Barley, a dog, wiggles vigorously on the futon in a close-up shot, resulting in a mixture of motion blur and low-light digital grain. The camera on my phone doesn’t do justice to the full glory of Barley’s most vigorous motions, and this effect is compounded in low light. Mostly, this means that I end up tossing some photos as too much of a mess to be worth keeping, but occasionally the result instead has an aesthetic all its own. In particular, I’m getting “fan photo of a 70s performance of I Wanna Be Your Dog” energy from this one.

Barley, a dog, looks right past a novelty skeleton jokingly buried in a yard, long after Halloween has come and gone. I definitely dig that some people leave Halloween decorations well into December (I consider it something of a holiday counteroffensive), but the funniest to me are decorations that, for one reason or another, have clearly been forgotten. The house overlooking this skeleton already has Christmas lights and a tree visible in the window, but the skeleton isn’t visible from the house. It’s only barely visible from the sidewalk, and is not on the same side of the house as the driveway. I genuinely think this poor fellow’s mori is no longer mementoed.

Barley, a dog, lies regally with her prey before her, a salmon-pink elephant with light blue lining its ears. On a recent trip to PetSmart to resupply Barley’s dry dogfood of choice, I happened upon these shockingly inexpensive dog toys, selling for $5 apiece, with the promise that for each purchase, PetSmart would donate $1 to its charity offshoot. I’ve not done the research on how responsible PetSmart’s non-profit activities are, but I know a bargain when I see one, and at $5, it’s certainly worth seeing if it’s a toy that can last longer than 5 minutes. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Barley was able to breach the shockingly thin material by breaking the pathetically weak stitching within a couple minutes. However! I then removed over half the stuffing and stitched the hole shut with upholstery thread (the scariest of all threads), and the toy has now stood up to Barley’s thrashing for months! Sure, it occasionally forms a new breach that I need to close with a bit more thread, but this toy represents the best value-for-money of any toy I’ve ever bought her!

Barley, a dog, walks alongside a fence, under the partial shade of light leaf cover on a sunny day. Certainly, I would never malign Barley’s lovely orange coat. But what if was more varied? Behold! Through the power of thinking back to a time when the sun didn’t set until after leaving the office, we can give Barley some big splotchy spots. Sort of an incidental calico. Truly one for the low-cost cosplay record books.

Barley, a dog, walks alongside a fence, under the partial shade of light leaf cover on a sunny day. Certainly, I would never malign Barley’s lovely orange coat. But what if was more varied? Behold! Through the power of thinking back to a time when the sun didn’t set until after leaving the office, we can give Barley some big splotchy spots. Sort of an incidental calico. Truly one for the low-cost cosplay record books.

LEFT: Barley, a dog, poses with clay likenesses of herself and Juniper. RIGHT: Juniper, a dog, poses with clay likenesses of herself and Barley. Closeup of Barley and Juniper’s claysonas, with Barley peering from the background. Closeup of Juniper and Barley’s claysonas, with Juniper frolicking in the background. I am happy to report that the absolutely adorable likenesses that were commissioned from Wolf & Ghostling have safely arrived at their respective destinations, and now safely reside with the pups they depict. I remain entirely pleased with the whole experience, and encourage everyone to marvel at their prior photoshoots. Separated as they are by thousands of miles, who can say when these puppers will next see one another in person? But at least they are together in spirit, and in clay.

Barley, a dog, is photographed curled up into a bean. Due to excessive digital zoom, the image looks somewhat smoothed and processed compared to a crisp photograph. I’ve never quite been able to persuade my brain that a low-resolution image has within it as little information as it actually does. Whenever I see something with a low pixel count, an irrational part of my brain insists that the image is somehow just fine, and that all I need to do is remove this mask that’s getting in the way. It’s like my brain thinks the world is trying to trick it with a translucent checkerboard shower curtain. Seeing what happens when machines try to “upscale” noisy images to smooth them out is a useful (if temporary) remedy to this digital delusion. There really is less information there to begin with.

Barley, a dog, does a little steppy as she scopes out a very crowded, lovingly gardened yard. Sometimes, you scope out a yard, and your first reaction is, “Damn, that’s a garden!“ I don’t mean some clinical, immaculate dollhouse of a yard, something that looks like its owners don’t dare set foot in it for fear of leave a blade of grass out of place. I mean a yard in which someone spends as much time gardening as the weather will permit, a space filled with a deep and patient fascination for things that grow. To me, the apex of a garden is not a topiary theme park, it’s not a golf course, it’s a collection. That’s the sign, to me, of someone who loves what they’re doing in that space.

