Barley, a dog, sploots in front of an office doorway, blocked by a dog gate, waiting for some friend to bring her a kind word. As much as Barley dislikes the carpet in my office, she’ll put up with it near my office door when she can reasonably anticipate that nearby friends might materialize to say hi and reach over the gate to scritch her behind the ears. Here, she’s been faked out by an ongoing conversation in the hall, just outside of her sight lines, and what moments ago was an expectant sit has now devolved, with a dramatic sigh, into a disappointed sploot. But she nevertheless remains vigilant. Surely, those people talking in the hall will pass the door any moment now…

Barley, a dog, lounges on a futon with her head on a toy, and with a single eye suddenly open and intent. Sometimes, while lost in a wiggly reverie with some toy or another, Barley will freeze when some detail in the wider world interrupts. In this case, owing to my having just turned off my headphones, she was suddenly able to hear a second voice in the room from an ongoing Zoom call. She froze, and her one uncovered eye opened wide and swiveled dramatically to assess the situation. Being a certified Screen Idiot, however, she quickly determined that it was nothing of import (“just the wind, no doubt!”) and went back to lazily chomping at the limbs of her faceless sloth.

Barley, a dog, sniffs at the base of a mossy decorative yard stone. It’s a real blessing that Barley sees the world around her as, in almost all particulars, immutable. In the video game of Barley’s life, all level geometry is static and non-destructible! And thank heavens, because it means I can leave her in my office or at home when I need to and there’s no fear of returning to find a pillow torn to pieces, or a yard full of holes. Even doors, which she clearly understands afford some passage, are seen as largely beyond her control, opening only by the magic of human manipulation. Pretty sure this pup’s going to reach the level exit with SECRET: 0%.

The hind paws of Barley, a dog, fill the frame, and a light dusting of green can be seen on the toes of one foot. I’m not sure what, exactly, is the nature of the green dust that slowly accumulates on some of the surfaces at my parents’ home. Best guess is that it’s some form of Chrysothrix that is able to just barely maintain a toehold on some of the more porous surfaces. Here, we see that Barley, in doing a big stretch to absorb as much sunlight as she can, has brushed the underside of this railing (where one wouldn’t think to wipe down) and come away with a fresh dusting.

Barley, a dog, pins her toy quasi-pig Hieronymus to the floor by the face, covering its eyes in the process. Hieronymus remains a favorite among the set of toys currently in rotation. The blue space pig has the advantage of being especially round and squishy (and thus withstanding chomps) while appearing to have interesting extremities worthy of a solid grab-and-thrash. I presume, however, that Barley has no particular sense of where its “face” is, and that she is not, in this moment, trying to spare its innocence.

Barley, a dog, is about to spring into action to chomp on a toy duck blurring towards her as close range. It takes a little forethought, but I do love an action photo in which Barley is mere moments from being the one in motion. Here we see her, anticipating the duck, jaw agape for chomping and her pupils blown out wide to capture every stray duck-related photon. A frozen moment during which the world has fallen away and only duck matters.

Juniper, a dog, stands in the sun near a fence with a pensive look. Juniper’s yard is separated from that of a neighbor by a tall fence through which only narrow diagonal sightlines are possible. From time to time, a neighbor’s dog named Wally will bumble out and scamper about on the other side of this fence, eliciting a whole song and dance from Juniper. Rumbling and grumbling, she’ll zoom back and forth along the relevant stretch of the perimeter, kicking up mulch as she does so. (The pavers in the picture keep her from scrabbling at the base of the fence itself.) For his part, Wally seems to find this to be great fun, matching her energy if not her tone.

Barley, a dog, cleans her teeth with the benefit of chicken-flavored toothpaste and a curiously shaped chew toy. The above is a quote from a guest visiting from out of town, upon seeing this particular toy soaking in my kitchen sink after a round of dental care. You see, this toy has a hollow interior, which can be filled with dog toothpaste (Barley likes the chicken-flavored variety), and its flared base gives Barley an easy way to anchor it as she chomps and monches to squeeze out every last bit of the stuff. And having been filled with a savory fluid, it needs to be cleaned after use. Hence it soaking in the sink. I cannot emphasize strongly enough how high-friction this toy is, designed as it is to clean teeth. It definitely, absolutely, does not have any other uses. I can’t help but wonder, though, why it is that Amazon no longer sells this particular model.

Barley, a dog, ignores two white flowers as she sniffs within a patch of ferns. I don’t doubt that Barley can smell the nectar in the flowers she passes, but I’ll be darned if she’s ever given a single hoot about them. For all her olfactory orientation, her relationship with smells remains strictly instrumental, and the beauty we humans discern in a flower is entirely lost on her. Instead, she is a connoisseur of occult aromas, of secret bouquets of another sort that our human languages will never even begin to have the words to describe.

