Barley, a dog, stands beside a makeshift barrier on a wooden deck. When a summer habit of leaving the door onto the deck open found itself at odds with having forgotten to pack the gate to keep Barley from wandering off into the neighborhood, a committee was convened to assess possible stopgap measures. While the resulting design did indeed stop both the figurative and literal gaps, it also led to some visible consternation on the part of some subsequent package delivery folk.

Barley, a dog, sleeps atop a heap of plush dog toys, on a dog bed, all crammed onto a futon. There’s a great deal of unevenness is Barley’s toy preference. The toy she chooses to thrash when she’s feeling feisty tilts heavily toward those that are floppier and fuzzier, and the mere act of thrashing tends to spread toys out, pushing the less popular candidates off into corners. As such, there is no natural scenario in which her toys will become heaped in one place; such stacking is instead some contrived move on my part, a Deus Ex Vacuo when it’s time to clean the carpet. Despite never arranging them in this way herself, Barley’s a big fan of these heaps when they happen, and will plop herself down right on top of them all to snooze for as long as the heap endures.

Juniper, a puppy, wrestles with Kona, another puppy. Juniper was the smallest puppy in a litter of eleven who were born into the shelter from which we adopted her. At a scant 16 weeks of age, she was taking frequent walks around the apartment complex where we were living at the time. One such sunny day, a guy walking a puppy of his own spotted me from a distance, then ran over to me and shouted, with clear enthusiasm, “Is that a Fairy puppy?!” Indeed it was, for Fairy was Juniper’s black mouth cur mother. Kona, the dark-snouted pup tusslin’ with Juniper in this photo, is Juniper’s brother, born in the same litter. The mutual recognition was immediate and they started bumbling all over one another with such vigor that we let them both off leash so they wouldn’t tie each other into a puppy knot. As it turns out, another couple in the complex had coincidentally adopted Kona from the same shelter, and having spotted us in the distance, his owner decided, correctly, that the pups looked similar enough to ask. Ultimately, Juniper and Kona never spent all that much time together. They would see one another around the property from time to time, but before long everyone had moved away from that apartment complex anyway. Nevertheless, their few brief orbits around one another before their paths diverged was one of the factors that inspired us to consider adopting a second dog soon. Barley joined us only a few…

Barley, a dog, stands high atop a gravel pile and seems astonished by all it allows her to see. In keeping with her spirit of taking the world exactly as it comes to her, Barley does not seem to realize that climbing on top of things lets you see much further into the distance. In this case, she needed to be actively cajoled into climbing this gravel pile. Once she was up there, however, her whole body sort of stilled as she panned her head left and right, as if astonished that a whole new topography had sprung up from behind her horizon line.

Barley, a dog, sits at attention with an expectant look. If you, dear reader, have been following along with these posts for any length of time, you know that this is not a Barley At Rest. This is a vision of a Barley with a large amount of potential energy, a wound spring ready to leap into action. She doesn’t have an objective yet: I’m not holding a treat (or else she would be fully focused, wide-eyed and close-mouthed) or a toy she wants to play (or else she would be on her feet). Despite this, she’s clearly ready for whatever comes next, and she’s pretty sure it’s going to be good.

Barley, a dog, grins and pants in the sunlight. Done judiciously, I think there’s a lot of aesthetic value in photography with “incorrect” exposure levels. As no great solarbaby myself, I’ve often had the experience of finding the day to be “too sunny” and never feeling like I can see clearly even after my eyes have had time to adjust. Given how enthusiastic Barley is about squinting in the radiant heat of summer sunshine, my phone’s slightly overwhelmed sensor is capturing something essential about how she must be feeling at this moment.

