Look Out! Duck!

Barley, a dog, turns to the camera. In the background, a bit out of focus, are a gathering of varied rubber ducks atop a garden wall.

It has often been remarked that Barley’s indoor persona is very different from her outdoor persona. Usually, people bring this up to contrast her headstrong, willful behavior when outdoors with her more gentle, snoozy, playful personality when indoors. It recently occurred to me that Barley very rarely plays with outdoor objects in a way that resembles her play with indoor objects. The nearest instance to this that comes to mind is chewing on sticks, but when it comes to objects that resemble her indoors toys (be it plushy or rubbery), she ignores them entirely while out and about. She seemed quite perplexed, for example, when I interrupted our walk to take this picture.