Barley, a dog, sniffs about among the dead leaves and branches beside a foot path. Even as spring is making itself undeniably felt with the warming weather and blooming flowers, I can’t help but feel as though some patches of land have yet to slip free of winter’s grasp. Through some mix of tough soil and limited exposure, I swear there are bits I walk Barley past that have had the same layer of leaf litter, hardly changed for the last six months.

Barley, a dog, makes herself as small as she can as she crouches behind a piece of furniture, nervous on account of distant thunder. As I’ve mentioned in the past, Barley experiences a lot of anxiety relating to stormy weather, and a pretty broad class of “sky rumbles” will inspire her to seek cover and make herself small. Note here how her legs are tucked under her body and her chin is lowered to the floor. This is not a dog who is curling up for a nap. She is also very insistent that her hiding spot have a solid-seeming roof. Her crate, for example, does not pass muster, and when as storm rolls through, it’s very common for her to spring out of her crate and get under a neighboring table instead. This tells me she has some intuition that distinguishes “soft cover” from “hard cover,” but I haven’t quite deciphered her rule of thumb for making that distinction.

Barley, a dog, is captured on camera pulling hard on her leash to try to get closer to a wary cat visible at the top of the frame. One of Barley’s many fans recently quipped that Barley is “only one or two steps from being perfect.” One such step would be her unsavory interest in cats. While Barley will show a lot of enthusiasm in her approach toward other dogs, and will show fleeting and casual interest in other furry animals (such as squirrels), she becomes laster-focused if she ever sees a cat. This tunnel vision does not seem pro-social. I wouldn’t try to stage such an encounter (by, say, approaching a cat on purpose), because there are too many ways doing so could go sideways. However, it so happened that I was getting my phone out to take an unrelated picture of Barley when she spotted the cat pictured above and started to scrabble forward along the pavement. I managed to snap this picture as I was steering her away from the encounter, and figured the image came out clearly enough that it would be worth documenting this facet of her personality.

Juniper, a dog, lies atop, and sinks into, the very lofty comforter atop a queen-size bed in an AirBnB bedroom. During a trip taken earlier this year, Juniper stayed in a dog-friendly AirBnB. I’m told that, upon arriving in the unfamiliar space, she no sooner had her harness removed before tearing off to explore the house and disappearing from view. Minutes later, she was found as you see her here, apparently committing early to which bedroom she wanted to claim for herself.

Barley, a dog seen from up close, sprawls luxuriously on a big cushion, paws forward, and gazes with rapt attention into the camera. Like many dogs, Barley spends a lot of the day sleeping. She’s a light sleeper, though, floating along just beneath the threshold of consciousness during daylight hours so as not to miss excitement that might arise. What’s a little disconcerting is that Barley also spends a lot of her day supervising whomever she’s around. I think she just often concludes that the people around her are the most interesting things going on, even moreso than, say, any wildlife that might be scampering about outside a nearby window.

Barley, a dog, gives her ear a scratch with her hind leg, which is a blur of motion as she squints and grins in satisfaction. For the most part, Barley doesn’t seem to be a particularly itchy dog. Every once in a while she’ll feel an itch at her ear or collar that warrants a scratch, but these are rare enough that I have few opportunities to capture them on camera. Much more common are her full-body back-wiggles, as previously documented, but even these have never been common enough to suggest anything concerning. It surely helps that she gets to say hello to her friends every day, who give her plenty of affectionate scritches.

Barley, a dog, stands beside an accumulation of branches and other woodsy detritus. Grounds crews have finally begin to gather and mulch the accumulating casualties of various wind storms since the New Year. I’ve been confused as to why this has been such a long time coming, and I’m beginning to think that this only becomes a priority when regular lawn care begins to loom on the horizon. Or, perhaps, wood that’s been allowed to weather for months is easier to mulch. Whatever the reason, piles have begun to spring up all over on Barley’s walks, turning to piles of mulch soon after.

Barley, a dog, looms large over the camera, kaiju-enormous, too immense to fit into the frame. As far as Barley is concerned, a human who has joined her on the floor is ready for shenanigans. Sofas and futons are for snuggles, but the floor is for wrasslin’. It’s a little mysterious when she deems a person as joined her for a tussle. Kneeling isn’t usually enough, but sitting on the floor often crosses the threshold. Lying down? Well, then it’s time to party.

Barley, a dog, trots through leaf litter that has been soaked in rain. The coming of spring has definitely been a mixed bag, weather-wise. The daily high has been swinging by as much as twenty degrees day to day, and while it’s never quite cold enough to fall back on my winter coat, it’s often wet enough for me to regret having made my transition to spring attire. For Barley’s part, there’s not been a downpour heavy enough to justify wearing her orange rain jacket, but she’s certainly been getting her share of foot and leg wipe-downs to keep mud from getting tracked in after her walks.

