Barley, a dog, walks past a set of stepping stones framed by bleached white gravel, with rich, dark garden soil freshly laid to either side. I’m one of those people who finds oil painting in progress to be very confusing, because I only have the faintest notion of what it would mean to paint the dark colors first and then layer the lighter colors atop them. I’m sure there are similar plans for this yard - the visible tag on a freshly planted shrub suggests that I’ve caught this yard in pre-production, with further shrubs to come that will in time grow to fill the space. Even so, the stark contrast of this footpath struck me so mightily that I had my phone out a half a block in advance of reaching it.

Barley, a dog, proffers up her toy donkey in the hopes of play time. Playtime is not coming fast enough! Barley’s head and tail are in motion to try to make tug (or, failing that, fetch) happen! Barley is generally pretty good at letting me know when she’s got energy that she needs to burn off through play. She’ll present me with a toy and will either play tug/keepaway with it, or (and only if I tell her to ‘drop it’) she’ll get ready to chase the toy down when I throw it before parading around with it, thrashing as she goes. She’ll just as suddenly signal when she’s done messing about, which doesn’t take long at all, so I can almost always make the time indulge her when she asks.

Barley, a dog, cuts her trek perpendicular with respect to the stepping stones that clearly indicate the path preferred by the landscaper, and she does so with a flourish of the tongue. Barley is not immune to level design. She can often intuit more or less what path I intend to take while we’re out on a walk, and steers toward those practical avenues, but once she gets a whiff of something interesting, it’s a whole other story. If she doesn’t stop dead in her tracks, she might drag me right into some shrubbery! As such, I usually keep a pretty close eye on Barley for the whole duration of a walk, because I often only have split-second of warning before she goes off-road.

Juniper, a dog, sits excitedly on a lawn chair with her ears up and her mouth open, visibly jazzed that her ball is about to be thrown. As so many dogs with working breeds in her lineage, Juniper often bring a certain “let me at ‘em!” energy to her play. She is very keen to chase when commanded, so throwing a ball is going to be a big hit, but once she’s in motion, she doesn’t always being the ball right back. Getting up to full speed overcomes a lot of her “I need to be a good girl” inhibitions and she sometimes just runs. When the spirit moves her, she may snatch up the ball and keep going, making several laps around the yard until she finally flops onto her belly and drops the ball to more effectively pant. It’s probably for the best that she’s never really had the luxury of long straightaways, because she’s already real fast, and if she were any faster it would probably only run the risk of getting her into trouble some day.

Barley, a dog, sniffs about among the grasses at the base of a telephone pole, unaware of the stereotypes she is reinforcing. It’s clear that Barley recognizes when she is in unfamiliar territory, because she sniffs longer and with greater intensity at all the signature canine landmarks. He check-ins with favored spots are a bit more perfunctory when it’s a spot she walk past almost every day. What’s unclear is how she feels about all this new information she’s presumably taking in. She’s activated, sure, but is she happy? Nervous? Are the edges of her vision darkening at the scent of some local cat who she imagines she might run down? Beyond knowing that she’s excited to go on walks and very engaged during them, so much of her private musings will forever remain mysterious. I don’t think I’d dwell on this so much if it weren’t for Barley’s limited theory of mind, because she clearly assumes I’m thinking what she’s thinking!

Barley, a dog, scans a lush fringe between the sidewalk and a fence while moving forward at a brisk pace. Barley’s a photogenic dog, which is lucky for me because she also doesn’t know that cameras exist, and as such is conceptually unable to mug for them. As such, I often end up photographing her “on the hoof.” I’m quite grateful that the modern digital cameras have such impressive (figurative) shutter speed, because between her walking speed and my efforts to try to keep the phone steady, I feel like these photos ought by rights to be much blurrier than they generally turn out.

Barley, a dog, curls up with a frilly pillow while snoozing on a bedspread. Barley’s not the loudest snorer, but she’s definitely a snorer. The emergence of her rhythmic little honks generally marks the moment she’s well and truly asleep, as opposed to merely dozing. Since they’re pretty soft and rhythmic, they’re not something that get in the way of my falling asleep each night. On occasions when I’m having trouble getting to sleep, what can sometimes get me in trouble is Barley dreaming, which generally sets in 15-20 minutes after the snoring starts. So it behooves me to tuck in when I feel good and ready to sleep, and not before, since I’ve got about a 15 minute window to lose consciousness before the soothing rhythm of Barley’s snores give way to sleep wiggles and dream woofs.

