Juniper, a dog, seems ambivalent about her unicorn-themed sleep mask, despite being cozy in a pink-and-blue fleece blanket.

Juniper’s increased time around young kiddos has generally been good for her. She seems to have intuited that they are juvenile humans and seems to dote on them. She certainly tolerates a level of child goofiness and energetic play that she wouldn’t abide from grown adults. Even so, the sometimes you get the impression that even “tolerate” is pushing it a little bit.

Barley, a dog, braces herself unsteadily on her dog bed, a purple bandage visible on her leg.

Here, we see Barley at her furthest out of sorts: Recovering from having had her teeth cleaned at the vet. There was a window of time during which Barley enjoyed going to the vet, and I’m persuaded that it’s getting her teeth cleaned that finally persuaded her to be nervous about the experience. She seems to really dislike the aftermath of general anesthesia: She was a groggy, wobbly mess for about six hours after I picked up her, and didn’t fully shake her medical hangover until the following day. Safe to say, I’m not going to need to worry too much about Barley becoming a recreational user of opioids.

Barley, a dog, walks daintily along the a curb, with bare earth to one side and the gutter to the other.

Since I don’t post photos in chronological order, there’s no feeling that any picture constitutes any particular milestone as I’m taking it. And yet, here we are: this is the 700th BarleyPost (excluding Juniper Fridays in which Barley also appears), spanning over two calendar years. Through it all, Barley’s demeanor and temperament have remained astonishingly consistent: An enthusiastic copilot, a boisterous mute, always up for adventure so long as there’s not a thunderstorm. I hope I’ve done the various nuances of her existence justice with this kaleidoscope of fragmentary portraits.

Barley, a dog, sniffs about along the edge of a chain-link fence. Within the fence is the stump of a tree branch that grew through the chain link and became fused with it.

I always get a kick out of seeing the aftermath of a tree having been allowed to become ingrown with a fence or similar structure. It’s as though someone took a few years to accidentally back their car over the mailbox, an accident unfolding over years. Then, one must imagine whatever turn of events required the branch to be cut, the briefest flicker of an ending after many years of prelude. One must assume the tree never saw it coming (which I suppose one must assume of trees in general, but the point stands).

Barley, a dog, looks back over her shoulder at the camera while standing beside a planter that reads, “The Phoenix Is Rising.”

As much as I appreciate the manner in which walking Barley has made me more attentive to my surroundings, there is certainly also a degree to which I become preoccupied with trying to make fetch happen. I saw this planter and thought, “Oh, good, let me get a picture of this,” despite having no particular feeling about the resurrection of firebirds, and Barley was actively impatient to continue on with her investigations. Now, looking back at the photo, it’s as though she’s giving me “did you really need a picture of that?” exasperated kid energy. It cannot be denied that “The Patience Is Declining” isn’t nearly as upbeat a slogan for your statement garden.

Barley, a dog, leaps into action to subdue a plushie toy seal.

Barley is once again a big fan of a toy I spent less than five dollars on. For all the very fancy and expensive dog toys Barley has enjoyed over the years, there really is something to be said for how much of a kick she gets out of the cheapest toys I present her with. Getting her lower incisors extracted as a preventative measure may turn out to be one of her biggest quality-of-life enhancers, in the long run, because there are so many toys (and so many hours spent playing with those toys) that got unlocked by that procedure.

Barley, an orange dog, stands besides an orange fire hydrant, with a sign in the background sporting orange lettering.

I often need to remind myself that Barley is orange. I’ll tolerate certain things in the natural world being brightly colored (flowers, for instance), but when animals have high saturation, I’m automatically more suspicious. It’s not an “uh oh, is this a venemous animal?” sort of reaction, it’s more of a “aha, is this a cartoon I see before me?” sort of reaction. When I describe Barley to people, I want to say she’s “brown” or “tan” or some reasonable-color-for-a-dog-to-be. But look at her. She’s the color of a Werther’s Originals. This dog is orange.

Barley, a dog, snoozes on her giant dog bed, one paw out for good measure.

