Barley, a dog, stands in a college hallway beneath a bulletin board marked with various tags. One reads, “We are situated within the collapse of a civilization and the noise is deafening. Act now and the community will make it through.” Having now had a few days to ponder cohost’s closure as a platform and the not-too-far-future reality of the whole site being deleted, I find myself in a bit of a mood about the theme of community. I don’t intend for this to be a whole thinkpiece about social media platforms - you came here to see photos of my dog - but I nevertheless think there’s an opportunity here to reflect on what community means in a digital space. Some of you found Barley through the tags and have come to know her through my photography and authorial voice, without our ever having interacted directly. Cohost made a lot of those sort-of-one-way observational relationships possible, and I get the impression that some of the distress that people expressed stemmed from feeling that those cozy, safe connections were going away. Well, if you’re reading this, you’re still here, and I’m glad for it. All of us were already somewhere and many of us have planted new flags and tilled new fields. Additionally, I felt compelled to reach out directly to folks in September, and I have very much appreciated the fruits of that contact. With hindsight, I am willing to admit that I squandered many opportunities to be in…

Barley, a dog, viewed in closeup as she lies on a hill of dry summer grass, chomping the heck out of a stick and seeming very satisfied as she does so. Barley gives me the impression that she’s a real creature of the senses. Unlike Juniper, who always seems to be trying to deduce something, Barley is quite content to lose herself in a pleasant experience. With a belly full, a back warmed by the sun, a friend close to hand, and a branch coming apart under the force of her jaws, she has all she needs in the world.

Barley, a dog, encounters a blue Yard Orb. Slight motion blur suggests that she is already moving on to other things as the photo is being taken. I will, at times, try to make photographic fetch happen. While I wouldn’t say I stage photos I take of Barley, I will sometimes inspire her natural curiosity with an encouraging “whazzat?” to get her to investigate something so I can take a picture of her doing so. Turns out, Barley has no time in her schedule for the pondering of orbs. Get outta here, orbs, you don’t even smell interesting! Thus concludes Barley’s brief adventures in orbposting, regular posting resumes tomorrow.

Juniper, a dog, is hidden beneath a futon. Only her hind legs peek out, as viewed from above in this photo. Like so many Internet denizens, Juniper must sometimes take steps to quell the exquisit agonies of Being Seen. Fortunately for us, her limited canine perspective taking is such that she often doesn’t quite achieve full stealth mode. These days, she mostly retreats to her crate, but back in the day she used the cozy stratum beneath the guest room futon as her refuge of choice, and her skooch-to-get-under technique almost always left her toes exposed.

Barley, a dog, sploots in a fenced yard beside and parallel with a golden retriever. Each chews a hunk of wood enthusiastically. Barley was very fortunate to have many playdates over the summer months, and in doing so was able to share in her passion for chewing on crumbly hunks of wood. Her interest in “social chewing” turns out to be quite general, and is practiced in the context of acquaintanceship. She chews while hanging out with guests, whereas when she’s with people in her close ingroup, she’s much more inclined to relax or sleep. So the question is: Does she love to chew socially because it’s an outlet for her excess excitement, or is it a social performance?

Barley, a dog, relaxes in the grass with a pensive look. Not too long ago, I took Barley on a longer-than usual walk on a lovelier-than-usual day. Our route was largely familiar, but one of Barley’s great strengths is that she finds an eternally renewing interest in the world, so she was no less enthusiastic for it. As we made our way back and came within sight of the doorway that would bring us back indoors, her pace slowed, and she resolutely plopped down onto the grass. There she stayed for some minutes, sniffing the light breeze, soaking up one last coatfull of afternoon warmth as I waited, before we returned to the office and the remaining work of the day.

Barley, a dog, glaces up from a nondescript concrete alcove. In the foreground, out of focus, is a secure keypad/callbox, on which is balanced a textbook titled “Introduction to Nuclear Engineering.” There nothing noteworthy about walking past a locked door. Best to assume most doors you walk past are locked, frankly. And should that door have a card-swipe, no big deal, you see that all the time. Now, a door with a card-swipe and a number pad? That’s a little more unusual, how come you need a multi-factor locking mechanism. And if that electronic lock has an armored camera pointed at it? Then maybe, maybe you take notice. What I want to know is, do you finally start asking questions when someone drops off the copy of Introduction to Nuclear Engineering that they borrowed?

