Juniper, a dog, is glimpsed through a window lying on a deck and surveying her domain. She has brought one her toys with her to do so. Several people have independently described Juniper as “cat-like” in various respects, and an important aspect of this is her level of solitary independence. Yes, she has her moments of wanting to be close and snuggly, but she also has her own agenda and her own priorities. Who can say what inspires her to take up a shift of watching the back yard? What inspires her to rise, satisfied by a job well done, and return inside with her toy? I’ll tell you this much: She had no idea she was being observed when this photo was taken!

Barley, a dog, stands warily at the top of a staircase, peering down at the camera. Barley does not like the basement in my parents’ house, and is not wild about our being down there either. My mom tells me that when Barley first came to the house, it was not fully dogproofed and she freaked out a little when Barley went into the basement, so she attributes Barley’s hesitation to having been told she’s not allowed. That’s no doubt part of it, but even when coaxed down the stairs, she doesn’t sniff around and doesn’t relax. Instead, she retreats back up the stairs the moment you take your eyes off her. Luckily for her, she doesn’t need to sleep in the basement’s guest bedroom.

Barley, a dog, sits on the futon and watches a snowy patio through foggy glass as small birds capitalize on a pile of birdseed. Once Barley was back home from her wintry excursion (her excitement was clear when she recognized where we were), I refilled my birdfeeder and threw some extra birdseed on the ground for good measure. Over the passing hours, Barley lazily watched a whole gang of birds eagerly refuel. Even with the curtains drawn, the glass on patio door remained foggy all day (something that only ever happens when it’s way below freezing outside), and when I closed the blinds that night, I discovered that the condensation had begun to freeze to the glass along the base of the frame.

Barley, a dog, sits in an empty parking space and looks intently at an adjoining apartment building. I did not take Barley for a long walk on her record-setting day, but even so she was giving some evidence of not being thrilled. Often, I post photos of Barley sitting, and if it’s an outdoor picture, it’s almost always guaranteed that she did so because I asked her to. Barley almost never sits outdoors: She’s either running around or flopped onto the ground. This photo is a rare unprompted sit. I think she recognized that the entryway to the building we were passing would provide shelter from the wind, and was trying to signal to me that she’s really rather not continue.

Barley, a dog, trots gingerly up a hill dusted with snow and littered with fallen twigs. Full-force winter doesn’t hit Barley’s neck of the woods very often, but when it does, it always seems to do so in pretty dramatic fashion. This year, Barley got to set a new personal record. You might think, “gee, this photo doesn’t look like much of storm to me,” and I get where you’re coming from, but what the photo is failing to capture is that we’re walking in 12°F (-11°C) with gusty 30 mph (48 kph) winds. I’m quite confident it’s the coldest weather Barley’s ever encountered in her lifetime.

Barley, a dog, snoozes comfortably atop a messy, unmade bed, the evident beneficiary of its heaped comforter and scattered pillows. I don’t believe Barley understands the concept of a “made bed.” If anything, her preference is for beds to remain unmade as a matter of policy, as this gives her a more varied comfort topography into which to nestle her weary bones for a restorative nap. I wonder if, when she sees me making a bed, some part of her thinks, “…dang it.”

Barley, a dog, sniffs along the bade of a retaining wall made of rough, uneven stones. One needs to set aside appropriate time when taking Barley for a walk in an entirely new neighborhood. Any surface that (to our eye) looks like it probably would smell interesting evidently does, and as Barley’s chaperone I find my pace slowed to something a little more akin to that shuffling through a museum, observing each piece in turn.

Juniper, a dog, fully arrays herself across the pillows of a guest bed and bleps with visible exhaustion. The holidays are a stressful time! A sensitive soul like Juniper, in particular, needs to take her share of breaks during such a time. Thankfully, she’s a master of self-regulation, and when she’s had her fill of the frolicking, she makes a quiet exit and zonks out in an empty corner of the house for a bit to recharge her batteries.

Barley, a dog, is seemingly being scrutinized by a sculpture backlit by sunlight. It consists of stained glass inlaid into a piece of driftwood that give the impression of a glowing red orb floating above an abstracted tropical fish. Recently purchased from a street art fair, this sculpture of my mother’s certainly captures one’s attention. Even if the lights are on in the house, the slightest bit of sunlight will catch in that red orb and draws the eye with all the force of loan shark grabbing a businessman’s tie to get his attention.

Barley, a dog, follows a trail of moss down an inclined sidewalk. Another quality fostered by hills are very specific moss formations. Note how a channel seems to be cut right along the edge of the concrete, beyond which moss suddenly flourishes and then peters out. I speculate that this pattern is the specific result of rain runoff. The runoff is frequently enough that it prevents the moss from encroaching any further to the left, but the runoff itself has been enriched by the yards from which it has overflowed, so it also encourages moss growth. This results in a sharp boundary, whose sharpness narrows and channels the runoff. To the left, currents too strong for outgrowths to get purchase; to the right, a ridge that draws from the current as Egypt did from the flooding of the Nile.

