She's Very Happy To See You

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.

Barley, a dog, sniffs along the base of a wall built so low to the ground that she could step over it. Setting aside that low a wall can be a nice decorative touch, it amuses me to think that this wall almost certainly exists as a wall, a genuine barrier, despite its unimposing stature. The property to which it belongs is the last level surface before a hill begins that then descends steeply for what is eventually a 200 foot drop in altitude. This is not a wall that prevents the escape of children, or of pets, but of soil. Naturally, this makes it an ideal sort of wall for Barley: low enough to provide no real obstacle (and possibly even something to climb up onto), but tall enough to collect all manner of smellful clues.

Barley, a dog, is viewed in profile as she relaxes on a sofa with her bone. Behind her, a sculpture of a nude woman, black with golden accents, holds a sphere and faces in the same direction. My parents have had this statue for as long as I can remember (though not nearly as long as I’ve been alive, I don’t think), and like all objects one grows up with, it’s something I have always taken entirely for granted. This was no doubt further supported by various threads of art history & art enthusiasm among my relatives, leading to many visits to museums of fine arts. It was only in 5th grade, when a friend from school came over to my house for the first time for a birthday party, that someone my age made me aware that I had a naked lady in my living room! Barley, by contrast, is dressed in a much more reserved fashion, practically fully dressed. She is, after all, wearing her collar.

Barley, a dog, sniffs around among wet leaves outside an enormous floor-to-ceiling bank of windows looking into a spacious stairwell. Despite having previously photographed this window from the inside, I more often pass it from the outside as I wend my way around various buildings on my walks with Barley. The main point of there meanderings is for her to spend time outdoors, because it’s far better suited to her interests and also because she’s got needs. So I figured it would be fitting to capture some slightly more true-to-life conditions. Even so, I find I revisit the same notions: How weird must that austere, sterile world behind glass seem to any creatures passing by?

Barley, a dog, snoozes fitfully on a bedspread of gray and white. While visiting my parents, Barley’s favored haunts vary with the seasons. During the summer, she’ll spend quite a lot of time downstairs with my folks, but during the winter, I suspect that she finds the house to be a little chilly, because she defaults to staying in my bedroom a much larger proportion of the time. My room is, after all, the most effective heat trap in the building: It has the smallest window of any room upstairs and is a bit of a doldrums with respect to air flow. Putting my PC through its paces no doubt also makes a meager infrared contribution. As such, not only does this act as her home base, but she’s always the first to settle in for the night, with me joining hours later as a distant second.