Juniper, a puppy, lies with her upper body beneath a bed. She has twisted her body into a J shape to peer back out past the fringe of the hanging sheet. An early sign that puppy Juniper might be growing into nervous Nelliehood was how much she enjoyed wedging herself under a low bed. Sometimes, you would walk into the room to see just a single foot sticking out; other times, her whole rump would still be exposed. She ended up getting the nickname “wormshark” because she seemed really enthusiastic about belly-crawling and generally wormin’ around under that bed, as well as doing the same under a weighted blanket, while leaving distinctive bodyparts visible above the figurative water line, Jaws-like.

Barley, a dog, cranes her neck over some flowers to examine some dry mulch just beyond them. I’ve commented on this before, but I remain eternally tickled as how little Barley stops to smell the flowers. She so completely embodies the spirit of that idiom in how she lives every day of her life, and at the same time would be utterly baffled to discover that humans think flowers are worth stopping to smell.

Barley, a dog, stands on wet grass. Ahead of her, all the fallen leaves have been corralled around the trunks of leaves and lampposts, as and to the edge of the grass. I understand the liability motivation for the unending scourge of autumn leafblowing: keep the paths clear, minimize the risks of people slipping and falling. If you own a property with a lot of foot traffic, you’re playing with fire if you don’t have folks honkin’ and whonkin’ those dangerous leaves. What’s a little weirder to me is the aesthetic of leafblowing as it applies to stretches of lawn. Surely, if there is wet and muddy grass, some level of slippage is inevitable, and surely, if the paths themselves are clear, pedestrians should have a clear idea of where they are expected to walk. And yet, the standard practice in these parts is to give every tall object (tree, streetlight, fence, hedge) a halo of dead leaves and clear the grass. It’s not a small amount of extra work, so there must be a reason for it, but maybe it’s nothing more than that some people want fall to look tidy? Mysteries upon mysteries.

Barley, a dog, poses next to a display case containing “Memories of Tokyo-To” on vinyl, by 2 Mello. I have a lot of art on my walls. I think it’s important to enrich your space with symbols and imagery that you find meaningful, and that it’s worth finding a way to do this even when finances are tight; maybe even especially then. A while ago, despite being a 100% digital music person, I bought “Memories of Tokyo-To” by cohost’s own @MelloMakes on vinyl for the express purpose of having it as an artifact. I then sat on my hands because I didn’t have a good way to display it. My patient vigilance has just now been rewarded, because I got the box frame pictured here for a mere $20 in a store clearance section. I then carefully measured and cut the matte myself from a bit of scrap I’ve been hanging on to for years. All told, my long-standing appreciation for this album (which I’ve kept on regular rotation for years) and the extra effort needed to figure out how to mount it make for an object that I’m thrilled to have on my wall.

Barley, a dog, makes her way across a big green lawn. Barley likes to run, but otherwise I genuinely don’t think she finds that lawns have much to offer. Even in Florida, with a pretty large back yard at her disposal, her “circuit” for running laps involved circling around the one dense thicker of bushes and shrubs and then cutting through it at high speed. Over and over, she would burst through the underbrush, get herself turned around and in position over the course of a big arc, and then do it again. Her ideal playground, I think, would probably be a patch of pretty dense woods with a couple clearings and lots of hidey holes. Too bad I wouldn’t be able to fit all the places she would no doubt want to show me.

Barley, a dog, suns herself on a wooden deck next to her very favorite black rubber chew toy. Now that the weather is consistently cold and frequently gross, what a nice time to remember when there was as much sun as you could possibly want (and more!). Of course, not all among us are sun worshippers, but Barley certainly got her share when we last visited my parents during the last heat wave of summer. I often find myself envious of how simple Barley’s needs are: Just give her a toy that can stand up to her chomps, a supply of cool water when needed, and all the Sol juice she can drink.