Juniper, a dog, rests her head on a sofa cushion and her blankie, and sleeps soundly. One of the curious consequences of Juniper being an anxious dog in general is that it’s very easy to tell when she feels safe and able to relax. Her most blissful quietude is achieved when she’s lying beside her Person, with some gently non-confronting television playing in the background, and she can slip into the deep sleep of a dog who is letting someone else keep watch.

Barley, a dog, glances back over her shoulder as she sprawls long. Above her, atop the futon, Jacobhorse Drawfee also stretches with an unnatural length that can only have arisen from dark sorcery. As a long-time fan of Drawfee, I was pleased that they made a Jacobhorse available for sale, but I was not satisfied with its dimensions. So I did what any self-respecting scientist would do, and modified it myself. The result is a creature most unnatural, an eight-legged sleipnir-taur of a thing, but it is long enough. So long, in fact, that Barley has never once confused it for a toy. I’m pretty sure she think’s it’s just a cushion.

Barley, a dog, stands in front of an enormous tree. You can tell the tree is enormous because a Barley is provided for scale. When I was growing up, my grandparents lived in a condo with an adjoining shared park area. One tree in particular was clearly the oldest, a bulbous mass gone wide and knotty under gravity’s relentless pull. The story I was told (although I did not then and do not now have any way of verifying it) was that it has been planted during the reign of Napoleon. Of the trees I now have daily access to, this is the only one what gives even a fraction of the “I’m too old for this shit” energy that the ancient giant I would visit in my childhood conveyed when I would stand at its base.

Barley, a dog, sprawls lazily on her side, snoozing, awaiting the next visitor to the office. Of all the folks working hard, there is exactly one person in the building at the time of this photo who would be excited if they were to attend a meeting. It’s Barley. She would love very much for someone to come and meet with me (and thus with her!) in my office. She would be an active participant in the meeting! She would contribute what she is able! Her contributions would not be on topic, but you can count on them to be very enthusiastic! Reject emails, she would say if she could. This could have been a meeting.

Barley, a dog, sniffs at the base of a brick archway. She has been here before. Since the walks I take Barley on while at work are often relatively short and thus within a given radius of the office, there are certain spots that Barley is very, very likely to visit multiple times a week. By now, she has certainly sniffed at this exact spot over a hundred times, and is making steady progress toward having sniffed at it over a thousand times. Her level of focused interest remains undiminished. She’s gotta check the news!

Barley, a dog, strolls past a huge compact emergency generator, oblivious to the ominous noises it is capable of making should the situation require it. One of the curiosities of owning an adventuresome dog is that things that seem on paper like they would get boring somehow simply don’t. In this case, I am amusing myself by Barley’s failure to recognize that this cuboid contraption is a generator. This shouldn’t amuse me as much as it does: She fails to recognize the function of almost every complex machine she encounters. And yet my mind’s eye never fails to do some nonsense like recreate the party wallflower meme, except the room has only Barley in the center and a generator in the corner wearing a party hat and thinking to itself, “She doesn’t know I’m a generator.”

Barley, a dog, stands alert in a grassy expanse, ears forward and looking with playful intent toward something out of frame, as a stick rests at her feet. I owe a considerable debt to Barley’s fans, who have been instrumental in providing her the level of adventure that she deserves on a daily basis when I am too busy at work to take her for a walk myself. This photo was taken not by me, but by a Barley Megafan who knows how to show her a good time.

Juniper, a dog, sits by the window and looks at the camera with one of her tiny chipmunk toys between her front paws. Juniper gives the chipmunk a little affectionate sniff/nuzzle with her snoot. Since posting about them a couple months ago, I have since been informed that Juniper’s tiny toy friends are in fact chipmunks, not squirrels. Regardless, she remains a big fan of them, carrying them gently by the scruff from place to place and keeping them near as she keeps watch out the window, or watches television, or naps. She is gentle with them even relative to her other stuffed toys (all of which are handled far more delicately than Barley ever would). So, I am convinced that in her fundamentally doggy way, she perceived the chipmunks as Baby.

Barley, a dog, snoozes on the futon, lying on her side with her legs out and her head way back, as if she was making the sideways-dog version of a snow angel. Barley enjoys sprawling out like this most after a long and/or vigorous walk. When she’s given those legs a workout, you need only rest a hand on her shoulder or her hip, and compare the temperature to that of her ribs, to get a sense of how much excess heat she generates with all that exercise.

Barley, a dog, trudges along through a cluster of vines above a red concrete curb, along a slope that is at least a 60 degree angle from the ground. This photo really doesn’t do justice to how steep this incline is. I assume the landscapers cultivated ivy here in the hopes that the roots would hold the slope together and keep it from sliding into the street below every time there was heavy rain. Whatever the case, Barley is happy to pick her way along despite having legs that are far too equal in length for such terrain.