Barley, a dog, is photographed with her snoot very close to the camera, creating a fisheye lens effect such that even her ears are already slightly out of focus, and her feet appear tiny and distant. Sharing Barley with people via this visual medium doesn’t fully do justice to how tactile she is as a creature. Given the option, when not out on an adventure, Barley wants to be very close most of the time. I suspect that, at some deep level, she finds “chairs” (objects stop which humans seem to spend a lot of time perching) to be unfortunate obstacles to her quest to snuggle and/or tussle. She, of course, wants to be good, and so is responsive to demands that she not climb into nearby laps, but she does keep trying to do so, as if we’re all just a little too far away from her for her liking.

Barley, a dog, lies on her side in an office and catches a long slice of sunlight being cast through a window at a low angle. The low angle of the winter sun is mostly obnoxious for me, a computer user who is trying to minimize screen glare. However, that low angle, in concert with the deciduous trees being stripped of their leaves, also means Barley get access to some direct sunlight that are scattered and blocked during the rest of the year. Unlike her normal maneuver of curling up in her fortress of softitude, she managed to catch a few rays of the noonday sun as it swings low across the sky.

Barley, a dog, stands next to a water fountain that has a “no cell phones” symbol stuck to its side. They say that every warning sign tells a story, and I’m a little baffled by this one. Yesterday’s post, sure: people in a waiting area who are on their phones are pretty loud and obnoxious. But who is hanging out next to the water fountain as they have a phone discussion? Is there some other story being implied here? Are people… washing their phones in public? 🤔

Barley, a dog, looks at a “no cell phones” sign left on a side table in a college building’s lobby. This space has little to worry about from Barley. I’m confident that Barley can’t even conceive of telephony. Her world is very small and immediate, and (we presume) that she behaves as though the world beyond her immediate sphere may as well not exist. As such, she’s not expecting to receive any calls.

Barley, a dog, investigates a low garden wall decorated with a chaotic array of childrens’ building blocks and, behing them, varied rubber ducks. A few months after I shared Barley’s first encounter with the duck wall, I happened to be walking past when the homeowner was present, and complimented her on the ever-changing array of items she and her husband keep on display. She told me a tragic story: The members of the duck wall I had previously photographed got stolen! Apparently, they noticed some weirdo had been hanging around looking at them, and the one day they all vanished and the weirdo has since not been seen around. It seems impossible to me that there is any commercial value to loose rubber ducks, so the thief must just be an enthusiast. Fortunately, this hasn’t deterred the duck hosts from trying to add a bit of color, so a new batch of toys has since appeared, and will continue to do so.

Juniper, a tiny puppy, crouches nervously in the wet sand of a beach in a somewhat oversized harness. We had a sense of Juniper’s nervous sensibility early on. With the first month or so of adopting her as a puppy, we took a trip out to the ocean to see what she would make of it all, and she was not having it. In fairness, the surf was pretty strong that day, but even walking along the beach at some distance, Juniper seemed very unnerved by the rumbling crash of each arriving wave. We have since concluded that she likes water just fine, so long as it’s perfectly still and about ankle-deep.

Barley, a dog, lies on the futon with one of her toys, but glances with evident alarm toward something happening off campus. Barley gives me The Big Eyes all the time, but a key implication my being given The Eyes is that you see them face on. Barley’s got big, dark eyes. Even when Barley gives me her biggest puppy-dog eyes, what strikes you are these inky brown and black orbs. What I don’t usually get to see are the vivid whites of her eyes, since they only form a thin ring when you lock eyes with her. But viewed from the side, the size of her orbit becomes pretty difficult to ignore. I figure I’m not the first person to notice this about dogs, because it’s been a visual gag in cartoons since at least 1943.

Barley, a dog, stands in front of a fallen tree that, long ago, was cut. It blends into the backdrop, as if it has been here all along. Nearly a year ago, a tree fell and that portion that blocked the path needed to get excised. At the time, what impressed me was how disconcering it was to see a fallen tree with a bright cross-section. Over the last eleven months, the elements have had their way with that bright patch. Now, the fallen tree blends nicely with the backdrop, and one imagines that almost everyone walks past it without giving it a second thought. But I have not forgotten: The landscape is still changing. The level geometry is not static. The ending has not yet been written.

Barley, a dog, trots with great enthusiasm down a college hallway, so much so that her leash is pulled taut. Barley is generally very excited to investigate novel environments, but she seems to consider indoor spaces to be more austere than the outdoors where she normally walks. As such, whereas her walks outdoors involve stopping to sniff things every couple dozen feet, Barley doesn’t really slow down in a hallway. If only the janitorial staff was a little less diligent, Barley would no doubt have a lot more olfactory hotspots at which to pause and ponder.

Barley, a dog on a leash, chased her fancy under some overhanging branches that I absolutely won’t fit under if I follow her. Barley has become reasonably good at staying on the same side of any tall poles as me. I don’t think she really understands why, but both the sudden jerk on the leash and my scolding attention have done a pretty good job of teaching her that, for whatever reason, she should stay close to me when we walk past tall thin objects. She has far less of an intuition when it comes to low0hanging things (or at least, low from my point of view), so from time to time, she’ll get a full head of steam about some scent or another, and will try to bodily grad my entire self into a foliage I will not be able to pass through.

Barley, a dog, wears a fleece neck warmer with a cartoonish felt mustache attached that gives her big Hercule Poirot energy. “Excuse me, sirs and madams, excuse me. I mustache you a question about that delicious food you are currently enjoying.”