Barley, a dog, flops exhaustedly on her side, resting against a stretch of cool, shady grass. I had occasion to take Barley on one of our longest walks in recent memory, a substantial meander that kept us on the move for the better part of two hours. It was neither especially warm nor especially cold, and Barley didn’t seem to be panting, but she was walking very slowly, so as I matched pace, we were down to only perhaps three tenths of an amble. Mere blocks from home, she saw this cool patch of grass and called an audible: No more, it’s flop time. Naturally, I obliged, and sat on the curb beside her. Giving her some gentle pets, I could feel the warmth of her shoulder and thigh muscles. After perhaps five or six minutes, she seemed largely restored, and we finished our journey at a moderate pace. I don’t believe I’ve ever seen Barley go to sleep as enthusiastically as she did that day, hopping very purposefully onto the futon and immediately slipping into an unusually deep slumber.

Juniper, a dog, noodles around in the ankle-deep water of a kiddie pool laid out on a big, brown lawn. Juniper’s experiences with being in deep water have been almost exclusively negative. She can swim, but as soon as she can’t feel the bottom, no thank you, time to head back to shore. She does, however, really enjoy being in shallow water, especially if it doesn’t make any sudden moves. On hot days, she’s very good at keeping herself busy, staring into the glimmer of the waves she makes with her little tippy taps.

Barley, a dog, leads the way down a narrow side street. Some dogs on walks have a very clear sense that their owner is taking lead and their job is to dutifully follow. I’ve made no effort to cultivate that disposition in Barley, and as such she is often the one making forward progress. Mind you, I’m very much the one deciding which turns to make and thus where we’re going, but these are fleeting redirections. Since Barley’s main modes are “Forward!” and “Wait, that smells interesting…” I don’t know that she even realizes how little say she has in where we go. Instead, the extent to which she’s taking point or lagging behind is mainly a function of how tired she is.

Barley, a dog, looks back into a seemingly never-ending array of stairs and railings in a dense residential complex. I don’t get the impression that Barley really bothers to navigate at all. To her, it seems, the metaphor for the world wouldn’t be a map. Instead, I imagine that she sees the world more in terms of a Choose Your Own Adventure gamebook, with smell cues rather than text prompts. Frankly, I think she has a point. For one another, no matter how convoluted the architecture, I never get the impression that she feels lost.

Barley, a dog, stands before an inflated lawn decoration of a black cat, scaled up to be much larger than Barley. Barley’s fur along the line of her back is visibly standing on end. Lending further evidence that Barley’s instantaneous assessment of a possible animal is based on their silhouette, she immediately recognized at a distance that this Halloween inflatable was cat shaped and advanced with all due enthusiasm. As she approached, she slowed, and eventually froze, her tail lowering slightly and her fur raising. She did not growl, nor did she take her eyes off the monstrous feline. After a few moments (and managing to snap a picture), I told Barley that it was OK, and she glanced back at me very quickly before locking back in on the inflatable. Only with my cajoling did she made very cautious steps toward it. Only when she skirted around it and sniffed at its haunches did she seem to realize that it wasn’t a beast at all. That, in some sense, it wasn’t “real.” Still, as we walked away, she glanced back, as if worried it might pursue us.

Barley, a dog, takes a break beside a drinking fountain that memorializes Marion Pattullo and her dog Angus. I first walked past this memorial almost 25 years ago. It’s hard to miss, but it’s also easy to miss that it is a memorial. While I’m certain that I’ve read the plaque before, doing so never before made enough of an impression on me that it formed a memory I can today retrieve. Perhaps, in writing this entry, I can make a very slightly more durable mark on my mind. Once you start to watch for them, you realize that public spaces are full of such memorials. A bench here, a water fountain there. A brick wall, with names etched into the bricks. In modern life, even as we live less among the dead than ever before, we cannot help but be crowded from all directions by the memories of the living made physical. As I write this, I have within line of sight and arm’s reach two desk accessories. Each is engraved with the name of one of my grandfathers, at a time that the two lived on opposite sides of the world. They are with me still, but only and solely as memories. Marion Pattullo died in 1993, and she and her terrier Angus were beloved enough that a memorial was erected in their names. The man who designed and built the memorial in turn passed away in 2009. I did not know the woman or her dog, nor was I present when the memorial was inaugurated. The memories that it was meant to immortalize are evaporating away, leaving behind only a residue of stone. Of Marion, a scant few facts can still be gleaned from the Internet. A job history. A handful of pictures. Of Angus, we know even less. But we can infer from this residue that he was loved, and that he must have been a good boy.