A non-insubstantial percentage of my photos of Barley are relatively samey photos of her sleeping, taken so that I might append them to some ongoing conversation in order to say, “Look at how sleepy my dog is right now.” I don’t think I ever had this “proof of life” instinct before I owned a smartphone, and I’m not much of a shutterbug otherwise. Barley brings out a particular sharing mood in me that I don’t feel with respect to photos of myself. “Check me out” feels distasteful and self-aggrandizing, while “check out my dog” feels worthy, even generous.

Barley, a dog, trots through grass just tall enough to brush along her undercarriage.

I’m grateful to live in a part of the country that has a minimal risk of ticks, and further grateful that Barley’s fur is so short that any such troublemaker would be immediately evident. This sort of tall grass is pretty much the Barley’s ideal, because it’s tall enough to hide goodies and short enough to be easily traversed. So long as I’m vigilant about anything she might find in there (which isn’t too hard because, with my taller perspective, I can generally spot anything really troublesome before she can), I’m happy to give her the chance to explore.

Barley, a dog, is confronted with balloon numbers as big as she is spelling out “2025.”

Marking the end of an academic year in the middle of the calendar year is never going to feel “natural” to me, but I think this speaks to a deeper issue I have with calendars in general. I think my brain is much more suited to thinking in terms of timespans with beginnings and endings, and much less so in terms of cycles. Part of this issue is that I like the definitiveness of an ending, but life goes on and nothing is ever over. So, we’ve got to position those milestones somehow, I suppose, even if one place along the roadside seems as good as another.

Barley, a dog, stands on a concrete loading ramp that descends into a green river.

Barley remains deeply ambivalent about bodies of water. She doesn’t have any regular access to them these days, and as such seems to associate water with neither play nor with an opportunity to cool down on a hot day. Even getting her to stand still for this photo took some cajoling, because her main interest was to turn around and get back to investigating the tall, scrubby grasses growing along the river’s sandy banks.

Barley, a dog, stands beside a cluster of white flowers.

It’s quite natural to imagine that, when flowers or fungus happen to form in “fairy rings,” that locals would attribute the apparent intentionality of their arrangement to the fair folk. Being much more of a city boy, myself, I tend to see flowers of any sort as a likely sign of authorial intent, even as another part of my brain recognizes how silly that is. So when I see little bursts of wildflowers like these, I figure a reasonable compromise is that this is a sign that the King of the Fairies made a slight footfall while passing through. What could be more natural?

Juniper, a dog, glances at the camera in a brief lapse of vigilance at the living room window.

Juniper is mellowing with age, in a way that seems good for her overall anxiety levels. She still keeps attentive watch for any intruders, but she doesn’t get as bent out of shape at random passing card or dogwalkers as she used to. The stability of her routine is as important to this as anything, and her mood is generally better when she has a sense of what’s coming next.

Barley, a dog, investigates a garden patch full of fresh green growth.

As promised a few posts ago, here’s the After to the ground crew’s seemingly desolate Before. Some of this was transplanted in the interim, but other shoots are fresh growth in their own right. We’ll see what this will amount to as Fall comes around again, but for this First of May, the grounds are looking pretty inviting!

Barley, a dog, snoozes on the futon as she is photographed from a low angle.

It consistently amuses me to view Barley from this type of angle, because it really gives the sense that her body is an expansive landscape, stretching into the distance. When she’s walking around, she’s easily understood as a compact, stocky agent in the world, but when she sprawls like this, it’s much easier to imagine how the broad expanse of her flank could seem like an entire world to, say, an errant flea. A world, admittedly, that would be poisoned from that flea’s perspective, thanks to her monthly dose of anti-parasitic meds.

Barley, a dog, stands beside a rope swing hanging in someone’s yard in the early morning hours.

Walking Barley as much as I do, I am constantly pondering how the world must look to her, and it occurs to me that she really wouldn’t have any way to conceive of “a swing.” No doubt, this just looks like another piece of yard art to her, and not a functional signifier of the presence of small children.

Barley, a dog, sniffs about in a patch of formerly overgrown greenery that has been reduced to nothing but brown mulch and stumps.

As part of an aggressive landscaping strategy, the grounds crew at work have really reduced some of the green spaces to a dingy shadow of their former selves. This seems very intentional on their part, so I fully expect that as temperature continue to rise, we’re going to see a surge of new growth, just in time to impress the wave of visitors that comes with the end of Spring. That said, this is an older photo: Stay tuned for the reveal!

