Barley, a dog, sits on hotel bed somewhere in the Southwestern United States. The tale of how Barley came to cross America corner-to-corner in six days involves a longer and more delicate backstory than I’m comfortable elaborating upon here. We will begin our tale in media res on a November Monday in 2019, at Orlando International Airport. The employee working the cargo desk took a look at Barley and declared, “Nope, I don’t care what the paperwork says, that’s a pitbull and we don’t fly pitbulls.” Suddenly, the plan for Barley to fly cross-country was dashed against the rocks. She couldn’t stay in Florida, however, so something needed to be done immediately. I remain forever grateful for those who rallied immediately to begin the drive from Florida to Dallas, starting at the crack of dawn on Tuesday. Meanwhile, I rallied my own forces. I couldn’t leave work until Thursday after lunch, and I needed to be back at work Monday morning. So my mother and I arranged to fly to Dallas separately. After two days of nail-biting stress, my Thursday consisted of work until noon, then going straight to the airport to fly to Texas. Once united, my mother and I spent the evening getting ourselves prepped: renting the car, stockpiling supplies, making reservations, working out how to cover the remaining distance. Late that night, Barley was delivered to us; a little antsy from being cooped up in a car for days, but ever her enthusiastic self. Without complaint, she…

Barley, a dog, is Number 4 in a lineup of Polaroid photos of dogs. Much is made, and rightly so, of the many large projects around the world that were derailed by the pandemic. I feel like there is an additional, hidden cost in all the small projects that met a similar fate. In late 2019, Barley had her photo taken by a staff member as part of a fun little side project to make a photo board of all the dogs at my place of work. Clearly a film camera fan, he had only just gotten started, and mere months later, he and almost everyone else started working remotely, ending the project before he had enough Polaroids to finish even the first row on the board he had planned to fill. Not a huge loss, perhaps; just another project in the limbo state of “maybe abandoned, or maybe on the back burner.” The truth is, though, the world is richer for our many expressions of creative nonsense, and is poorer for each one it loses. Projects like these, that compel a kind of sharing with others, build community. They give people an excuse to meet and get to know one another. The older I get, the less trivial these qualities seem to me. Which is my way of saying: It’s not just you who needs hobbies. Everyone around you, in a certain sense, needs your hobbies too.

Barley, a dog, patiently waits for permission to do something about the treat balanced on her head. Barley doesn’t really understand the command “Stay.” In general, it’s much more difficult to train dogs to not do things they want to do than it is to train them to do something they wouldn’t otherwise. So Barley treats the command as a sort of general-purpose “Don’t!” Whatever she’s doing, she musters enough will to very reluctantly hold her position. However, she won’t really stay put - if you tell her to stay, and leave the room, she’ll probably follow you unless you keep shouting “Stay!” from the other room. Still, she’s good at waiting for permission to eat, at least for a moment.

Barley, a dog, looks directly into the camera with what seems to be mild disappointment. In a live context, there are a whole host of dispositions that Barley doesn’t appear to display. She’s incapable of looking sarcastic, for example (everything she does is sincere), and I wouldn’t say she’s ever struck me as resentful (if something “bad” happens, her reaction is simple distress). However, when frozen in time by a photosensor, her face sometimes happens to thread some expressive needle, and you get Exhibit A, above, which I would describe as “serving the judges chicken nuggets.” But of course, that’s how you know it’s a photographic illusion: Barley would love some chicken nuggets.

