Barley, a dog, gives her nose a big ole’ lick as she looks at the camera, while standing over an abstract bit of chalk art. It’s no rare thing to come across chalk art while walking a dog, especially during a warm & sunny time of year. Typically, however, you expect to either see none at all, or a mixed pocket of chalky sketches, doodles, and fragmentary writing. I hypothesize that not only are most chalk artists children, but they also almost always work as groups, jointly doing a bunch of things at once on a shared canvas. This piece, by contrast, was one of modest size, and was executed in a controlled, systematic fashion, without anything similar in the immediate surroundings. Asked her opinion upon encounter the work, Barley gave it one tongue up.

Barley, a dog, looks up from her sniffing to glance down the wooded path that extends ahead of her a short distance. Barley is generally well behaved on wooded paths, so long as she remains on leash. In general, any furry creatures that find themselves in a wooded area, lurking at the edge of a path, make themselves scarce long before Barley comes a’sniffing, and while on leash, she generally understands not to try to go places I can’t follow. She’s even become quite mindful of staying on the same side of trees as me so the leash doesn’t catch. That said, I’ve seen her sensibilities off-leash and she will absolutely chase prey through the underbrush. So the policy is clear, even far from any roads: Without rock-solid fencing, the leash stays on.

Barley, a dog, has only made it one body length out of her crate before she has flopped onto her side. Barley loves her crate: It’s dark, cozy, and no doubt very familiar-smelling. However, at the height of the summer heat wave, it seems that coziness was too much of a good thing. I do not, after all, have AC. So, one uncomfortably warm evening, I watched her groggily emerge from what appeared to be a deep sleep, take a couple heavy steps past the threshold of her crate, and flop right back into whatever dream had been interrupted by being too damned hot.

Barley, a dog, wiggles enthusiastically on some cool green grass. Barley, a dog, continues to wiggle, now kicking in the opposite direction. Barley, a dog, shakes it off, sending waves down the length of her leash. In many ways, this has been a Summer of Wiggles for Barley. Never has she wiggled so vigorously, or in so various a set of places. Beyond merely trying to cool off by shedding some heat into a shady patch of grass, as she is doing in this instance, it seems that she has only this year mastered the subtle art of giving herself scritches through tactical wiggling.

Juniper, a dog, presents a handsome profile as she looks out the window from a room lit with warm yellow light and into a yard lit with bright, pale sunlight. Setting aside how regal and dignified Juniper is at her most contemplative, I love the interplay of light in this photo. The sharper edges drawn by the sun on her snout fade as we follow the line of her body back into a part of the room less directly in the sun’s path, while the contours of the rest of her body are revealed by the ambient light of the room she is in. The manner in which this both reveals all the details in the photo without being washed out provides some important clues on how to photograph things lit from the side by the sun without losing half their details to shadow.

Barley, a dog, is right-of-frame in a panoramic photo of a colorful painted traffic roundabout themed around rainbow salmon. I don’t think someone can fully appreciate how much of photography is a kind of orchestrated deception until they assemble a panoramic photo by hand. Focal length, in particular, is a deliriously weird concept to deal with. This is just the inversion of the problem of mapping the Earth on a flat map: The world isn’t 2D, so compromises needs to be made to collapse the 3D world onto a plane. For example, at a glance, this photo seems reasonable, but my choice to have Barley be the focal center (despite not being centered in the frame) means that things get increasingly distorted as the eye travels to her left. Note, for example, that this roundabout does not look like the road has the same width all the way around (I assure you, the actual location is sensibly circular).

Barley, a dog, examined her surroundings on a cold, dim winter morning. My sunrise/sunset opinions aren’t especially popular. In my perfect reality, leaving for work should line up just about with dawn, such that you can feel things waking up when you arrive. Then, the sun should set maybe two hours or so after you get home from work. As such, I’m quietly looking forward to the shorter days in the coming months. No shade (cough) toward those who enjoy the sunlight, of course! And certainly, Barley’s got much more solar opinions on the matter, and that definitely counts for something.

Barley, a dog, sits, squints, and pants in the sun amid a big patch of tall white flowers that bend their heads in the direction of the sunlight. We’ve had some hot ones this summer! We capture Barley here, beleaguered but dutifully posing for a photo toward the end of a walk. Her pace for the remainder of this walk will be slow, one foot in front of the other, and her two ports of call upon reaching home will be her water bowl and her bed.

Barley, a dog, stands in front of a monument reading “First house in Tacoma, built in 1865 25 yards from here by Job Carr, Tacoma’s first settler, mayor, postmaster, judicial officer, notary public. Erected 1964 by Pierce County Pioneer & Historical Ass’n Endower, Howard Carr Jr.” Historical markers like this one really tickle me. Setting aside the degree to which this marker was placed and then pretty much abandoned, I also find it very funny that the reason his monument is 25 yards away from the location it is meant to commemorate is that the spot in question is probably dead-center in the middle of a parking lot. Everyone’s got different priorities! Get in there early if you want to place your marker precisely!

Barley, a dog, looks up at the photographer from the bed she lies atop, surrounded by toys. Seeing Barley nap while surrounded by a goofy number of toys always warms my heart. Don’t get it twisted, though: she knows who’s a Person in her immediate vicinity, and if you get up to leave, she’ll check in as if to say, “Oh, hey, we goin’?”