Barley, a dog, snoozes atop her bed-on-a-bed, curled into a ball such that all of her toes are gathered beneath her face.

Now that Barley has this spacious expanse of bedding to work with, she has displayed a range of different sleep poses not commonly observed. This particular post, I suspect, isn’t normally comfortable on a stiffer surface because the underside’s shoulder blade is a bit awkward, but with so much soft support, she no doubt feels as though she is floating nearly weightless and can tuck her paws any way she pleases.

Barley, a dog, sploots elegantly upon a grassy expanse in the spring sunlight, as viewed from above.

Something I don’t think about often is the sheer variety of surfaces that Barley’s belly has made contact with. Perhaps it’s a sign of how sheltered my modern existence is, but my belly has hardly made contact with anything aside from the inside of whatever shirt I’m wearing and a few varieties of bed linens. It just goes to show that she’s a hardy and resilient sort, ready to tackle whatever the world throws at her.

Barley, a dog, snoozes with her face wedged between the futon and a throw pillow.

Barley’s blockhead is such that if she rests its weight on a gap in the softness, she will sink. This seems to suit her fine, though, since getting wedged bewteen soft things isn’t just cozy. It’s also shady!

Barley, a dog, sniffs at the base of a low wall made of concrete pavers and covered in moss.

There’s an aesthetic to overgrow that speaks to my, because it is nearly impossible to fake. You can’t buy this sort of growth, it’s the sort of thing that only time can provide. Clearly, theres a balance (climbing vines can compromise brickwork, for example), but all told, I prefer the gentle dereliction of cultivated overgrowth to the antisceptic austerity of LEGO architecture.

Barley, a dog, sniffs at what I suspect to be a brunnera plant with heart-shaped leaves.

I took this photo thinking nothing of it. “Oh, that’s a nice looking plant. Heart-shaped leaves? Sure, should be easy enough to identify online when I write this up later.” This just goes to show how un-gardeny a person I am. I was not prepared for the enormous diversity of options that come up when one searches for “heart-shaped leaves.” (Quite a bit of Valentine’s Day posting muddying the search results as well). So my educated guess (don’t trust me, I’ve done no studying of this topic) is that this is a brunnera varietal? Maybe? Let me know in the comments (I’ve not added comments to the website at the time of this writing).

Barley, a dog, peers up while lying beside a quartet of tins containing Grether’s Pastilles.

The first time I needed to teach a continuous three-hour block several times per week, I was struggling not to lose my voice right out of the gate. A good friend, who had done both sales and Toastmasters in a previous life, gave me the tip: these glycerinated gummies are an absolute lifesaver if you are reaching your vocal cord limits. Not that these would do Barley much good. You don’t need a voice saver if you only bark a couple times a month.

Barley, a dog, is stopped, per the instructions of a stop sign placed very low to the ground.

“So… how long until it changes to ‘GO’?”

Barley, a dog, sprawls on her back beneath an equally long and dopey Jacob Horse, of Drawfee fame.

Look at these two cartoon characters. They hardly seem believable, and certainly aren’t true to life. How could real animals be so silly?

Juniper, a dog, makes a bit of a mess of the dog bed in front of the television as she tries to stomp it into a more comfortable configurations.

Dogs pacing in a circle before lying down is often characterized as a kind of trope, an instinctive behavior that is presumed to be hard-wired. If you watch dogs do this under a variety of conditions, however, you’ll see that there’s a thoughtfulness at work. Here, Juniper is trying to pace out a circle to create comfy spot, but the dog bed is not cooperating, and it wouldn’t be out of line to give her the caption, “Uh, a little help here, please?”

Barley, a dog, gives a storm drain a sniff.

Time was, Barley was extremely reluctant to stand on a grating with flowing water underneath it. Even very sturdy bridges gave her pause when the sights and sounds of a current were coming from beneath. Just this year, however, she has become interested in storm drains, and is eve willing to walk across them! I’ll need to see if the same holds for bridges.

Barley, a dog, looks up from the futon at the camera with wide, hopeful eyes.

