Having come home early from our party, we had plenty of time to settle in and watch a streaming broadcast of the countdown and fireworks in Seattle. While there weren’t a ton of fireworks in the neighborhood at midnight, there also weren’t none, and Barley never seemed to so much as squirm nervously. She was so safe and so cozy all snuggled in that there was nothing at all to fear.

Barley, a dog, stands alert in a lit window, peering into the darkness at the arriving photographer. This photo is subject to a number of constraints, mostly the limits of digital zoom. Barley is quite a ways away, watching for our return on New Year’s Eve, and when the car pulled in, she sprang to her feet and stood, all stanced up as you see her here, until she knew for certain that we were actually coming into the house. We had been away for a few hours at a New Year’s gathering, but made out way home well in advance of midnight because Barley does not handle fireworks well. Hopefully, local ne’re-do-wells didn’t set off too many sky bombs while we were at the party, but we got back early enough that she hopefully didn’t have too rough a time.

Barley, a dog, wears a festive miniature holiday hat. The elastic cord is decidedly too tight, and Barley’s expression reflects this. When Barley and I arrived at my folks’ place for the holidays, I was presented with a tiny hat. Barley would, I was assured, look adorable wearing it, and I agreed. The elastic was sized for a human head, of course, and as an experiment, I tried doubling up the elastic. It was immediately clear that this was not enough elastic, and as soon as the hat went on, Barley froze. We had it off her again as soon as we snapped this photo (no longer than a few seconds), and Barley shook her head in bewilderment, clearly confused by the fleeting hat ambush she had just experienced.

Juniper, a dog, relaxes in her crate with various plushies, including a conspicuous University of Florida football. There’s a certain irony in Juniper being the dog who remained deep in college football country, while Barley came to a far-away land with a substantially smaller tailgate culture. No vision of hell could be more perfectly tailored to Juniper’s sensibilities than a long afternoon spent with loud, drunk, unfamiliar college football fans. Fortunately, should game day ever makes its way onto her home turf, she can make use of her even-homier-sub-turf, her shady crate. It is where she retreats to whenever things feel overwhelming, and where she brings her many toys to keep them safe, out of what one presumes is a powerful nurturing instinct.

Barley, a dog, stands in front of a tiny drainage furrow, bridged by five cinderblocks turned on their sides. Now this is an application of cinderblocks that I can get behind! As far as I’m concerned, if a structure (a) can support your full weight as you stand on it, and yet (b) allows some sort of flow or passage beneath your feet, then it’s a bridge. Given the size of my feet, and the length of Barley’s body, this might well be the absolutely smallest structure that counts as a bridge for the both of us. Granted, Barley would need to stand sideways on the blocks, but she could definitely do it! She hasn’t done so yet in this picture, of course. We’ll just have to cross that bridge when we come to it.

Barley, a dog, stands on a wooded path, in shadows tinted green by the light passing through the trees above. A quadrilateral patch of light illuminates the path ahead. I’ve been casting my thoughts back to warmer days, and happened upon this photo. While squares, rectangles, and diamonds are not such odds shapes to encounter in nature, they’re not shapes you expect to see composed of sunlight. Upon closer inspection, of course, we can see that this is partly an illusion created by a change in the darkness of the soil, but it was a very compelling illusion in person. An ancient part of my brain half-expected that when Barley stepped into the square, I would receive a popup message asking if I wanted to save her game.

Barley, a dog, trots along a patch of grass encircled by moss-encrusted cinderblocks delimiting what was no doubt a flowerbed or tended garden once upon a time. The Pacific Northwest is rather poor in ruins, relative to the rest of the world. In large part, we may attribute this to its abundance of lumber, from which very comfortable habitation may be built but that is rapidly reclaimed by the land if left unattended for any length of time. Given that sensible people build structures to be used today, not to be visited by tourists in 400 years, why bother building things out of stone? It’s a shame, because there’s something very satisfying about poking around a genuine ruin, one that’s still at the mercy of the elements, that’s not noteworthy enough to have a fence or a ticket booth. I enjoy the humbling experience of sitting with the knowledge that such a structure was the site (and likely the focus) of many stories that are have become wholly unknowable with the passage of time. Rather more modestly, it seems plausible that this rectangle represents the efforts of a resident in years past to do something a bit more deliberate with their yard, only to give up or move away. The unattended soil was no doubt immediately conquered by the surrounding greenery, and within a few seasons there wouldn’t have been any distinguishing the flora within the boundary from that without.

