Barley, a dog, stands on a wooded path, in shadows tinted green by the light passing through the trees above. A quadrilateral patch of light illuminates the path ahead. I’ve been casting my thoughts back to warmer days, and happened upon this photo. While squares, rectangles, and diamonds are not such odds shapes to encounter in nature, they’re not shapes you expect to see composed of sunlight. Upon closer inspection, of course, we can see that this is partly an illusion created by a change in the darkness of the soil, but it was a very compelling illusion in person. An ancient part of my brain half-expected that when Barley stepped into the square, I would receive a popup message asking if I wanted to save her game.

Barley, a dog, trots along a patch of grass encircled by moss-encrusted cinderblocks delimiting what was no doubt a flowerbed or tended garden once upon a time. The Pacific Northwest is rather poor in ruins, relative to the rest of the world. In large part, we may attribute this to its abundance of lumber, from which very comfortable habitation may be built but that is rapidly reclaimed by the land if left unattended for any length of time. Given that sensible people build structures to be used today, not to be visited by tourists in 400 years, why bother building things out of stone? It’s a shame, because there’s something very satisfying about poking around a genuine ruin, one that’s still at the mercy of the elements, that’s not noteworthy enough to have a fence or a ticket booth. I enjoy the humbling experience of sitting with the knowledge that such a structure was the site (and likely the focus) of many stories that are have become wholly unknowable with the passage of time. Rather more modestly, it seems plausible that this rectangle represents the efforts of a resident in years past to do something a bit more deliberate with their yard, only to give up or move away. The unattended soil was no doubt immediately conquered by the surrounding greenery, and within a few seasons there wouldn’t have been any distinguishing the flora within the boundary from that without.

Barley, a dog, snoozes on her ridiculous bed with her face entirely buried in the overhang created by its floppy ring edge. Barley’s ridiculous bed is currently in “armrest mode,” with its foam-core outer ring folded back on itself to create a big floppy semicircle. Since each core has a circular cross-section, the top bit tends to flop to one side of the bottom bit, which can create a snug overhang. This, clearly, has its advantages for the snoozing dog. Not pictured is Barley’s reaction when, after very quietly taking her picture, I spoke her name and she tried to pop her head up, only to find that she had positioned it a little too comfortably, with no clearance for a quick awakening!

Barley, a dog, descends a steep and plant-laden slope instead of descending the stairs mere inches to her right. When we first took Barley in, she was quite nervous about climbing or descending the stairs between the first and second story. She needed a lot of encouragement, and once in motion she seemed to try to get it over with as fast as possible. It’s possible that, at that time, stairs were something she had hardly had to deal with. Florida’s a pretty flat state, after all, so it’s possible that her original owners lived in a single-story building. today, of course, she has had many years of experience with stairs, and she navigates them like a pro. She’s even willing to run up and down a staircase as a form of play. And yet, from time to time, she gives me these little hints that she wouldn’t mind an alternative. When I whipped out my phone, I figured it might yield a photo taken at an unusual angle, and it caught me by surprise when she lateraled and descended the whole slope without once putting paw to step.

Barley, a dog, is photographed at a pier, next to a concrete bollard that has been painted to look like a giant pacific octopus. Barley was genuinely confused when we stopped to take this photo. “Why are we stopping?” she seemed to ask, looking around for what could possibly be a point of interest. Given that she doesn’t even find television interesting, it should come as no surprise that she has never once expressed even a shred of interest in any painted mural or similarly representative artwork. These, so far as she is concerned, are just another part of the world’s texture that is irrelevant to her concerns. Her colorblindness no doubt plays a role, but a really critical detail, I think, is depth perception. She has been fooled by statues before. It’s as through, if she perceives that some image is flat as she moves (because its subject shows no parallax relative to its background), it is immediately disregarded. So these creeping tentacles mean nothing to her, nor do these looming eyes. As an aside, this happens to be the 700th post on this blog, which is hard to wrap my mind around. Less than a year left before we hit our fourth digit!

Juniper, a dog, is photographed up close as she faces the setting sun during back yard play. Juniper, like most dogs, goes a bit bonkers when her owner returns home from work. It’s only natural: Dogs have a strong sense of routine that is calibrated to their circadian rhythm, so it’s safe to assume that someone coming home at the same time every day will set up a cycle of anticipation and confirmation. When the weather is nice, this uncorked energy is often released into the back yard for a few frantic minutes of fetch, which more often than not unwinds into full zoomies as Juniper takes advantage of the open space to experience the joy of running at speed and turning in wide, race car arcs.

