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.

Barley, a dog, looks up from a comforter that she has heaped and wound into a soft little nest atop the bedspread. A lazy Barley has a cozy mode and a sprawl mode. Beds are wonderful surfaces, but they’re sometimes surfaces, ideal for when Barley feels the need to really take up space. It’s a dramatic contrast to the Barley who winds herself into a little loaf by tucking every bit she can and becomes a canine lozenge.

Barley, a dog, pauses while trekking down a woodsy path and glances up at the photographer, as if to check in. Barley really can’t be trusted off leash when outdoors. She’ll pick a target on the horizon and make for it. However, as enthusiastic as she is to plow forward, she’s aware of her companions, and will occasionally check in on them. She’s not the sort of runner who is looking to run in order to get chased, at least not usually. She’s the sort of runner who assumes that her pack wants to go the same place she does, and charges ahead fully expecting the rest of the team to feel the same.

Barley, a dog, pushes herself up from a sploot with her front paws, but remains at the midway point, with her feet still sticking out behind her. If Barley it tired and rises from a sploot, she sometimes gets about halfway and just rests in this position for a bit while she waits to see what happens. Is there a reason to become more wakeful? Or perhaps an opportunity has arisen to snuggle up with someone before going back to sleep? This is the posture of a dog who is present and attentive, but could fall asleep again in less than 30 seconds if she needed to.

Barley, a dog, sniffs with great enthusiasm at a shrug. In the foreground, out of focus, a scrap of brown paper hangs from a tree that reads, “this is the murmur of yearning” in black calligraphy. "This is the press of a bashful hand, this the float and odor of hair, This the touch of my lips to yours, this the murmur of yearning, This the far-off depth and height reflecting my own face, This the thoughtful merge of myself, and the outlet again." -Walt Whitman, "Song of Myself," 1892 version.

Juniper, a dog, is lying on the bed and, let’s be honest, scowling at the camera. She seems very cross, despite having her squirrel and her shark as company. A long-time fan of this page asked me the other day, “Is Juniper… depressed?” While I don’t think that’s the case, she is certainly a dogs with big moods that she wears on her sleeve. When she’s had enough of something (whatever it might be), she quietly exits and recharges her batteries somewhere more peaceful. When she’s tired but also feels the need to remain vigilant, she takes on a long-suffering expression that we have referred to for years as “boo boo face.” Here, we one such instance. Look at her, being a huge boo boo. Not pictured is the party currently unfolding elsewhere in the house that is too noisy and boisterous for Juniper’s liking, so much so that she can’t really get much respite from it even by retreating to the guest room.

Barley, a dog, glances back at the photographer as she stands on a shiny smooth floor before huge floor-to-ceiling windows that look out on woodsy terrain that comes right up to the building’s edge. I’m all for architecture that brings in a lot of natural light, but I sometimes feel as though architects haven’t fully thought through how doing so will impact the resulting space. The notion was, no doubt, to give those passing through these halls a dramatic view of the woods beyond, but those woods are so close to the building that the glass feels much more like a wall than it does a window. Add in the total lack of consideration for how the space might be used (a bench along that stretch might have been nice, for example), and it makes me feel more than anything like this window turns the building into a zoo for the benefit of the wildlife, who would like to observe humans and their pets going about their lives while in captivity.

Barley, a dog, stares up mournfully from an expectant sit. At the edge of the frame, we see the nearly-empty bowl of popcorn from which she would dearly like a sample. It’s hard to say which foods are Barley’s favorites, since she finds just about any food to be stop-the-presses levels of interesting, but popcorn seems to hold a fascination even beyond her normal enthusiasm. Obviously, the saltiness is a big factor, but I bet the textures is also important. Not necessarily the texture in her mouth, mind. I think it’s how loudly it crunches in the mouths of others that sends her a big signal that, “Someone’s chowing down on something special, I better get in on that action!”

Barley, a dog, treads through grass. Close examination reveals that each blade of grass is coated in a thin layer of frost. One of my clearest visual signals that I’m far from home in a different part of the world is that the plants are the wrong color. There’s greenery of some kind most everywhere, but between regional variations in local species and horticultural practice, the particular shade of green can vary quite dramatically. Occasionally, my own neighborhood will play this trick on me. Leaving for work early one unseasonably cold morning and finding that a chilling fog has dusted every place with a patina of frost had me feeling like I’d woken up in a different state, or maybe even inside a black-and-white photograph hand-colored in pale, penciled hues.

Barley, a dog, sploots on a carpet with only her hindquarters in the frame of this animated GIF. After a pause, her tail begins wagging enthusiastically. Barley is very tuned into how much attention is being paid to her, and she’ll display some provisional excitement if she’s given an encouraging (but not definitive) clue that fun times are ahead. Certain words mean it’s time to hit the gas (“walk”,”eat”, and “snack” are all turbo boosters), but if she hears her name, it’s probably a pretty good sign and she’ll get the engine turning over in case there’s more good news.