Barley, a dog, relaxes on her dog bed while viewed in extreme closeup. Beside her snoot are a tiny blue tigerbear and a equally tiny pear-shaped lightbringer. I continue to enjoy the small, adorable creations of Wolf & Ghostling, not least because Barley herself has been rendered in miniature by this very artist. I would encourage anyone to avail themselves of a tiny friend who has been crafted by thoughtful human hands. There really is something special to being able to glance to the left or right of my computer monitor and be reminded that someone out there Made This Fellow/Beast/Creature who now stands vigil on your desk.

Juniper, a dog, sits on her haunches and looks expectantly at the photographer. Then, she mlems, giving her lips a robust lick. Juniper is much less food-motivated than Barley, but she’s still intrigued by the possibilities of snacks. If anything, the food that humans are eating is more interesting to her than her regular dinner. Here, we see her patiently observing a TV dinner in progress, wondering if some opportunity will present itself. She is far too disciplined to insert herself into the proceedings and insist on getting a cut, but she’s thinking about the possibility that some morsel might make its way to her.

Barley, a dog, squints as the stands facing the sun on a clear day. My image of Barley is one of wide-eyed attention, but it occurs to me that this reflects two facts of my routine existence. First, I spend most of my time making eye contact with her indoors. While we are out on walks I see her mainly from above and from behind. Second, he time spent outdoors consists mostly of looking at the ground ahead of her, with her vision seeming to often act as little more than a targeting system for her nose. So occasions to consider Barley looking to the horizon, in the direction of something as bright as our stellar orb, simply doesn’t transpire very often.

Barley, a dog, sits with a large box of goldfish crackers and an enormous plush turtle. She does not seems to consider either to be worthy of chomping. The size of an object appears to be pretty essential to Barley’s understanding of their function. Her default understanding of plush toys, for example, is that they are very likely toys for her to chomp, but this ceases to be true if the toy in question is sufficiently large. She has never, for example, evinced any hint that she considers this huge plush turtle to be viable prey, and instead appears to think of it as a pillow. She also doesn’t seem to know that this box of goldfish contains delicious crackers. Thank goodness, because she certain has the tools to get into the insides of both of these friend-shaped objects.

Barley, a dog, sniffs at the base of a metal fence, beyond which is a lawn that definitely consists of astroturf. Some time ago, I expressed confusion about the uncannily perfect grass in this yard. Turns out, not only does this lawn consist entirely of astroturf (horror!), it turns out that such astroturf lawns are increasingly popular in this neighborhood (double horror!). I struggle to wrap my head around this decision. To be sure, lawns are an expensive to maintain, but there are yard options that don’t feel like being stuck in the model home diorama from Bettlejuice. Plastic grass also feels bad, whether to walk on or to sit on. So I find myself coming back to the question: Who is this for? This can’t possibly increase the property value, can it? This doesn’t look good from the street, so surely it also looks bad through the windows, right? How does this become a popular options, with a half-dozen yards done up this way within a two-block radius? Truly, humans are a mysterious species.

Barley, a dog, enjoys her dinner at her designated feeding station, complete with multiple layers of splash protection. For several years now, at the advice of my vet, Barley has received her meals with water. The trouble, it seems, is that she’s not especially fluid-motivated, and so often seems to forget to drink enough water, and we can ensure she stays hydrated by making lapping up a bunch of water a prerequisite to collecting every last morsel of food in her dish. Given this approach, however, steps need to be taken to establish a splash zone, because she’s not going to eat her food any more calmly just because it’s floating in water!

Barley, a dog, grips the base of a stick in her paws as she gnaws at it, having turned her head almost 90 degrees to do so. A subtle but substantial change that Barley has displayed over the years is a growing manual dexterity. While still entirely outclasses by all of nature’s beasts with genuine hands (such as raccoons), she is, today, able to position her paws in ways that consistently stabilize objects of interest and provide appropriate counter-pressure to her chomps. When she was first rescued, she really couldn’t do so at all and instead relied entirely on her mouth to accomplish things. This isn’t limited to objects, either. In those early weeks, she would gently nip at you to get your attention (a bad habit we had to train out of her right away, since it could be easily misconstrued). Today, she will instead prod you with her paw if she feels she’s not getting her due attention, which she never used to do. Granted, this aptitude has grown very slowly over many years, so it was easy to overlook, but the contrast today with how she used her paws back in 2018 had become really clear.

Barley, a dog, lies on a very familiar dog bed amidst the scuffed legs of a hotel room desk. Barley doesn’t spend all that much time in truly novel environments. On any given day, she is either at home (maximally familiar), or in my office at work (also very familiar), or hanging out in my car while I pop into the store for something, or walking the street in a neighborhood she’s now been exploring for most of her life. Even her vacations are, generally, a return of one sort or another, such as visits to my parents. So I don’t have too many occasions to see how nervous she gets in new places any more. I figure, better safe than sorry, so I generally bring one or two of her dog beds, so she can have an island of familiar scent if she wants one, as she did in this photo of us spending the day in a hotel room.

Juniper, a dog, is photographed up close as she sleeps, a tiny blep just barely visible between her lips. Not every dog who is asleep looks contented. It’s often not too hard to spot a dog who has fallen asleep nervous, or cold, or otherwise guarded. By contrast, it soothes the soul to see a truly relaxed dog, who feels safe in their environs and has allowed their bodies to entirely relax as they fall into a deep and dreamy sleep. Given her nervous disposition, my heart is especially warmed to see Juniper experiencing such contented rest. No doubt she is pictured here dreaming of knowing the perimeter is secure so she can watch her favorite baking show.