Barley, a dog, is fully relaxed atop a throw pillow. Barley, a dog, makes a big smile while being scritched in just the right way. Barley loves the opportunity provided by a long phone call. She’ll laze on the futon next to me as I provide relaxing, low-energy scritches with my free hand, drifting in and out of sleep. Every once in a while, some particularly choice spot will elicit wakefulness and a big smile, even as the rest of her muscles remain slack as a sack of cooked noodles.

Barley, a dog, wedges her snout into a ventilation gap along the edge of a building’s foundation. It never fails. Every time our semi-random peregrinations take us past this particular spot, Barley is compelled by odors I will never know to wedge her snout into this aperture and breathe deeply from the darkness contained therein. I suppose I should be grateful it’s just a touch too narrow for her entire head, or else she might begin a journey into the very earth itself.

Barley, a dog, squints up through beaming sunshine on a wooden deck, in the company of one of her Stella seahorse toys. We’re finally, finally starting to get nice days from time to time, after what feels like months of drawn out dreariness. While the full-throated warmth of summer sunshine is still a ways off, I don’t doubt that Barley is keen to resume her worship of the celestial orb.

Barley, a dog, sleeps in the sun atop a futon, with all four paws brought together in front of her. Barley manages to fall asleep in a variety of poses, but my very favorite is when she has just the right combination of head support and back support to bring all of her paws together in a little bundle. Just curled enough to be cozy, just loose enough to signal that she’s sufficiently warm. The apex of snoozing.

Juniper, a dog, snuggles into a comically oversized dog bed with her Adult Shark toy. Not long after Juniper came into possession of Baby Shark, her collection was bolstered by Adult Shark, another long-time companion who she like to bring with her to nap with. Here, the pair are depicted sharing Juniper’s legitimately ridiculous dog bed, a veritable cloud of softness into which she loves to squrim and coil up into a little ball.

Barley, a dog, scrutinizes a patch of tall, dry grass. As much of a sniffer as she is, Barley will occasionally give something the most intense eyeballing. When she stopped by this thicket, rather than wedge her nose in like I was expecting, she dropped her snout and peered with steely intensity into its recesses. This went on for a while, and even as I snapped a pic, I wondered if she was about to make some move on a concealed critter. But, the moment passed, and she moved on, so we’ll never know if it was empty or if some concealed creature beat her at a staring contest.

Barley, a dog, gazes into the eyes of one of her toys, a blue creature that just barely qualifies as a pig. From time to time, I catch myself realizing that dogs are not burdened in the ways we are by the sense that something is “wrong.” When I saw this approximate pig at the store, my first reaction was that it must have been designed by a space alien whose only description of a pig came from a medieval manuscript. But upon further reflection, it occurs to me that there’s no way Barley would care, or even notice, that this is a “wrong pig.” So, meet Hieronymus, Barley’s newest toy and escapee from the Garden of Earthly Delights.

Barley, a dog, bellyflops into lush grass to shed some heat. I tire of this still dreary weather, so I cast my mind to warmer days; warm enough that Barley, indefatigable though she may be, needed to use her “belly on the cool grass” trick to take a breather. This Florida dog knows how to beat the heat!

Barley, a dog, braces herself to chomp at incoming waves on a rocky beach. Barley’s experience of the river may have been an anxiety-provoking experience for her, but she’s always seemed excited to visit the beach. Certainly, it’s a carnival of odors and no doubt her nose is alive with the smells of ocean, but she also seems to find waves very compelling. Her inclination, I think, is to see each swell as a distinct “thing,” and the undulations of the waves (rushing forward and withdrawing, telegraphing their motions) seem to put her into a playtime state of mind.

Barley, a dog, lies on a bed, shrouded in darkness. The light behind the photographer catches in her eyes, causing them to glow uncannily. I ain’t ‘fraida no Barley. I ain’t ‘fraida no bed.

Barley, a dog, sits still somewhat moist from a bath. Between her short fur, her lack of an undercoat, and regularly being caught in light rainfall, I’ve never lived with a dog who needs fewer baths than Barley. Still, from time to time, she gets a good cleaning, and every time I find myself weirded out by the sight of her without a collar. “Oh, good heavens,” I think in a period accent, “I didn’t realize you were changing!” And yet here she is, Donald Ducking it every day and I don’t give it a second thought. Remarkable how little it takes for the human brain to code an animal as “clothed.”