Barley, a dog, picks her way through a hillside of large, loose rocks, peppered with dead leaves. With so many hills around where my parents live, we see an equilibrium that I simply don’t see when at home. On the one hand, there is much less reason to use leaf blowers, so there’s leaf litter around. On the other hand, when on an incline, leaves simply can’t pile up very deep, as they are easily coaxed downhill by even a light wind. This results in a lot of areas that never manage to accumulate more than a moderate dusting of leaves.

Barley, a dog, peeks over the top of a sofa to peer at the camera through a window. A floor-to-ceiling bookcase looms in the background. Barley has spent enough time scoping out my parents as they garden that she isn’t willing to assume that someone merely being in the yard should be treated as sufficient reason to think they’re about to come back in the house. Here, we see a wary hopefulness: She’d like for us to come back into the house, but her excitement doesn’t kick in until we’re in the right part of the yard.

Barley, a dog, climbs up a shallow set of concrete stairs that follow a gentle curve. An environment with a lot of hills presents some clear complications to those fixin’ to stroll. The essence of a comfortable stroll, I think, is to be able to lose track of what your feet are doing, and this is precisely what you do not want to do while descending a staircase. I figure these steps are just about as long as they can safely get: Any shallower a grade, and the steps would be longer than a comfortable stride length, with the eventual risk of a rounding error and a lip misjudged. Barley, being as close as she is to the action, of course has this fully under control.

Barley, a dog, rests on a sofa with her Christmas mouse and black rubber toy. The sofa is protected by a holiday-themed throw, tucked into the cushions. I am given to believe that my parents use their sofas without covers most of the time, but it’s getting genuinely hard to imagine the living room without a rotating array of throws and blankets tucked into the cushions to protect them from Barley’s paws. For her part, Barley partakes of the furniture enthusiastically, the better to hang out with us up close and in contact.

Juniper, a dog, is curled up against her husky toy, forming a smaller dog orb resting upon a larger dog bed orb. Juniper is no stranger to doing a big lean against someone and getting a big hug, but she’s plenty crafty enough to make use of her surroundings to be gently snugged from all sides. I think, if she could manage it, she would welcome the opportunity to float weightless in snugspace, hugged by the universe.

Barley, a dog, stands next to a hedge shaped into a t-shaped tetramino consisting of roughly one-meter cubes. I’ve mentioned before getting a kick out of people giving their yards a very Minecraft feel by shaping some bit of shrubbery into a cube. This, however, is on a whole new level. I suspect it will be a little less cube-ish when all it regrows all its leaves, but seeing stuff like this in the wild makes me want to check whether I’ve got any hedge in my inventory to fill in the gaps.

Barley, a dog, lies on a bed next to a squishy Christmas mouse toy. Barley stomps the Christmas mouse right on its face while vigorously worrying at one of its ears. Despite making out like a bandit in this year’s gift exchange, Barley’s favorite new toy is also one of the cheapest, a deeply discounted Squishmallow knockoff, an elastic egg of a thing. It’s just big enough that it’s a real mouthful to try to chomp, and it’s so squishy that it seems as though Barley can’t get good purchase on anything other than its few minor extremities. So, it’s holding up pretty well so far!

Barley, a dog, stands beside a row of oversized Xmas bulbs arrayed like flowers emerging from a flower bed. No doubt this is to do a bit with my own frame of mind, but my impression while walking Barley during the last month or so is that Xmas decorations went up pretty late, only really seeming to materialize in full force about a week before the federal holiday itself. As a matter of pure speculation, I wonder if this is partly to do with how historically warm and wet the winter has been so far. More than just not being the most pleasant weather to be out in, I feel at some level like December snuck up on people a lot more easily this year than is had done historically. As such, I feel confident that people are going to leave their decorations up until pretty late into January to compensate.

Barley, a dog, is nervously parked under a desk on a hastily improvised dog bed made from a towel. Barley’s become slightly less nervous about certain kinds of Sky Noise (upstairs footfalls are very run-of-the-mill these days), but thunder and fireworks both remain sources of vexation. The trouble is that they’re both quite infrequent, so Barley has no real hope of habituating to them. Unfortunately, this made for a predictably fraught New Year’s Countdown. We made her as comfortable as we could, since she could hardly be coaxed out from under this table.

Barley, a dog, pins down a dragon toy with the year “2023” written on its foot as she chomps on its floppy horns. As much as I’m grateful for my good fortune this year, it’s hard to ignore how awful this year has been for so many people. While my sober assessment is that the turning of the calendar page will result in more of the same overall, it is my pledge to you all that Barley will continue to radiate a blissful, blameless innocence for all to enjoy. Best wishes and warmth for the coming year.