Juniper, a dog, happily (if sleepily) chills atop the sofa by the window, as is her want, at the edge of a wide show portraying her living room. After a hard day’s work protecting and patrolling the homestead, Juniper loves nothing more than to be with her people as they watch some light television. She is, however, only sometimes a snugglebug. Just as often, she keeps her distance and chills somewhere elevated that she can lie down and keep an eye on everyone. Be a shame to lose that high-ground advantage, after all.

Barley, a dog, trots happily alongside the curb of a street with green gardens but no sidewalks. The presence or absence of sidewalks feels very arbitrary among the streets where Barley often walks. Frome one block to the next, they end just as abruptly as they begin, sometimes only lasting a fraction of a block. Of course, traffic is very light anyway, so this doesn’t pose a particular hazard to dog walkers like myself, so long as I remain vigilant. Perhaps the reason for this inconsistency is one of the mysteries bestowed upon a person when they become a homeowner.

Barley, a dog, sniffs among some greenery. Above her someone has suspended a stormtrooper helmet from Star Wars on a branch. Word is, deer have been encroaching further and further into the surrounding neighborhoods as developers figure out ways to turn the steepest, most uneven plots of land in the area into additional homes. I presume this cinematic icon was put in the yard in the hopes of giving them pause. Much as it startled me the first time I turned the corner and saw it, it doesn’t seem to have alarmed Barley one bit. I doubt she even recognizes it as face- or head-like.

Barley, a dog, lies in the sun on a love seat, atop an incongruously vivid fleece throw depicting brightly colored lizards. Barley’s a very light shedder, and my parents don’t go too far out of their way put protections in place, but one step they always take is to tuck in a throw blanket on the sofa and loveseat, because the seat cushions aren’t well suited to getting laundered. This has revealed a pretty dramatic array of fleeces that I had never realized they owned, presumably purchased at clearance prices during some sale or another over the years.

Barley, a dog, tromps her way through a row of small white flowers in someone’s yard. As I’ve documented before, Barley is disinterested in flowers to a comical degree. They are, by far, the yard plants she finds least compelling. Ironically, this means I need to pay more attention when she’s near them, because humans do care quite a bit for the flowers in their yard, and she could do quite a bit of damage if she were given free reign to stampede through them to get at the more interesting woody shrubs that provide their backdrop.

Barley, a dog, awakens briefly from a snooze on the futon, opening an eye but otherwise remaining as she is. Her paw is propped up on a throw pillow in a way that strikes the photographer as a tad uncomfortable. In addition to setting herself down wherever when she decides it’s nap time, Barley will sometimes exhibit a slightly liquid tendency to slide down the sides of whatever she is resting on. In this instance, she started out lying atop the pillow, and only later turned her shoulder a bit to wedge her face between the pillows. Her paw merely stayed behind when she did so.

Barley, a dog, trots along an unpaved path beside of fringe of wet leaf litter. Through the sparse foliage, the reflective surface of a slow-moving river is just barely visible. Barley can swim, but is not what I would describe as a confident swimmer. She’ll happily splash around in ankle deep water on a hot day, but if compelled to swim out into open water (say, in pursuit of a thrown ball), her eyes go real wide the moment she starts dog-paddling and stay that way until she can feel the bottom again. Mind you, she’ll still swim out to where the ball is, get it, and come right back, but that overtone of panic is hard to ignore. As such, I’ve not gone out of my way to give her chances to frolic in the water. She seems much more in her element on dry land.

Juniper, a dog, sniffs curiously beneath the countertop of a kitchen where there is both a big pot of soup cooking on the stove and an Instant Pot simmering on the counter. Whereas Barley is good in the kitchen mostly because she has close to no concept that surfaces above her eyeline can harbor unseen objects, Juniper is good in the kitchen because she wants very badly to be a good girl and hasn’t been given permission to investigate. You can tell the difference because Juniper’s sniffy investigations are much more directed: She knows something is going on in the kitchen, and she has a pretty good idea where.

Barley, a dog, sleeps with her face smashed into a folded throw blanket, such that it has ended up wrapped around her face like a soft taco. I had that post from a couple days ago in mind when I happened upon this photo from a few years ago. Just in case you were harboring any suspicions that Barley was actually some sort of comfort genius, her strategy really has always been “just put me anywhere, I’ll figure something out.”

Barley, a dog, puts her face way into a stand-alone shrub, giving the impression that she has a giant green sea urchin for a head. Barley of course needs to sniff just about every free-standing landmark that’s at dog’s-eye level, since those are very likely places for interesting smells left by other dogs. Occasionally, though, she puts her head way into a shrub and leaves it there for quite a while. This invariably makes me nervous, despite it never having resulted in a bad outcome that I can recall.

Barley, a dog, sleeps with her body below the shoulder on her dog bed, her head resting on a stuffed toy, and her wrist supported by a different stuffed toy, resulting in a coincidentally perfect ergonomic arrangement. Barley is, strictly, not a tool user. There are objects that she’ll do things to, but she won’t ever use one object on another object. This extends to maintaining her comfort: She has a very hard-wired “dig and twirl” routine that she uses to soften up a surface if it’s not soft enough or too lumpy, but she has never arranged herself a comfortable nest in any more purposeful fashion. Sometimes, however, she lucks into lying down in such a way that the objects already present enhance her comfort. The level of ergonomic support she is receiving in this photo is a rare thing as it is, and is only made possible by how many of her toys I leave lying around at all times.