Barley, a dog, stands at the back of a small chapel. The view down the aisle reveals a raised stage and a pair of modest pipe organs. There’s something very curious to me about rooms and buildings that retain their form purely out of momentum and nostalgia. This chapel, for example, is located within an institution that has operated in an entirely secular way for nearly 100 years. Despite having lost its function, the chamber’s form and furniture remain trapped in amber. Since the space nevertheless gets used (mostly for administrative meetings and the occasional spoken word performance), the echoes of sermons long past were far less compelling than the smell of what I must assume are a bunch of unfamiliar folk, because boy howdy was she excited to sniff up and down the length of the pews.

Barley, a dog, walks along a footpath through lush greenery. The sun shines brightly through the leaves above, turning the earth of the path into a vivid cowprint pattern. In my youth, I knew a older professor whose every move was wracked by visible discomfort. I would eventually come to learn that she had been beset by an aggressive form of arthritis in her 20s, and had spent most of her adult life managing inflammation. She had spent a big chunk of her earlier life in Colorado, and I once asked her if she was considering moving back there when she retired. After all, that seemed like a climate that would make her arthritis more tolerable. She casually shook her head and said she intended to stay in the Pacific Northwest. She recounted the first impression the region when she came to visit campus to interview for the job she would eventually get. The first night of her stay, she called her husband from the hotel, and without so much as a salutation, she began the conversation in an almost frenzied tone: “It’s so fucking green!“

Barley, a dog, is curled up on a fluffy, well-stuffed new dog bed. She is glancing at the camera to see what all the fuss is about. Barley is now the proud steward of a new dog bed. The old bed, which was beginning to look a little threadbare, will go to my parents, where it will remain as an accessory for Barley’s future visits. Given the goofy levels of fluff in this new bed, I can’t help but ponder the ways in which this sort of dog bed is not meaningfully different than a plush toy. Despite this, and despite having many such toys, Barley at no point looked at this bed and saw a beast she could thrash. She understood immediately that this is softness on which to loaf. How does she make that distinction? Don’t get me wrong, I’m also very grateful that she doesn’t see throw pillows as toys, either, but she’s carving the objects of the world into practical categories really effectively, so naturally I’m curious what she’s relying on to do so.

Juniper, a dog, sits atop a flurry white floor mat in what appears to be a bathroom. As much as she feels a strong bond to her people, Juniper also has her own routine and habits. At times, she craves a solitary nap in a cozy nook; at others, she wishes to monitor the property and patrol its perimeter. But at other times, she goes full velcro dog and will insist, as politely as she can, on accompanying you into the bathroom.

Barley, a dog, stands atop a partially submerged stretch of black plastic sheeting that was no doubt at one time buried in order to prevent weeds from growing in a yard. Of the various tools used to sculpt a yard into a particular image, few are as radical as the roll of plastic sheeting. From the point of view of any germinating seeds that are unfortunate enough to find themselves beneath it, its denial of sun or moisture has an almost Eternal-Cylinder-esque kind of brutality, a wholly unnatural thing carving a boundary through an otherwise typical ecosystem. A major weak spot for such sheeting, however, is that is flat curvature is never a precise match to a yard’s topography, and the folding and wrinkling needed to shape it to the terrain’s contours are the cracks in the fortress through which the natural world can fight back. Given a sustained floral seige, and without steady reinforcement, the fate of any such boundary is to gradually be surfaced by erosion and undone by each days thousand little disruptions. In this respect, Barley pawing at this weird noisy boundary is just her doing her part to help.

Barley, a dog, runs down a grassy hill that is speckled with tiny wildflowers on a sunny summer day, with a brick building just visible at the edge of the frame. 🎼And if I only could 🐶I’d make a deal with dog 🎵And I’d put her through her paces 🎤Be runnin’ down that road 🎶Be runnin’ down that hill 🕺Be runnin’ to that buildin’

Barley, a dog, snoozes in her crate next to a star-shaped toy that sports a torn-off arm and a googly-eyed look of astonishment. Barley, a dog, lying beside her mended toy, which looks no less surprised. If a toy isn’t going to stand up to Barley’s attention, it’s usually evident within minutes. Despite being billed as a “tough” toy for “heavy chewers,” this star(fish?) didn’t stand a chance. After giving it a thrashing, Barley began grinding her way through one its arms with her hind teeth, a relentless scissoring effect that I’ve yet to see fail. Less than ten minutes after making its introduction, the toy had to be taken from her, so sorry was its state. However, After taking out a lot of stuffing and sewing up the hole, it has survived subsequently without incident. A good thing too, because this was a gift from one of her fans! So I’d feel terrible if I had to trash it the very day she received it. There’s something about the toy being stuffed tight that makes it much more enticing to chew. Maybe it has good mouthfeeth, or maybe some instinct kicks in that “this one’s got a thick hide, gotta get through it!” Either way Barley has almost never been destructive once a toy is floppy enough to bend under its own weight.