Barley, a dog, lies on the floor with a manta ray toy whose face conveys a naked enthusiasm in stark contrast to Barley’s relative seeming stoicism. I suppose it’s very sensible that most dog toys have either neutral or happy expressions - even a slightly worried expression would add a grim subtext to any photos of a good-natured thrashing. Even so, Barley’s manta ray takes things to another level. The key, I think, is the choice to have the eyes looking somewhere - if they were pointing straight ahead, the manta ray’s happiness would seem unfocused and nutty. In any normal environment, however, there’s going to be something in the direction the eyes are pointing, so long as they’re pointing in any direction at all, making it much easier to tell ourselves a story. And if the manta ray is making eyes at Barley herself… Well! 😀

Juniper, a dog, seeks out dog kibble hidden among the felt petals of a large snuffle pad. Juniper gets excited whenever her snuffle pad comes out. I find this especially endearing because she’s one of the least food-motivated dogs I’ve ever known. A bowl of dry food sitting out, waiting to be eaten, has big “I’ll get to it when I get to it” energy for her - she just can’t be bothered unless she’s in the mood. But the snuffle pad! That’s a game and eating all that food yields praise! Or maybe she sees it as work? After all, she wants nothing more than to be a Dog With A Job, so maybe she interprets the cheering she receives as she snuffles as a sign that, “Yes! I’m absolutely knocking this mission out of the park!”

Barley, a dog, sniffs along the transition from patchy grass to dense shrubbery. Put Barley in any relatively open area, and unless she’s in the mood to flop and sun-worship, the first thing she’ll usually do is walk straight to the edge of the area and start checking its boundary. Whether it’s following along the base of walls, or checking out trees, or scoping out a drop-off, her understanding of a space seems to be principally focused on tracing its edges. No doubt, this is for two reasons. On the one hand, such boundaries are generally likely places for other dogs to have left behind socially compelling scents. On the other, wind and weather have a way of gathering crumbs along such edges, so if you’re going to find some Floor Snacks in an unfamiliar place, that’s probably where you’d want to check.

Barley, a dog, turns her head to the left, presumably in order to give everybody’s favorite look, Magnum. Barley places so little emphasis on vision that I routinely find myself perplexed by her head movements. My primate brain finds the narrative that she’s “looking” in whatever direction she’s facing hugely compelling, but I suspect the truth is that sometimes, she’s swinging her head around in service of her other senses with her vision unfocused and zoned right out. (Also, love when she does this dainty paw tuck.)

Barley, a dog, sits in front of a painted metal sculpture of a panda and a painted wooden sculpture of a grizzly eating a fish. Walking past this yard, I couldn’t help but feel that its terraced structure felt a little empty, as though something belonged in this spot. Barley happily obliged, of course, but I don’t think she really understood the brief. Let’s face it, Barley would definitely be That Person who ignores the direction everyone is facing in an elevator, and who instead turns around and starts talking to everyone. I don’t think she’ll be cast as a yard ornament any time soon.

Barley, a dog, lounges in a sunbeam on a sofa beside her favorite toy, and looks back at the camera. Here, we see Barley with four of her five fundamental Wants being satisfied: Soft, Sun, Toy, and Friend (in the form of the implied photographer). The only thing missing is Food.

Barley, a dog, rests on a patch of grass and looks back at a hilly street she has just climbed. Barley’s stamina is middling at best, especially in hot weather. She’s a trooper, of course, and will do what she can to keep pace, but from time to time, she signals that it’s time for a break and doesn’t so much lie down as let herself plop. In this case, a half dozen consecutive blocks up steep hills was just about what she could manage before it was time for a 5-minute breather.

Barley, a dog, is collarless and still visibly moist after a bath. As I’ve mentioned before, I’m always unnerved whenever I see Barley without her collar on, even when I’m the one who took it off to give her a bath. What I’ve further realized is that really any dog without a collar grabs my eye as it passes. It’s precisely akin to a shirtless Donald Duck: “Nudity is occurring, one should at least remain vigilant.” The generality of this effect impressed me recently when Barley and I encounters a tiny collarless dog, standing defiantly in our path. Even from a ten pound dog, standing around outdoors collarless is an undeniable a power move. (The tiny dog was fine in the end, by the way. He had managed to back up out of his collar and freed himself from a yard tether. I was able to keep him in a standoff long enough for his owner to find us and retrieve him.)