Barley, a dog, lies on some patchy grass with a stick, with another dog nearby. Both dogs are looking expectantly toward the left side of the frame. My favorite period during one of Barley’s play dates is the point where both pups are pretty pooped and agree to take a breather. These moments of calm are generally short-lived - we see the dogs perking up at the sound of someone approach the gate ino the yard - but they’re a welcome indication that both dogs feel comfortable hanging out with one another. It’s just nice to know Barley has friends.

Barley, a dog, reclined blissfully on her belly, revealing the pink skin of her belly and a handful of age spots. As Barley has gotten older, she’s begun to show some scattered age spots on the skin of her belly, where her fur is no more than a veil of downy wisps. The vet assures me that these are perfectly normal and no cause for concern, but they nevertheless serve as a reminder that the tanning Barley shows on her belly every summer is in response to cellular damage. Fortunately, because her belly is so visible, and because she’s so keen on having people rub it, there are lots of opportunities to inspect her skin and catch anything worrying as early as possible.

Barley, a dog, stands on a concrete bench and faces toward the right side of the frame, as if noticing something from her elevated vantage point. Barley isn’t usually one to jump onto benches, but if the bench is sufficiently wide and flat, she’ll sometimes pop up on top of it to sniff at some alluring smell she can’t quite reach from the ground. This usually results in her taking a pause and scanning her surroundings. I get the impression that it would never occur to her to seek the higher ground in order to see further, and that the perspective gained from being up high comes as a little bit of a surprise.

Juniper, a dog, lies on her side on an overstuffed sofa beneath windows whose light is softened by sheer white curtains. As much as I love to see Barley sleeping on her side with her belly exposed, I love to see Juniper do it more. She’s such a nervous and vigilant dog, and I gain great peace of mind from knowing that even she can find herself those all-important moments of serene, restorative sleep.

Barley, a dog, walks along a sidewalk, past a sign pole. The edge of the sidewalk, the orientation of the sign pole, and the angle of the siding on the building in the background, are all out of alignment with one another. Speaking of wanting to correct photo orientation, I was totally flummoxed by this seemingly innocuous photo of Barley. It’s a cute dog trottin’ along on a sunny day! What’s not to like? Well, try and find a right angle anywhere in the frame. The siding on the building’s going one way, the sidewalk’s going the other, and neither agrees with the sign pole! I think what’s happening is that the building’s siding is crooked and the sidewalk is actually angled away from the wall slightly, which is harder to see because of the ivy. In the end, I figured the pole was my best bet for judging which way is down. Just goes to show that an innocent photo snapped without a second thought can become a real mystery during post-processing.

Barley, a dog, is lying on her back on the futon, gently smiling at the camera. The photo is rotated 90 degrees from real, and Barley’s pose bears a striking resemblance to a young woman doing a flirtatious hair flip. I’m normally a stickler for keeping photos oriented with respect to True Down, but my camera got confused when I took this photo and didn’t rotate the frame. I’m so pleased with how this photo looks in portrait mode that I’ve chosen not to correct it. I’m not sure what the ad agency she’s working for is trying to get me to buy, but it’s working!

Barley, a dog, glances up while on a walk, and the low angle of the setting sun casts a shadow long enough that it extends longer than Barley’s body length, and out of the shot’s frame. Barley’s main walks of the day ordinarily take place in the morning and early afternoon, but these summer months have a way of leaving my circadian rhythm a little disoriented. As such, I’ve been taking Barley on more evening walks than usual, and I’m not used to these long shadows being associated with such warm weather. In the context of my routine, long shadows are a winter phenomenon, and I found myself wondering, “Why don’t I feel more cold?” until I finally figured it out.

Barley, a dog, is wiggling on the futon! She wiggles to the left! Barley wiggles to the right! Barley wiggles all around! Barley pauses on her back to look at the photographer, as if to say, “Wait, were you watching all that?” With summer comes the peak of Barley’s need to wiggle. On the one hand, the sun’s rays can leave her noodle feeling a bit cooked, and a thorough wiggle in a shady patch of lush grass seems to help cool her down. On the other hand, with much less rain than she experiences during the rest of the year, I get the impression that her skins gets a tiny bit more itchy, in which case a drier patch of grass, or indeed the futon itself, can provide a bit of relief. The wiggles themselves seem to come upon her like a fugue state, and she comes out of a wiggle with a weird eye-contact-making intensity, as if she’s trying to see if she missed anything while she was out.

Barley, a dog, scrabbles up a big pile of mulch, sniffing with eager interest. Barley’s a big fan of mulch (as are we all). For starters, she’s not wild about getting her feet wet, and even during the rainy season, mulch is at once absorbant and relatively non-compressible, leaving her feet drier in the rain than when walking on grass or pavement. It also seems to be consistently interesting to sniff, perhaps because its absorbency helps keep recent scents aromatic for longer. I’d wager it’s a close second to decorative ivy for “ground covering Barley is most likely to venture out onto if given the chance.”