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?”

Barley, a dog, poses in front of some very sun-bleached tiles depicting ocean life native to the region. Gold Dirona.Gold Dirona. Alabaster Nudibranch. Red Tube Worm. Moon Snail.

Barley, a dog, gazes upward in a closeup that reveals small scratches to her snout. Well, it was bound to happen again eventually. A well-concealed cat, things happening fast, and Barley got what was coming to her. The cat, of course, is fine: They were separated immediately after the blow was struck. Safe to say, however, that no lesson was learned on this day, as Barley appeared entirely unfazed by the experience.

Barley, a dog, sits on a hill with enormous conifers behind her, stretching into the overcast sky. Granted, living somewhere famous for its rain isn’t for everyone, but I think there’s a great deal to be said for how green this makes everything. This is tree-growin’ country, and I’m grateful to the many parks that put really impressive trees (of a sort that wouldn’t be allowed around houses out of a concern they might one day collapse) within walking distance.

Barley, a dog, sits expectantly as the claw of her lobster toy looms in the foreground. On the one hand, the name is apt because the lobster’s face does not appear on screen. On the other hand, Barley chewed off the lobster’s face years ago, so it’s not as though it would appear if the camera panned left.

Barley, a dog, tromps enthusiastically through dry leaves on grass. Would that I could fully revel, as a pure acoustic experience, in the sound of Barley and I moving at full trot across a field of dry leaves. Alas, my eyes must remain open and vigilant, to keep this eager creature from eating anything she shouldn’t.

Barley, a dog, clambers atop a sofa in order to gaze excitedly out of a window at the back stairs, anticipating someone’s arrival. For most of the time Barley and I have been together, our orbit been narrow and largely exclusive. Her routine is my routine, and she is an enthusiastic copilot. Visiting my parents provides an opportunity to see her adopt a wider routine involving the habits of others. Every morning, my dad takes a walk, so she knows where to station herself to be ready for his return. In the later afternoon, she knows to check in with my mom to receive a little treat while dinner gets put together. While she still spends most of her time with me, it’s nice to see her going on these little sidequests.

Juniper, a brown dog, is very happy on her big brown couch after getting home from a vigorous walk. As much as Juniper’s mind is filled with potentialities at all times, as is that of any Dog With A Job, her opportunities to execute on a plan are at best intermittent. As such, she is no great athlete, and tires herself out pretty fast given the opportunity. Walks are an especially high-activation undertaking, since they involve venturing into unknown territory, and after a short distance, she’s all too eager to return to her command center, her battle bridge, her war room, the Big Brown Couch.

Barley, a dog, is caught mid-blink as she hangs out near some goats. There’s something weird about expressing gratitude for Barley. Not because she doesn’t deserve it; obviously, she’s a blessing to all who encounter her. It’s more that her gratitude is so immediate and automatic. It’s never a performance, she has only the faintest glimmer of an idea of “performing” in any sense. To take stock, to be deliberate in my reflection of how thankful I am for Barley’s many wonderful qualities, isn’t true to the essence of her spirit, which is to instead do so instantly and unreservedly. Food for thought.

Barley, a dog, sniffs excitedly along the roots of a tree, surrounded by fallen leaves. As a creature who gravitates towards edges and boundaries, Barley has many more perimeters to check during the fall. In addition to the usual targets (tree roots, where walls meet ground, benches), the heaping of leaves by winds and workers create prickly, fractal combs that can catch and hold all manner of sniff-worthy portents. The colder temperatures don’t hurt: Barley trots more briskly when it’s cold, so this season sees her zipping around like a kid on a scavenger hunt.

Barley, a dog, looks toward a house under construction that, aside from its roof, appears to be made entirely from particleboard. From time to time, I encounter objects in the world that feel so much like video game assets that they induce a wave of, well, “anti-graphics” sentiment. Here, for example, we see an object that’s giving off enormous MyHouse.WAD energy. I feel pretty confident that even a person with zero video game experience would agree that this house looks uncanny. I can’t tell if Barley, by contrast, has any sense at all of violated aesthetic expectation. Her acceptance of the world as it is proceeds with no hesitation or resistance.

Barley, a dog, is tuckered right out on the office carpet. On account of the time of year, I’ve had a few late days at the office recently. Barley, of course, would prefer to be wherever I’m at, so she doesn’t seem to mind, but her expectation that “someone might stop by to say hi” keeps her in her lighter, more vigilant “nap” mode for a lot longer than she would be at home. Here, while napping with an eye and an ear on the door to monitor for visitors, she has slipped into deeper, dreamier sleep. Which tells me that at least she feels safe!

Barley, a dog, stands in front of a series of shiny metal planters containing a shrubbery and edible vegetables. Of the various residential aesthetics I come across on my walks, “farmcore” is the one I find most perplexing. I’m happy to live and let live, of course; people can go wild with their yards as far as I’m concerned. I just don’t quite get why you would want your residential garden to look like a working farm. In my admittedly limited experience, modern farms are very much working environments, full of heavy equipment, paint that needs a fresh coat, and a patina of mud spatter that folks are too busy to bother to clean off. It’s a functional environment, not a demonstrative, performative one. So what is someone performing that aesthetic looking to communicate? It makes about as much aesthetic sense to me as fashioning your yard in the style of an oil refinery or a quarry.

Barley, a dog, lies in the back seat of a car, atop a comforter spread out for her convenience. Barley is consistently excited to go for a ride. She has now, however, developed too keen a sense of which car is mine. From her perspective, anyone milling about near a car is worth investigating, and the open door itself is practically an invitation. Once in a car, her enthusiasm is a bit more ambiguous than I think it used to be. Mostly, she sprawls atop the blanket provided for her. She may have come to realize that all it takes is one quick deceleration for her to gutterball into the precipice before her.

Juniper, a dog, sits on the grass in a yard and scans her surroundings while holding a tennis ball in her mouth. Patrolling the grounds is a regular part of Juniper’s routine, and even when the weather is a little rainy, she’ll still stick her head out briefly to check on the yard and make sure everything is as it should be. Partly, this dutiful reliability stems from her deep need to be a Dog With A Job, but there is also an architectural reason for it: Unlike the front yard, which she can survey from the comfort of the living room couch, there aren’t any windows through which she can get a clear view of the back yard for various reasons. So, the only way to really be sure that the homestead is safe from invaders is to venture forth and check for herself.