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.

Barley, a dog, is wearing a slouchy tigerprint terrycloth robe while displaying a devastatingly powerful left-turned look. Dressing up a dog is good fun and all dog owners have, through dutiful care of beloved companions, earned the perk of having the occasional silly costume modeled for their amusement. But I submit for your consideration: Do you not also owe it to yourself to buy a number of cheap novelty towels that, when used to dry your bath- or swim-moistened pup, create incidental costume opportunities? Why not make every wet dog moment a fashion show?

Barley, a dog, squints contentedly on a bright, sunny day. As someone who grew up in the Pacific Northwest, I never really needed to invest in sunglasses. It was only when I moved to Florida that the intensity of ambient outdoor light on any given summer day compelled me to think of sunglasses as necessary safety equipment. It is thus with a certain nostalgia that I reckon Barley’s simple reflex to happily soak up sunlight through narrowed eyes. Despite being a Florida native (as far as we know), she’s never once yearned for sunglasses; the very concept of “glasses” no doubt slides right off her mind like a pitcher of lemonade placed atop a beach ball. Would that I, Barley, still had your innocence, that impervious spirit youth I once had back when I would insist, “who needs sunglasses, you can just squint?”

Barley, a dog, extends a paw with a look of hopeful expectation. Barley is a relatively good listener. While she’s no Chaser (and honestly, who could be?), she can recognize a few key words to which she has attached expectations. Among the most reliable of these is “paw.” Being very food motivated, Barley will present her paw sometimes daintily (but usually forcefully) whenever the word is uttered while making eye contact, because experience has taught her that delicious treats wait just on the other side of this exercise.

Juniper, a dog, snoozes in a nest of blankets with her plushie, Husky. Juniper is a dog with a job, and her various toys are similarly delegated particular tasks. One such toy, a monkey, joins her on expeditions into the yard to patrol the property. Husky, by contrast, is her most trusted comfort object, a soothing presence that she treat with a level of care and deference that has no equal among her toys. Juniper has never once taken Husky outside, and will seek him out in times of stress. Barley and Juniper unambiguously like the toys the play with, but I don’t think it’s an overstatement to say that Juniper loves Husky.

Barley, a dog, is non-plussed by a sign reading, “Amazingly enough, I don’t give a shit.” Over the years, I’ve seen signs like these available for sale in novelty shops countless times, so it’s self-evident that some market exists for them. Nevertheless, I’m always mildly shocked to see them in the wild, visible from the street no less. For the home owner who aspires to the rhetoric of Happy Bunny without any irony, whose only embrace of edge comes in the form of a counter-space-devouring $2k knife block that includes only three knives that they know how to use.

Barley, a dog, sits on one side of a glass door, scrutinizing a black cat facing it on the other side. Over the years, I’ve seen signs like these available for sale in novelty shops countless times, so it’s self-evident that some market exists for them. Nevertheless, I’m always mildly shocked to see them in the wild, visible from the street no less. For the home owner who aspires to the rhetoric of Happy Bunny without any irony, whose only embrace of edge comes in the form of a counter-space-devouring $2k knife block that includes only three knives that they know how to use.

Barley, a dog, stands near the bottom of a concrete stairway, in front of a beleaguered wooden gate. After a fair bit of sniffing around the base of the gate leading to the underside of this deck, Barley gave me one of her cryptic looks. “Are you smelling this?!” she might be thinking. Or, “So, you gonna open this up for us or what?” Or, maybe, “Haha, you’re real tall now, dad.”

Barley, a dog, knows that a treat is before her, but does not understand that it is a birthday treat. One of the great mysteries of our era is which calendar day is Barley’s birthday. Barley was believed to be around a year old when she landed in a shelter, which would make her a bit over 6 years old now, but given that she looks almost identical to how she looked years ago, her birthday is anybody’s guess. In light of this, our practice is to celebrate Barley’s birthday on the same day as her adopted sister Juniper, whose birthday is a matter of record. Happy birthday, Juniper. Happy ‘birthday,’ Barley.