Barley, a dog, lies on a futon. She rests her head against a green plush dragon with a tartan-coded belly, and dreams. The tag that came with this laughably inexpensive plushie for dogs told me its name was “Dream.” Everything about this line of toys, of which I’ve now seen at least a dozen different models, reads “tax incentive,” from the gossamer-thin materials, to a list price so low that they were likely being sold at a loss, to a promise that “one dollar would go to charity” for every toy purchased. The dragon’s tartan-coded underbelly was especially flimsy, and Barley managed to breach the fabric during her very first tussle with the beast. And yet, now stitched back up with upholstery thread and lighter by a leg, a snout, and about half of its stuffing, the dragon has now reached equilibrium and is one of Barley’s favorites, alongside other crappy toys from the same product line. They become her pillows as often as not, making it all the easier to go to sleep the moment she has decided she’s done playing. It’s impossible to say what sort of bond she might feel with the dragon, but it’s charming to me how much she favors it.

Barley, a dog, trots along contentedly in some moist grass, and does not appear to have noticed a pair of ducks (one male, one female) sitting in the grass on the opposite side of the path. There’s a ring of earth near my office that, whenever we get heavy rain for a couple days in a row, gradually fills to become a small, brackish pool about the size of a picnic blanket. A couple times a year, for the last three or four years, a pair of mallards will show up and hang out by the pool until it dries out. I have no idea if it’s the same ducks every year, perhaps stopping through as part of a migratory journey, but this pond fills in quite irregularly, so it seems like it would be a fantastic coincidence for them to always pass through at just the right time. Mallards also don’t generally form pair bonds that are stable over multiple breeding seasons, so it’s very possible that it’s been a different pair of ducks every time, and that this is simply a “nice spot for at most two ducks.” In any case, I try to steer Barley well clear of these visitors (photo ops notwithstanding) so she doesn’t scare them off. Fortunately, she’s not especially excited by birds, so even if she notices them at a distance, she’s pretty indifferent to their presence.

Barley, a dog, sniffs at the ground as she walks past a rose bush. She does not show any sign of stopping. The warm temperatures recently have had a range of effects on local yards, and those who have been putting in the work to keep their plants from wilting have been able to bank on tropical levels of growth. As usual, however, Barley’s appreciation for the floral arts remains minimal.

Juniper, a dog, stands in a fence yard, her body clearly visible in profile. A slight zigzag is visible in her tail. A detail of Juniper’s tail that photos don’t quite do justice is that it has two permanent “kinks” that give it a characteristic zigzag. She was born in a shelter with these, and they don’t give her any trouble at all. According to the shelter operators, this is fairly common in large litters (Juniper was the born the smallest of eleven puppy siblings), because when the womb gets very crowded, a few tail vertebrae can become fused at slightly arbitrary angles. When we met Juniper’s sister Kona by happenstance, we learned that Kona’s tail is fused in three places, at angles that give her a permanent corkscrew tail. They say that from crooked timber, no straight thing is ever made, but zigzag or no, Juniper’s as straight-shooting a dog as they come.

Barley, a dog, stands at the base of a telephone poll where neighbors have put up a handmade sign of a weary sloth hanging from a yellow “Slow Down” diamond. I’m a bit disturbed at the thought of what sort of motorist Barley would be. I don’t think a car would be enough for her. When her batteries are fully charge, she’s ready to go fast! She’d probably get the cheapest, gnarliest sportsbike she could and then sink three times its value into illegal mods before careening around the back streets at 150 miles per hour. Fortunately for me, Barley is not a streetracing delinquent, but is, in fact, a dog who knows nothing of horsepower.

Barley, a dog, lies like a lump on a throw cushion. It’s clear from the paw she has propped up that her nails have recently been trimmed. In French, one idiom for a hangover is “la gueule de bois” (literally, “wooden mouth”). Unrelatedly, “elle aboie” means “she barks.” So you see, I’ve devised an amusing (if somewhat ungrammatical) little pun to mark this photo of Barley’s deflated mood in the afternoon after getting her teeth cleaned and nails trimmed at the vet. Worry not: By the time night fell, she was mostly back to her old self, and the next day you couldn’t even tell she’d been out of sorts.