Barley, a dog, investigates a malevolent “deep gnome” who has no doubt emerged for an unholy observance of All Hallow’s Eve. I’m generally inclined to agree with the criticisms that the gnomes of Dungeons and Dragons are irredeemably twee. A good case for this is how difficult it is to take “deep gnomes” seriously. Goblins, by comparison, can cover the full spectrum, from silly to terrifying, but no hero has ever trembled at the prospect of being overrun by deep gnomes. That said, the gnomes described by Wil Hugen and Rien Poortvliet are a lot more compelling, and I think you could really make the case that their Unseelie counterparts could be very frightening indeed.

Barley, a dog, tolerates having eyeglasses draped over her face as she tries to sleep. In her longstanding opposition to headwear, there’s never really a time you can put glasses on her for comedic effect. The other day, however, I just about managed while she was sprawled out on the carpet in contented nap mode. She was a good sport about it, and I didn’t overstay my welcome.

Juniper, a dog, eats a large carrot with tiny, dainty nibbles. Juniper, a dog, makes incremental progress on her carrot, leaving many morsels by the wayside. Juniper’s overall level of daintiness is ridiculous, but her approach to carrots is especially royal. Over an extended periods, she will carefully nibble away the carrot, seeming to consider whether each morsel is acceptable. Some, she deems tasty and chews contentedly. Others fall from her mouth, never to be retrieved. She’s very pleased to be given a carrot, and proceeds in this manner becalmed for quite a long time, but the mess she leaves behind could strike fear into even the most hardened crudité.

Barley, a dog, sniffs a little too eagerly around a picnic table. Aside from Canadian goose droppings, the Things Barley Shouldn’t Eat that pose the greatest risk always seem to find themselves around picnic tables. Of course, I get it: People eating at a table outside aren’t going to be as vigilant about food waste as they are when they eat inside. But I’ve begun to view picnic tables with a sort of vigilant suspicion and have Barley locked in my sights as we approach. You wouldn’t believe how many chicken bones I’ve had to get out of her mouth because I was just a tiny bit slower on the uptake than she was while near a picnic table!

Barley, a dog, curls herself up for a nap and somehow seems to shrink in the process. I sometimes catch Barley napping in a way that feels as though she somehow shrank. Intellectually, I know it’s all a matter of angles and partial cover (there’s a whole shoulder behind that pillow on account of how she has slinkied her neck), but I figure there’s no harm in going over and giving her a hug just to make sure.

Barley, a dog, sits in a parking spot and looks up at a sign saying RESERVED PARKING FOR AUCTION WINNER. Don’t you worry none, Barley, you can park it wherever you like.

Barley, a dog, is completely oblivious to a skeleton sitting in a tree swing. An amusing discovery I’ve made this Spooky Season is that Barley categorically does not recognize skeletons as person-like. Sure, if they moved she would probably be startled, but she’s often fooled by silhouettes, at least momentarily. Stuff a shirt and some jeans with straw to make a scarecrow and she’ll at least check it out. So such luck for the xylophone crew: She treat skeletal yard decorations with a disinterest that borders on blindness. As such, this photo was particularly difficult to get. She kept just walking past the skeleton, back and forth, and even when I got her to stand still in front of the thing, she was convinced that surely I was trying to draw her attention toward something else.

Barley, a dog, has her paws on two toys at once. Since Barley is pretty ham-fisted with her paws (just stomping them around in the vicinity of their target), she occasionally gets herself into a pickle. Here, she was trying to wrangle the blue bone and wasn’t quite getting it because of its round ends. So in trying to stomp it into a fixed position, she coincidentally found herself on top of this dinosaur. As benign as this may seem, her paws ended up getting entangled with the dino, and she could not manage to get her right paw over onto the other side of the bone because the dino was in the way. At the moment of the photograph, she is pausing and looking up at me as if to say, “Uh, little help here?”