Even when Barley and I have been hanging out att day, following our normal routine, she still displays what seems like a sincere hopefulness whenever I stand and approach her. Even if it’s just to give her some belly rubs, she’s a real sponge for any positive regard she is given. And of course, sometimes my approach might mean something even more exciting. Like a snack. Or a walk!

Barley, a dog, examines a Lime scooter that has been unceremoniously dropped onto a flowerbed.

It seems far preferable for folks to be able to have non-car options, but I can’t help but find Lime’s gig economy business model distasteful. The alliance with Uber isn’t great, but beyond that, these bright eye-catchers are unceremoniously dumped wherever. It’s hard not to see them as a kind of corporate e-waste sprinkled across the landscape.

Barley, a dog, lies of the futon beside a shelf of serpent plants, reaching the full height of the patio door.

In a rare non-work accomplishment in recent months, I have finally expanded the flora in my apartment. There were some signs that my existing serpent plants needed to be repotted, and I went ahead and picked up a couple of small ones as well, just in case. Hopefully this will keep oxygen levels high, to more efficiently burn the midnight oil.

Barley, a dog, lies on an office carpet with a black rubber bone and a plush yeti.

These two toys have become the office champions, each playing a distinct role. The bone is chiefly a way of directing social energy: Barley only chews on it when I meet with others in my office. The yeti, by contrast, just for playtime between Barley and myself when other visitors are in short supply. When she is alone, both are ignored, for the only sensible activity when alone is to sleep.

Juniper, a dog, looks up from the pillow where she is snoozing with one of her plushes and regards the camera wth suspicion.

Juniper has a variety of spots she can retreat to when she decides that she has had enough of whatever shenanigans folks are getting up to. A popular option is the guest bed, which is mostly set up in “dog mode” when guests are not expected. At once relatively central in the house and relatively isolated from any high-energy happenings, it’s usually the best first spot to check if you’re wondering where Juniper has gotten to.

Barley, a dog, tried to get a chomp of some tall leafy blades of grass.

Barley has always been grass-curious, but this spring has seen new levels grass chomping that mean my guard can never be down. I suspect certain species must have a slightly sweet dew that gives them a fetching aroma, because Barley’s orientation on approach is one of intent-to-chomp. For my part, I’d just as soon she not upset her stomach any more than necessary.

Barley, a dog, is briefly illuminated by headlights during a night-time walk.

There generally isn’t too much call to take Barley on walks after dark, but every once in a while a busy schedule means she hasn’t had quite as much of an opportunity to stretch her legs as I’d like. As a very olfactory beast, she seems unperturbed by the darkness, and presses forward much more confidently than I do.

Barley, a dog, photographed up close as lies on her side atop her enormous dog bed.

I’m very pleased with what a big success this new dog bed has been. As absurd and oversized as it is, it’s clear that Barley appreciates the opportunity it provides to really sprawl. She will still occasionally retreat to a darker venue when the room is brighter than she’d like, but I’d wager she’s now spending the vast majority of her downtime in the apartment resting and snoozing atop these gentle blue waves of fluffy softness.

Barley, a dog, walks past a series of short decorative bushes, each trimmed into an approximate rectangle, with very wide spacing between them.

I’m always tickled by hedges that have been arranged in such a way that they can serve no purpose other than to be decorative. These, for example, are too short to provide privacy, and their comical spacing ensures they provide no meaningful barrier. If hedges are far enough apart that Barley can walk into your yard, they’re not keeping anything else out, either. Certainly, they’re not to my taste (and I spend enough of these posts complaining about yard aesthetics as it is), but maybe there’s an alternative explanation. Maybe, one day, a shady landscaper sold a homeowner on a scheme to have a hedge planted for just half the price.

Barley, a dog, leaps into the air to snatch a toy suspended above her. The camera’s focus has not had a chance to adjust to her sudden appearance in the frame.

Barley was very intrigued by these rocks for whatever reason. It seemed to be more than a mere interest in a scent left by another passing dog, and I eventually decided to coax her away from the spot. I couldn’t shake the feeling that she had perhaps found the entrance to a mouse nest or somesuch, at which point no good was going to come of her fixating long enough to make trouble for any critters residing therein.

Barley, a dog, sniffs about at a low stony retaining wall, under the overhanging branches of a decorative spiny bush.