Barley, a dog, surveys the odors among the wet fallen leaves along a wooded trail. I’ve had a few opportunities to let Barley run loose on larger properties with a robust fenced perimeter, and one thing I know for sure is that she’s plunging into that underbrush at the first opportunity. Even if the plants seem a bit scratchy or brambly, she’s surprisingly adept at making her way through what, to my human eyes, appear to be impassable walls of underbrush. My second biggest anxiety about Barley being off leash, after her running into traffic, is her disappearing through barriers of vegetation in pursuit of prey. When we’re on a walk, she mostly intuits that the path before us is our intended road, but when things are as woodsy as they appear here, I usually need to keep her on a shorter leash to curb her forestwalk.

Barley, a dog, sniffs along the base of a wall built so low to the ground that she could step over it. Setting aside that low a wall can be a nice decorative touch, it amuses me to think that this wall almost certainly exists as a wall, a genuine barrier, despite its unimposing stature. The property to which it belongs is the last level surface before a hill begins that then descends steeply for what is eventually a 200 foot drop in altitude. This is not a wall that prevents the escape of children, or of pets, but of soil. Naturally, this makes it an ideal sort of wall for Barley: low enough to provide no real obstacle (and possibly even something to climb up onto), but tall enough to collect all manner of smellful clues.

Barley, a dog, is viewed in profile as she relaxes on a sofa with her bone. Behind her, a sculpture of a nude woman, black with golden accents, holds a sphere and faces in the same direction. My parents have had this statue for as long as I can remember (though not nearly as long as I’ve been alive, I don’t think), and like all objects one grows up with, it’s something I have always taken entirely for granted. This was no doubt further supported by various threads of art history & art enthusiasm among my relatives, leading to many visits to museums of fine arts. It was only in 5th grade, when a friend from school came over to my house for the first time for a birthday party, that someone my age made me aware that I had a naked lady in my living room! Barley, by contrast, is dressed in a much more reserved fashion, practically fully dressed. She is, after all, wearing her collar.

Barley, a dog, sniffs around among wet leaves outside an enormous floor-to-ceiling bank of windows looking into a spacious stairwell. Despite having previously photographed this window from the inside, I more often pass it from the outside as I wend my way around various buildings on my walks with Barley. The main point of there meanderings is for her to spend time outdoors, because it’s far better suited to her interests and also because she’s got needs. So I figured it would be fitting to capture some slightly more true-to-life conditions. Even so, I find I revisit the same notions: How weird must that austere, sterile world behind glass seem to any creatures passing by?

Barley, a dog, snoozes fitfully on a bedspread of gray and white. While visiting my parents, Barley’s favored haunts vary with the seasons. During the summer, she’ll spend quite a lot of time downstairs with my folks, but during the winter, I suspect that she finds the house to be a little chilly, because she defaults to staying in my bedroom a much larger proportion of the time. My room is, after all, the most effective heat trap in the building: It has the smallest window of any room upstairs and is a bit of a doldrums with respect to air flow. Putting my PC through its paces no doubt also makes a meager infrared contribution. As such, not only does this act as her home base, but she’s always the first to settle in for the night, with me joining hours later as a distant second.

Barley, a dog, steps off the sidewalk onto a patch of small, rough stones in what appears to be a low-water yard. I really appreciate a xeriscaped yard, especially when it has been done well, but I think that’s in large part because they’re always the stand-out yard on the block. Sure, the idea of landscaping that minimizes water needs and looks good year-round is sound in its own right, but I’m also a sucker for novelty, so any yard that stands out gets extra credit. When passing this house, though, I was struck by what the neighborhood would look like if everyone took this approach, with each plot having its own sunken bed filled with a different type of loose stone purchased in bulk. I suspect it would feel stifling and dystopian, like a housing project on the moon. The real culprit, in that case, would be the lack of color, so my advice to any one considering this design is to make sure there are some splashes of color that re visible from a distance. You maybe can’t compete with the GREEEN of a whole lawn, but even a modest concrete bench with some tastefully inlaid ceramic tiles makes a big difference.

Juniper, a dog, is fully relaxed as she watches an off-screen television, surrounded by Christmas decorations. Dogs, as I like to remind people, have a keen sense of what time it is, but no idea what day it is. Recurring milestones like “Friday” are not something that can set their expectations around, and they rely on us to give them clues about how one day might differ from the next. For most dogs, the ideal is for each day to precisely resemble the next - routine is king, because this makes it easy to anticipate what comes next. With this in mind, I have to assume that big holiday celebrations are universally disorienting for dogs, even if they’re fans of all the excitement. Juniper, being a homebody with a dash of castle doctrine, would really rather not, to the point of being totally overwhelmed. So, this year, her enjoyed a particularly becalmed Christmas, thanks to an elective, but substantial, dose of trazodone. 💊🐶💤

Barley, a dog, screeches to a halt and leans way back in order to sniff a low-hanging branch. Something I routinely forget about Barley is her dramatic spinal flexibility. It’s not for nothing that they make toy dogs with slinky bodies, ‘cause this dog can slink! When you add to this the basic stability of a quadruped, Barley can tilt her whole body to extreme angles that a really surprise for an upright biped like myself.