Barley, a dog, presents a rubber chew toy. She does not want you to have it, but she’s excited for you to try to take it away from her. Because she’s missing her lower incisors, Barley is not the most adept tug-of-war athlete. She really relies on pincering the item in question between her canines and hoping that’s enough to hold it. Even so, she really enjoys winning the tug, so you’d be doing her a favor if you pantomimed giving it a solid effort, even though you plan to let her win in the end.

Barley, a dog, hurries past a big lavender bush. I’ve made much of how uninteresting Barley finds flowers in general, but I’ve recently begun to suspect she somewhat dislikes lavender. That might be the wrong word, but her disinterest in it seems more active than it would normally be for shrubbery. If I had to guess, I would speculate that its smell somewhat masks other interesting smells in the area, so she may have erroneously learned that it’s not even worth slowing down as we pass it.

Barley, a dog, stands in a narrow concrete staircase and glances warily at the ocean waves splashing up against the steps a few feet ahead of her. I’m sorry Barley, there was to be no walk on the beach this day. Furthermore, you do not want to be anywhere close that water. It’s pretty doggone cold this time of year. (There was no risk of her getting any closer. She was very wary of how hard the water was hitting those bottom steps, and of the loudness of the splashing thanks to the surrounding concrete walls.)

Barley, a dog, lies in a curved sploot, with her legs projecting back from her hips at a ninety degree angle from the orientation of her head. I continue to be amazed at how flexible Barley’s back is. It’s easy to miss just how far her hips swing during one of her silly upside down wiggles, but when she fully relaxes in a shape worthy of a candy cane, one has the time to really ask, “Wait, how she do that tho?”

Juniper, a dog, looks excitedly at a television showing an Animal Crossing character catching a whale shark. Juniper’s a big fan of television, but she’s gradually become more comfortable watching video games. So long as the visuals aren’t too frenetic or the action too loud, she’ll keep an eye on things. In keeping with her long-standing suspicion about fish-like screen beasts, however, she definitely needed to protect the homestead against this whale shark. After all, if they can leave the ocean, none of us are safe!

Barley, a dog, can’t read a sign explaining that having bowel movements is disrespectful. Even if they could, what would they think this sign means? I choose to read this sign as saying, “It would be disrespectful for your dog to sit on my Staples Easy Button, because I can’t afford to buy another ink cartridge refill right now.”

Barley, a dog, lays on her side on a futon, her body as relaxed as it is extended. I always love to see a dog blissfully asleep, laying on their side. I see such a dog, belly out and paws crossed, and I know that this is a dog who feels safe. And that’s huge. More than merely protecting Barley from life’s genuine hazards, I strive to give her an experience that is free from needless dread or thoughtless uncertainty. My success in doing so to date is a point of pride.

Barley, a dog, pokes around a stonescaped yard with an awful lot of faintly red, pink, and purple stones. Walking around residential neighborhoods, one comes to expect certain colors in certain parts of the visual field. If there’s a lot of blue, you expect it in the sky. If there’s a lot of green, you expect it a bit below the horizon line, at lawn level. One does not realize the strength of these assumptions until one encounters its exception. This yard, for example, is almost entirely stonescaped, with just a few bits of plant life in the mix, and even though its colors are quite subtle, it radiates an aura of PINK that hits you like a ton of bricks as you come around the corner.

Barley, a dog, sniffs at a stone pig. Its secret is that it’s not actually a pig.

Barley, a dog, stands amid some small tree and, viewed in profile, stares off to the left. Something I enjoy about going through old pictures of Barley is trying to remember what she is looking at. It’s almost never the camera - to the extent that I’ve posted pictures in which she is looking into the lens, it’s because I’ve positioned my face behind it to draw her gaze. More often, her attention is elsewhere during photos. So, ask yourself: What might Barley be looking at so intently in this picture? What has captivated her. Vote on your phones now.

Barley, a dog, stands on a patch of mossy grass that is encrusted with patchy frost. Barley’s not exactly well-insulated (having, in effect, only the wispy memory of an undercoat), but she handles cold surprisingly well. So long as a walk doesn’t take us too far from home base, she doesn’t even need a sweater until things are solidly in snow territory. However, her coping mechanisms for morning frostiness is a heightened athleticism. She’s no less excited to go on walks when it’s cold out (in contrast to her visible reluctance when it’s wet out), but she’s gonna go on that walk. If she had her druthers and if I was able to keep up, it would be a run from start to finish.

Juniper, a dog, sits on an expanse of grass and glances back at the camera over her left shoulder. My experience of keep up with Juniper’s life is very singular, because she warms up to people slowly and is wary of strangers. I have this guarantee that I will always be one of Her People, and so I can easily imagine being the viewer to whom she confides by breaking the fourth wall. This photo feels like a shared confidence. Knowing her as I do, however, I can guarantee that she would never address an approaching stranger in such a familiar way. To an outsider, I might imagine her voiceover instead asking, “…And you are?”