Barley, a dog, chews forcefully on a toy bone made of black rubber. Among Barley’s “just for chewing” toys, her Mammoth TireBiter bone is the clear favorite. If she’s beside herself with excitement and is told to “go get a toy” to displace that excitement, she’ll almost always grab this bone if she has a clear sightline to it. When she chews on it, she does so with an almost trance-like intensity, her eyes unfocused and the rest of her body slack and forgotten as her will is concentrated in her jaw. I enjoy idly wondering what kind of canine emotion underpins this all-business chompin’.

Barley, a dog, happens to turn to face in the same direction as a concrete owl statue. I feel I can say with confidence that Barley is always standing in the place that she lives, but does not think about direction and has never once wondered why she hasn’t before.

Barley, a dog, is photographed from the shoulders up in 3/4 profile. I’m routinely struck by how strikingly, unpretentiously photogenic Barley is. No doubt, this cohost account has rewired my brain a bit to be on the lookout for photo opportunities, but as much I’m biased, I feel like Barley approaches some Platonic ideal for some Kind Of Dog. On the one hand, this makes the chain of happenstance that brought her and I together feel all the more unlikely (an illusion, of course, since everything in life is the exception and there is no rule); on the other hand, it makes her complete innocence, her constitutional inability to exhibit vanity, all the more endearing.

Juniper, a dog, is snuggled up with Barley, another dog, on a dog beg that is made extra-comfy by an additional pillow. It’s wild to think that this photo is from over 5 years ago. Eagle-eyed fans will notice both that Barley is not yet wearing her signature high-viz collar, nor does Juniper have any gray around her snout at all. Here, we see the adoptive sisters after living together for mere weeks, and over a year before they would eventually be separated by thousands of miles. Each is now living a full and exciting life on their respective coast, but I can’t help but be nostalgic for that period in their then-young lives when they were thick as thieves.

Barley, a dog, sniffs at a patch of plants whose leaves are covered in a fine white hair-like surface, creating the appearance of being “dusty.” Growing up, my father made several attempts to interest me in gardening, never with any success. So complete was my lack of interest that he improvised various tactics, one of which was a scheme to award me a quarter any time he was gardening and I identified a plant in the yard. I learned exactly one plant name: “Dusty Miller,” an ornamental plant that comes in many strains, all of which have thick ‘trichomes’ on their surface, making them look hairy, fuzzy, or dusty (depending on your distance from them). Daily, over a summer week, I would exit the house and ambush my father, pointing to the plant and declaring that I could identify Dusty Miller; upon receiving my quarter, I would turn on my heels and return inside. Eventually, my frustrated father cut me off, but not before demanding to know why I hadn’t bothered to learn any of the other plants (which I genuinely couldn’t tell apart). He wasn’t satisfied by the reply that I didn’t see what was wrong with coming out 25¢ ahead. The irony of it all is that I’m not even 100% sure Barley is sniffing Dusty Miller in this photo.

Barley, a dog, looks up quizzically from the car backseat on which she is laying. This proved a surprisingly difficult photo to take, because I was sharing the back seat with Barley at the time, and she was adamant that the best place for her head was on my lap. This resulted in an angle I couldn’t square with my desire to get the monkey in frame. After a bit of cajoling, she finally looked up at me with what felt at the time as an admonition that I should stop squirming around so she could snooze, and I was able to snap this pic and then relent, letting her drift off as the highway sped along beneath us.

Barley, a dog, scans the neighborhood as she sits in front of a lavender bush. I was struck by visual synergy of Barley’s blue-themed accessories, the bright blue sky, and the blue-indigo of some particularly bright lavender. However, I quickly realized that we would have to press on before I could take too many pictures. The lavender, you see, had attracted a rather large number of bees, and moments after taking this picture, Barley began to get a little too curious about their slow, hovering flight right at her eye line. So we pressed on.

Barley, a dog, sleeps awkwardly on a dog bed that has been temporarily put up on a futon, such that her butt hangs over the edge. Barley will often take refuge on her bed when I put it up to vacuum, having learned that the vacuum “can’t get her” when she’s up on a piece of furniture. This does, on occasion, degenerate into bad all-around compromises, as we see here, in which Barley has managed to somehow fall asleep despite her butt hanging unambiguously over the edge, her dog bed providing only the illusion of support.