Barley, a dog, snoozes on her ridiculous bed with her face entirely buried in the overhang created by its floppy ring edge. Barley’s ridiculous bed is currently in “armrest mode,” with its foam-core outer ring folded back on itself to create a big floppy semicircle. Since each core has a circular cross-section, the top bit tends to flop to one side of the bottom bit, which can create a snug overhang. This, clearly, has its advantages for the snoozing dog. Not pictured is Barley’s reaction when, after very quietly taking her picture, I spoke her name and she tried to pop her head up, only to find that she had positioned it a little too comfortably, with no clearance for a quick awakening!

Barley, a dog, descends a steep and plant-laden slope instead of descending the stairs mere inches to her right. When we first took Barley in, she was quite nervous about climbing or descending the stairs between the first and second story. She needed a lot of encouragement, and once in motion she seemed to try to get it over with as fast as possible. It’s possible that, at that time, stairs were something she had hardly had to deal with. Florida’s a pretty flat state, after all, so it’s possible that her original owners lived in a single-story building. today, of course, she has had many years of experience with stairs, and she navigates them like a pro. She’s even willing to run up and down a staircase as a form of play. And yet, from time to time, she gives me these little hints that she wouldn’t mind an alternative. When I whipped out my phone, I figured it might yield a photo taken at an unusual angle, and it caught me by surprise when she lateraled and descended the whole slope without once putting paw to step.

Barley, a dog, is photographed at a pier, next to a concrete bollard that has been painted to look like a giant pacific octopus. Barley was genuinely confused when we stopped to take this photo. “Why are we stopping?” she seemed to ask, looking around for what could possibly be a point of interest. Given that she doesn’t even find television interesting, it should come as no surprise that she has never once expressed even a shred of interest in any painted mural or similarly representative artwork. These, so far as she is concerned, are just another part of the world’s texture that is irrelevant to her concerns. Her colorblindness no doubt plays a role, but a really critical detail, I think, is depth perception. She has been fooled by statues before. It’s as through, if she perceives that some image is flat as she moves (because its subject shows no parallax relative to its background), it is immediately disregarded. So these creeping tentacles mean nothing to her, nor do these looming eyes. As an aside, this happens to be the 700th post on this blog, which is hard to wrap my mind around. Less than a year left before we hit our fourth digit!

Juniper, a dog, is photographed up close as she faces the setting sun during back yard play. Juniper, like most dogs, goes a bit bonkers when her owner returns home from work. It’s only natural: Dogs have a strong sense of routine that is calibrated to their circadian rhythm, so it’s safe to assume that someone coming home at the same time every day will set up a cycle of anticipation and confirmation. When the weather is nice, this uncorked energy is often released into the back yard for a few frantic minutes of fetch, which more often than not unwinds into full zoomies as Juniper takes advantage of the open space to experience the joy of running at speed and turning in wide, race car arcs.

Barley, a dog, surveys the odors among the wet fallen leaves along a wooded trail. I’ve had a few opportunities to let Barley run loose on larger properties with a robust fenced perimeter, and one thing I know for sure is that she’s plunging into that underbrush at the first opportunity. Even if the plants seem a bit scratchy or brambly, she’s surprisingly adept at making her way through what, to my human eyes, appear to be impassable walls of underbrush. My second biggest anxiety about Barley being off leash, after her running into traffic, is her disappearing through barriers of vegetation in pursuit of prey. When we’re on a walk, she mostly intuits that the path before us is our intended road, but when things are as woodsy as they appear here, I usually need to keep her on a shorter leash to curb her forestwalk.