Barley, a dog, stands in front of a holly tree, its signature red berries visible on the branches. It’s only this season, in taking this picture, that it occurred to me why holly is a decorative aesthetic associated with Christmas. This particular holly tree is an imposing presence in my parents’ yard, but most of the year, its dark leaves provide a kind of camouflage. Then, quite suddenly toward the end of November, its bright red berries begin to appear, just as the surrounding deciduous trees have dropped their leaves. I had not made the connection before now that holly (and its bright red berries) are a Christmas theme because they’re one of the only fruiting plants to have such a striking appearance. It’s not holly that’s associated with Christmas; Christmas is the innovation that’s associated with holly’s vastly more ancient life cycle.

Barley, a dog, sits in front of some front lawn Christmas decorations, including a large ball ornament and an even larger arch that, confusingly, is a kind of figurative ball ornament. I can think of all sorts of reasons why, but my overall impression is that the holiday spirit is fairly muted in general this year. My own family is celebrating in a more modest, scaled-back way, and that seems to be true for everyone else I talk to. Now, this could of course be an information silo problem, but I feel as though there’s more to it than that. Walking Barley at considerable length this month, I’ve seen fewer and smaller seasonal yard decorations than I’m used to. When driving after the annoyingly early fall of darkness, I see fewer lights. Even this photo is misleading, because it was taken some weeks ago, and when I walked past the same spot yesterday, these decorations had been taken down and the house apparently restored to its non-seasonal appearance. All of which is to say, if you’re feeling exhausted, I get it, and I’m right there with you. I hope you’re taking it easy, and sleeping in. Don’t bother keeping up with the Joneses, do what you gotta do to recharge those batteries for the year ahead.

Barley, a dog, shows off her taco costume, which doubles as a sweater during a cold snap so long as it’s not raining. Barley’s now worn her taco costume for multiple Halloween trips to my workplace, and she’s always a big hit when people realize what they’re looking at. However, I keep the taco handy all winter long because it’s also a surprisingly warm sweater. Being made from the cheapest, non-breathable plastic fibers, it retains body heat quite nicely, and is also very quick to put on. That said, its main shortcoming is that it is also quite cheaply build, so I wouldn’t risk using it on any walks that (a) have a risk of getting muddy or (b) during which are likely to be rained on. As fun as it is, it definitely wasn’t build to last, so I’m trying to limits how much it needs to be laundered, as I fear it might fall apart if handled roughly.

Barley, a dog, glances sideways at the camera as she trots across grass covered in autumn leaves, without breaking her stride. Most of my time walking Barley is spent either watching her directly, or watching slightly ahead of where she is going to scope out things before she does. She, by comparison, does not spend too terribly much time looking at me. My understanding of the scene is that “I am walking Barley,” but her understanding is clearly, “We’re walking.” She only really checks in as directly as you see here (while on the move, at least) when I address her directly, usually by name. After all, when she’s confident that I’m speaking to her directly, the next thing I might tell her might be very exciting indeed.

Barley, a dog, lounges on a futon while watching the world through a glass patio door. While I would think of it all as “walking the dog,” Barley’s “walking” mode is very different from her “tracking” mode. The latter requires a lot more vigilance on my part, partly because it’s much more start-and-stop (and so much harder to match pace with), but also because at any moment it might culminate in Barley deciding to take a nibble of something she oughtn’t. We’re much more likely to travel in this mode when we’re off the beaten path, but being on concrete is no guarantee that Barley won’t catch a scent and lurch off tangent to our heading with her nose hovercrafting just above the terrain’s surface.

Juniper, a dog, wades out into the waters of a lake to give a golden lab a piece of her mind. Barley, another dog, happily observes from the shore. Back when Barley & Juniper were a dynamic duo, we did what we could to try to make sure they were getting properly socialized, so we took them to various dog parks. Pretty early on, however, Juniper’s nervous energy began to get the better of her, a preview of the wary homebody she has since become. One dog owner during that time jokingly referred to her as “the fun police,” because she was only calm when all the dogs were standing or sitting around, and she would get agitated if anyone provoked any horseplay. Immediately prior to this photo, she got very out of shape when this golden lab decided to paddle out a ways into the water, and waded out about this far to bark until the situation had been remedied. Barley seemed amused by the whole situation, never making a peep.