Barley, a dog, lines herself up parallel with the floor to reach the deep recesses of a jar of peanut butter. Since Barley will happily eat just about anything, our societal norms around packaging waste provide a steady supply of momentary toys in the form of flavored vessels. Yogurt goes the fastest, and is already a staple of Barley’s diet, but every once in a great while, the emptying of a jar of peanut butter will herald a prolonged licking campaign. To her credit, Barley doesn’t try to lift or carry a glass jar, perhaps because it’s heavy enough that it stays more or less in place as she snakes her tongue as far in as she can, and we always keep an eye on her for the duration, but she’ll keep it up for a long time before she decides the last remaining dregs are beyond her reach.

Barley, a dog, bleps after dropping her monkey onto a sunlit porch. Barley has fully embraced the return of Hot Sunny Days, and is here seen channeling her Inner Juniper by showing a monkey some sunshine. Since she loves this one patch of porch so much (it being the only area that remains sun-baked across the whole of an afternoon), I have to keep an eye out because she will often bring toys in her excitement to be outside, only to then leave them behind when she comes back in.

Juniper, a dog, bleps ever so slightly when presented with a dog treat decorated to commemorate her birthday. As noted the day of on a recent BarleyPost, it was also Juniper’s birthday recently, and in the last week I have come into possession of this delightful bit of photo evidence of her own celebration at the time. This photo subtextually tells us a lot about the difference between Barley and Juniper. When you proffer a treat unto Barley, her eyes lock onto the treat, glancing back at you only occasionally to see what you might do with it. When you proffer a treat unto Juniper, her eyes focus squarely on you instead of the treat.

Barley, a dog, sprawls out snoozy at her full length on a couch, her back snug against its backrest. From Barley’s point of view, the couch is a chart-topping variety of furniture, eclipsed only by the human bed, because both provide the opportunity to snooze comfortably in the immediate proximity of (and even in physical contact with) a buddy. In days of yore, Barley would often seek out wherever Juniper was napping and snuggle up with her, and if she today perceives a human spending time on a sufficiently large piece of furniture, she’ll want to join them to do the same. In practice, Barley is game to spend her time doing just about anything, so long as she gets to do it with you.

Barley, a dog, braces herself to pursue a squirrel that has just bolted across a set of train tracks. Fear not, Barley was immediately dissuaded from diving into the ditch, scrambling up the rockpile, and crossing the tracks in pursuit of the prey animal that her posture so plainly signals she has seen. But were it not for the leash, she absolutely would have done so. It is precisely this thrill of the chase, which I can’t really compete with, that makes keeping her on leash a necessity in any unfenced area.

Barley, a dog, looks up at the photographer without understanding, after having been presented with a page from the Codex Seraphinianus. I first learned of the Codex Seraphinianus in the early 2000s. It’s a remarkable object, a sort of asemic curio that mixes writing in a nonsense non-language with uncanny illustrations that feel like they lie just across a boundary that renders them unhelpful. Reading it gives an adult a flavor of the feeling a small, pre-literate child might feel when picking up a reference book without yet being able to understand its contents. However, when I first learned of this object, it was effectively out of print, and used copies of its luxurious single-volume edition from the 1980s were routinely selling for over $600, far too rich for my blood. However, when country went into lockdown in the spring of 2020, I discovered to my delight that when I hadn’t been paying attention, a new edition of the book had been issued that brought its price point down from prohibitive to merely irresponsible, so I decided to purchase it and a number of other self-indulgent titles from local booksellers who I earnestly wished to support while their retail locations remained closed. It is now one of my treasured possessions. Perhaps fittingly, Barley has never needed any help with the experience of being a pre-literate creature, and I can’t say she found its approximate illustrations of dogs to be even a little illuminating.