Juniper, a dog, balances on her hind legs as she watches to see whether a tennis ball offscreen will be thrown up or out into the yard behind her. Unsurprisingly, Juniper loves fetch. Her instincts to sprint and pursue are strong, but beyond that she Wants To Help with every fiber of her being, so she lives for the enthusiastic praise she receives when she brings the ball back. Being the smartie that she is, it’s important to mix things up, so sometimes the ball gets tossed up instead of forward. While Juniper’s not particularly good at catching a ball in midair, she does what she can. If the ball’s trajectory is especially vertical and she catches it right next to you, the need to run remains unsatisfied and she’ll take the ball for a little victory sprint before returning it for the next toss.

Barley, a dog, sploots contentedly on a vast expanse of grass, lit from directly overhead by a cloudless sky. I can say with some confidence that Barley’s eyes are fully unfocused, lidded just enough to keep the sun at bay but unfocused on that middle distance. Only the pricking of her ears this way and that, and a steady sniff cycle sampling the breeze, signal her sensory impressions as she sun-roasts.

Barley, a dog, is curled up atop a very lofty dog bed on top of a second dog bed. Barley is enjoying her Fortress of Softitude, but perhaps because it is so squishy, she favors it mainly when she feels the need to sleep deeply. Here, we see her only gradually awakening from a cocoon of sleep. When her naps are of a more vigilant sort, the kind from which she can spring into action (perhaps because of someone coming to my office), she prefers a surface with a little less give, the better to go from zero to standing in less than two seconds.

Barley, a dog, stands on a hill in front of a sign reading, “Make Orwell fiction again.” If I’m being honest, I’m consistently frustrated by people who see fiction as a sort of “fun aquarium” for problematic ideas. As if, somehow, producing fiction is an act of exorcism, a thing that banishes what we dislike to the Fiction Realm by bathing it in literary sunlight. Such people tend to be uncomfortable with the idea that, for example, Orwell’s writing is no more or less fictional than it was at the time it was published, and that literary works that have staying power do so not because they are containment zones, but because they are mirrors.

Barley, a dog, peers down from the top of a narrow staircase. Barley knows only one way to handle stairs, whether ascending or descending: A dead sprint. Given a cue (or even a misunderstood gesture) she barrels up the stairs as if chasing a mechanical rabbit mounted on the handrail. Given this hair-trigger approach, it’s not uncommon for her to misread the situation and climb the stairs alone. Her high-strung astonishment when no one follows her delights me to no end. Real Charlie Brown going for the football energy.

Barley, a dog, stands on a large lawn turned brown from the heat. Across a cobbled road is another law that remains a vibrant green. One of the many reasons I loathe homeowner associations is the outward uniformity they enforce on a neighborhood. I much prefer to walk around a swanky area and be able to spot at a distance which residents are willing to drench their lawns in a heat wave to keep them green and which have the wisdom to know that green grass will return with the rains.

Barley, a dog, fusses over a plush dog toy in the shape of a boar. Even after all this time, I don’t have a great track record of figuring out which toys Barley will get most excited about. Some of her nicer toys have barely warranted a second sniff, while other cheaper ones continue to beguile her. It seems like this boar is going to be another favorite, despite being cheaply made of stiff fabric and wiry fur. So when I’m out shopping, I keep a lookout for toys being sold at clearance prices and roll the dice on them pretty often. No point in trying to overthink Barley’s unpretentious taste in prey.

Juniper, a dog, rests atop a plush shark tow, atop a pillow, atop a dog bed, atop a sofa. Juniper, a dog, gently fusses with her plush shark toy. The condition of Baby Shark is all the more remarkable when you consider that is has been a beloved toy of Juniper’s for very nearly her entire life, now over 6 years. Such is her care in handling it: She carries it by the scruff and doesn’t roughhouse with it. She’ll gently fuss over it and reposition it with her paws and mouth, then vibe with it like a childhood friend.