Barley, a dog, lies sprawled on her side, her hips on her dog bed, her body relaxed, but her ears flopped into an upward position, and her eyes open. For all my efforts to give Barley a full and interesting life, there is no denying that she spends a great deal of time waiting. She hovers in the early afternoon when she anticipates that she’s due a walk. Her stomach marks the hour for dinner like clockwork, and she’ll gently remind me if it seems I might need reminding. For the most part, however, she appears to simply take for granted that I must be waiting for that same event to occur. Not resentful, not impatient, but vigilant. Something is coming after this, in just a little longer, a little longer…

Barley, a dog, pauses to drink from a broad, shallow stream of water flowing down a sidewalk from a broken sprinkler head at the edge of a patch of grass. I try to avoid letting Barley drink from standing pools of water, mostly out of an abundance of caution. I recognize that, if some fresh rainwater gathers on a shady, sleepy sidewalk, there’s probably not much harm in Barley wetting her whistle, but my prior experiences of living in urban environments makes it hard for me to shake the memory of such pools being rainbow-slick with visible films of motor oil. In this particular instance, the day was hot, a sprinkler head had broken, and water was bubbling forth in real time as if from a natural spring, so I relaxed my ordinary paranoia and let her shed some heat with an infusion of delicious Underwater Cool.

Barley, a dog, watches quizzically from inside a car whose windows are caked in a scattered powdering of tree pollen. The summer months are the only period during the year that Barley really needs a semi-regular bath. While not a stinky dog even on the worst of days, she can develop a little bit of aura after a week of heat-wave weather, a scent that’s just characterful enough that it would be within the bounds of good taste to freshen her up for the benefits of a sensitive guest to my office. So, too, does my car seem most in need of some intervention during these months, in which much of the local flora (particulars the many trees) tries its luck and unloads pollen into the air. For both, the coming of the rains provides a tasteful freshening up at regular enough intervals to keep them pleasing to the senses.

Juniper, a dog, sleeps on her comically large bed in a cable-knit sweater that clings to the contours of her body. As we all prepare to bid cohost a quiet passing into archival memory, we would all do well to keep our respective creatures close, and keep them warm. Theirs is a simple world, as compared with ours and its abstract and convoluted problems, and there is comfort to be had in bringin comfort to theirs. This is Juniper’s 85th post, on cohost’s final Juniper Friday, but an 86th entry will appear soon, as all our adventures will continue in all our widening worlds.

Barley, a dog, is photographed relaxing on the futon. The image quality is weirdly grainy in a way that only the lowest-cost image sensor on the market can provide. There is a slice of time in the photo-record of Barley’s adventures in which the images, while digital, have a kind of grain that feels unnatural in an era of surprisingly powerful phone cameras. Its trademark is an even scattering of dark motes, as if the photo had received a very light dusting of soot from a passing chimneysweep’s broom. During this period of time, my phone of many years had given up the ghost: It was never not hot to the touch, and (despite multiple battery replacements) could no longer hold a charge for more than a couple hours. So, as a stopgap, my phone company provided me what I thought of as the Pity Phone: a burner in all but name, retailing at around $30, whose CPU was so underpowered that it needed to run a comically toybox custom fork of Android. The phone had a camera, as all modern smart phones do. Nevertheless, the combination of the cheapest sensor money can buy and a puny CPU with no spare clock cycles to gussy up a noisy image resulted in photography that was literally the least one could do: Simultaneously blurrier and crunchier than you would want, a look so distinctive it effectively becomes its own data-moshed aesthetic.

Barley, a dog, sleeps deeply on a sofa in a sunbeam. The light scattered off of her orange body tints the fabric of the sofa, creating an impression that she is giving off a golden glow. It’s hard not to play favorites when one has a dog, because it’s very natural to reflect their intense and unconditional affect back at that in whatever form they express it. Even so, I can’t help but notice how often people speak of Barley’s warmth and friendliness, even relative to their own dogs! While she is a bit rambunctious, I don’t think I’m overstepping the bounds of good taste when I say that there seems to be a consensus that Barley has a palpable aura that is a bit special even among members of this very special species.

Barley, a dog, puts her paws up on a retaining wall and locks eyes briefly with a goat who, lying on the ground in the shade, has turned its head to face her. I’ll still stop by the neighborhood goats from time to time, but Barley has expressed such resolute disinterest in them (and they in her) that I was quite surprised by this moment. I assumed I would simply catch Barley on camera walking past, but she hopped up to check, and the goat looked back. And just as I snapped the picture, the moment ended: the goat turned away, and Barley proceeded to sniff a bit at the grass up top before hopping back down to street level. It seems wholly understood by both parties that what the other is up to is none of their concern. But a moment like this tells me they are definitely still aware of one another.