Barley was very intrigued by these rocks for whatever reason. It seemed to be more than a mere interest in a scent left by another passing dog, and I eventually decided to coax her away from the spot. I couldn’t shake the feeling that she had perhaps found the entrance to a mouse nest or somesuch, at which point no good was going to come of her fixating long enough to make trouble for any critters residing therein.

Juniper, a dog, curls up with her plush wolf friend in a heap of blankets.

As an adult dog, Juniper has a certain wrinkly softness about her that matches the blankets atop which she often curls. Whe has always had a bit more skin than she strictly needs, especially around her neck and shoulders, giving her a lot of turtleneck energy. She’s also a bit less active than she used to be, as her hips are a bit more sensitive than they used to be, and as she has become less stocky, her skin has expressed this rumpled duvet quality more and more.

Barley, a dog, springs forward in pursuit of her cow toy, her whole body as blur as her teeth make contact with their target.

While I do what I can to keep Barley in reasonable shape, there isn’t currently a fenced zone where she can really break into a full sprint for any real distance. Still, I wouldn’t want her to get entirely rust, so I will throw toys for her to spring after over much shorter distances, mere tens of feet along the unobstructed paths in my apartment. This has given Barley not only practice in explosive acceleration, but also in precisely controlled deceleration. Despite her evident speed in this photo, for example, she successfully comes to a complete halt and reverses course before hitting the plants or the patio door.

Barley, a dog, moist for a third post in a row, trots down a path beside exposed earth that is visibly saturated with water.

Despite enjoying the look and feel of the outdoors right after the rain, I try not to spend too much time walking Barley under those conditions. The villain the rears its head under such conditions is mud. While mulch and (to a lesser extent) grass to reasonably well at remaining walkable, bare earth that has become saturated can quickly become a micro-quagmire, giving Barley unfortunately little earthen booties. I’m not inclined to walk around with a roll of paper towels, so if her feet get mud-encrusted there’s not a ton I can do until I’m indoors somewhere, and I generally need to venture far enough into wherever I have arrived to get something to wiper her feet that she’ll end up leaving a lot of mud on the floor anyway. If we happen to be arriving at home, there’s a dedicated “mud towel” of course, but it’s just my luck that Barley’s worst run-ins with ankle-deep mud have all happened far from home, with the car being a mandatory intermediary location before I can get her feet refreshed.

Barley, a dog, still moist from being caught in the rain, ventures back out into a day at once sun-lit and soaked.

As it happened, our shelter from the rain/hail storm was brief, and we were back outside mere minutes after the rain had subsided. Like a lot of sudden cloudbursts, the storm vanished as quickly as it had come, with a wash of palpable sunlight following in its wake. It’s always striking to me how vivid, shiny, and colorful the world looks immediately after a heavy rain. It’s a bit like getting to see a world coated in clear varnish, with a pleasant freshly aroma as an added bonus.

Barley, a dog, sits on a carpet and looks up expectantly at the camera. Her fur is visibly damp.

“Oho, my watch says the forecast is ‘intermittent clouds,’ so I guess this hoodie will be plenty,” I thought to myself. Like a fool! Anyway, long story short, I was about four blocks from any meaningful shelter when the sky fully opened up with the sort of sudden downpour we don’t see here all that often. Then, before we had made it even halfway, the rain transitioned to fairly chunky hail. It’s the most completely the forecast has betrayed me since winter began, and Barley and I were both quite damp by the time we finally made it inside.

Barley, a dog, sniffs at the edge of slightly wild plot of front yard in which a freestanding trellis entirely encases a shrubby plant.

I very much see the appeal of a freestanding trellis, but I’m always a little mystified when I see one being used for something other than acting as the substrate for some sort of vine or ivy. I wonder if maybe this was placed around this plant when it was much smaller and was first planted, in a bid to protect it? And now it has grown large enough that it is the plant that has trapped the trellis, rather than the other way around.

Juniper, a tiny puppy, is lying on a bed with an alert expression and a single ear pointing comically upward.

Barley has, aside from some very minor cosmetic changes, looked the same the entire time I’ve had her. This makes going back to old photos of Juniper when she was a puppy all the more disorienting. Routine can make any aspect of life feel timeless and static, but change is always afoot, and it’s good and healthy to remind oneself of that regularly. I should probably do so more often.