Juniper Friday! Oh How You've Grown

Juniper, a dog, still in her puppy era, puts a paw to her face in a manner that seems like she is feigning shock.

Revisiting Juniper’s puppy photos is always slightly disconcerting. For some reason, my brain doesn’t register that puppies are young dogs in the way that I intuitively understand that children are young humans. Puppy Juniper both is and is not the moody beast I know today. She both is and is not the goofy weirdo I knew then. I recognize her, but it’s still shocking how much of a metamorphosis takes place during maturation. It shouldn’t be shocking, it’s the most natural thing in the world, but the storytelling part of my brain is so much more comfortable with pets being static and unchanging over time than it is with having known Juniper when she was this tiny. This sense of chronological uncanniness isn’t helped by our having rescued Barley just as she was finishing adolescence, meaning that she has always been within a few pounds of her current weight, making her much more plausible in my mind as an eternal, unchanging being.