Barley, a dog, looks dashing in her collar and harness, waiting with eager patience for her leash to be attached so that an adventure may begin. Well, gang, we did it. We made it to 500 posts about Barley on this daily blog (in addition to 84 posts about Juniper), which means I can finally deploy The Joke Post Title to mark the occasion. In that time, many of you following her adventures on cohost have said nice things about this dear creature, who would love you immediately if you met her (and already does if you already have). At the time of this posting, a week from today will be the final day that new Barley content appears on cohost. However, it will not be the end of her story! As many of you already know, Barley’s adventures will continue, much as they have until now, on her dedicated Neocities page. To mark the occasion, I have made an 88x31 button that I invite people to use to link to her adventures. Her page also includes an RSS feed, so you can be notified of each post as it arrives. Those of you already reading this post on her new site may not be familiar with RSS. It’s worth looking into! I’m using Feeder at the moment, but there are many other RSS readers out there. As the 2010s model of social media continues to fragment and disintegrate, why not reacquaint yourself with reading blogs? One additional note: I…

Barley, a dog, stands in a sunny park with an expanse of grass behind her. Turning her head slightly away from the sun, she gives her own nose a real big lick. Taking Barley on walks on a bright and windy day is a distinct experience because she spends so much time simply allowing the world to come to her. We’ll be walking, and she’ll stop and face the wind and stand, her ribcage pulsing from the steady stream of little sniffs she makes to read the news. English does not, so far as I’m aware, have an olfactory equivalent of “staring,” so my temptation is to say that she stares into the distance, but I can’t say for certain how much she’s even paying attention to her eyes. For my part, the whole point of the walks, beyond mere exercise, is to get her out and about and stimulated by the world, so I just stop and wait. Eventually, she brings her vigil to a close with a BIG ole lick to the nose to reset the instrument.

Barley, a dog, trots down a forest path amid trees and ferns. A surprising number of dead, orange leaves are scattered about. It was quite odd to take Barley on this forest walk, and at first I couldn’t place what felt wrong. What I eventually realized is that by brain was having trouble reconciling the heat-wave temperatures of late July (when this photo was taken) with seeing so many dead leaves scattered about. I’m guessing this is some accidental byproduct of (a) the comparative dry summer around here and (b) the trail having the protection of just enough of a canopy of branches that much of the direct sunlight is scattered, slowing its ravaging influence.

Juniper, a dog, lies on the floor beside a red sofa and looks at an offscreen television with rapt attention. I absolutely did not appreciate the unusual intensity of Juniper’s relationship with television until after Barley had joined the household. In this ancient photo, we see Juniper at the very boundary of adulthood, still less than a year old, transfixed by the glowing noisebox. She was a bit less anxious, then, and a lot less picky, and would sit and watch just about anything with us, calm and quiet (unless some screenbeast wandered into frame, of course). Today, it’s easier to identify her comfort genres (sitcoms and cooking shows) by how every part of her body relaxes when she watches them, except her eyes, which remain wide.

Barley, a dog, sprawls on a sofa and, her chin on her paws, looks up from the armrest at the camera with a plaintive look. Barley does not, so far as I can tell, experience satiety cues. Even after a full meal, she will remain interested if folks around her are eating food, and will very much give you the eye to see if you might spare a bit for her. I realize that some consider this to be “bad manners” for a dog, but I’m skeptical of efforts to narrowly delimit acceptable dog behavior. As such, I’ll often give Barley a little taste of what I’m having, nothing that would spoil her appetite. In this particular case, Barley was the enthusiastic recipient of a tiny corner of an orange slice moments after this picture was taken.

Barley, a dog, sleeps on her belly with her head turned toward the camera, her snout resting on her paw as if she is striking a demure pose. I often crack wise about the limits of Barley’s stamina, but the truth is that mine isn’t anything to write home about either. As such, while she will sometimes come home from a long walk rather tired, she’s rarely so thoroughly knocked out by a walk that it would be fair to say she’s exhausted. The one terrain for which I hold a clear advantage, however, is hills. She gets tired very easily by steep uphill grades, possibly because they engage some of her secondary muscles differently. In this photograph, we see a Barley freshly home from a summer’s walk up various 15° to 25° grades, so pooped that she flopped onto the bed in a full sploot and could not be bothered to stand up again when sleep came for her.