Barley, a dog, pauses in the shade and flashes her winning smile. As a Florida dog, Barley handle the heat relatively well - she goes just as hard as usual at first, then starts shedding heat as soon as she needs to. In addition to panting with her housepainter’s brush of a tongue, she also pauses in the shade and rolls in damp green grass as appropriate. I know it’s anthropomorphizing to see this as a picture of her smiling, but from her alert ears and raised tail, I’m still confident she’s having a great time!

Juniper, a dog, rests on an enormous yellow beanbag in front of a blue wall. Same photo, but reimagined as the cover of Dune (1965). Much has been made of the AirBnB aesthetic as a slightly uncanny middle ground between the vacant anonymity of a hotel and the lived-in homeyness of someone’s actual home. For my part, I don’t find that aesthetic as worthy of derision as some others; I’m OK with someone trying to make a space seem nice without also feeling like I’m on a guided tour of the inside of their head. That said, I was very struck by the color scheme of the attached photo when I received it, and imagined that perhaps Juniper is dreaming of an ocean of sand in which she is an enormous beast and is worshipped as a demigod.

Barley, a dog, is photographed passing quickly through the halo of a bright street light during an otherwise dark night. Taking photos of Barley after dark is generally an exercise in futility: The much longer exposure time of digital cameras photographing under low-light conditions doesn’t play nice with Barley’s tendency to be in motion at all times. I had hoped to fool my camera by taking a night photo in a relatively illuminated place, but this was the best shot I got from about a half-dozen attempts. Even so, maybe there’s an aesthetic to how bad a photograph it is.

Barley, a dog, sleeps nose-to-nose with a plush snake dog toy. By virtue of their shape, some dog toys sort of get bullied out to the edges of the room more rapidly than others, and although Barley like this snake toy well enough, it keeps ending up under tables and such. Thing is, Barley also gets herself under furniture more often than you might suspect, whether it be due to fireworks, or thunder, or people stomping around upstairs, or the sound of my desktop restarting (which must be making some sort of ultrasonic noise because she acts like she’s been jumpscared every time it happens). So I was pleased to see that she and the snake had a reunion during one of her recent taking-shelter-from-scary-noise naps.

Barley, a dog, pulls hard on her leash to try to get to a cat, who views her with appropriate skepticism. I happened to have my phone out anyway when we crossed paths with this cat, allowing me to catch this candid moment of Barley expressing her unsavory level of interest in cats. Normally, these pass so quickly as to be unphotographable, and it wouldn’t be responsible of me to stage such an encounter. I need to be entirely clear: She does not want to be friends. She’s looking to wreck shop. For this reason, I keep Barley well away from cats at all times, and hustled her along to the walk we were taking as soon as I got this one snap of the encounter.

Barley, a dog, twists her head to snap at her sloth toy, which descends from out of frame with visible motion blur. Barley’s toys get flung about a lot, mostly away from her to give the illusion that they are escaping so she can give chase. Sometimes, however, I like to mix things up and throw her toys at her, whether directly or with an arcing trajectory. I figure these lobs give her a sense of accomplishment, because she is very good at snapping fast-moving objects out of the air.

Barley, a dog, sniffs enthusiastically at some fresh animal tracks in a shady patch of mud. Barley’s much more of a sniffer than a sled dog, so our walks always proceed at a leisurely pace with many stops. I figure it’s best to just be patient about it and let her sniff - surely, there’s a reason that particular spot is very interesting. Every once in a while, the zero points I’ve spent in Tracking nevertheless give me a glimpse into the sorts of trace evidence she’s no doubt sniffing around for all day every day. Here, for example, evidence of recent animal traffic is plain to see.

Barley, a dog, stands in a vast expanse of rough, poorly maintained concrete. Barley rarely seems disoriented, either because there’s some enticing edge to move toward, or because we’re already moving in a direction and momentum carries the day. In this instance, as we were crossing a large paved area, free of cars, I stopped to check on a text I had received. This took a moment, and when I looked down at Barley, she seemed unusually hesitant. It was about the same distance to a wall in all directions, and there was really nothing around at her eye level to look at. Given how little she relies on long-distance vision to navigate, I think the space was so barren of any landmarks that she lost her bearings and was waiting for me to take the lead.

Juniper, a dog, delivers a submissive grin to the camera as she glances away from the rocky beach she overlooks. This summer has afforded Juniper several opportunities to deepen her relationship with the sea. For the most part, this has been valuable growth, and she enjoys approaching the water under the right conditions (accompanied by her people, without big waves and with a shallow grade). Her early life experience of being chased by waves as big as herself has not been forgotten, however, and sometimes she’s still nervous at the water’s edge. Here, we see her signalling, “This is plenty close enough, thank youuuuuu!”

Barley, a dog, is photographed in profile, the flow of her fur clearly visible. Being somewhat nearsighted, I often fail to notice the intricacies of texture until I get very close to something. This gives photography a slightly spooky quality, in that a good camera that’s in focus “notices” more of the texture in a scene than I do when taking the picture. When I first examined this photo at full-screen resolutions, I was transfixed by the delicate currents of Barley’s fur. Observe the gentle trade winds along her cheek, and note where they crash with the flow from around the top of her ear, filling the loose skin of her neck with furry turbulence. Note the downey-fine hairs of her ear, so thin that her pink skin is visible beneath. Appreciate her whiskers, made of sterner stuff than the surrounding fur and jutting from the surface like narrow, tilting obelisks.