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.

Barley, a dog, has her sights on a treat in the shape of a car. Barley, a dog, leans in toward the treat. Barley, a dog, makes her move to chomp the treat. As chompy as she is, Barley is very good about taking treats gently and without greedy abandon, in spite of how very much she would like to eat that treat right this very second, yes please oh please cronch cronch cronch cronch cronch.

Barley, a dog, stares out toward a distant body of salt water. Given my feeble sense of smell, my interpretation of how a dog responds to smell should probably be trusted about as much as Zampanò’s descriptions of the shot composition in The Navidson Record, but I swear that Barley has some deep interest in the smells of the ocean. Here, we see her gazing into a strong oncoming wind, her nose dutifully cycling sniff-fulls of air. Perhaps it’s merely sufficiently novel to demand further data collection, or perhaps it harkens back to another life, long ago, among memories formed at sea level.

Juniper, a dog, is unsure what to make of a trio of lion cubs on a television screen. Dogs seem to be pretty good at recognizing when other mammals are juveniles. I have it on good authority that Juniper did not display the same level of reflective aggression she normally brings to her confrontation with screen beasts when these bumbling lion cubs came on screen.

Barley, a dog, lays paws on the keys of a synth made entirely of whiteboard marker. (▶️)

Barley, a dog, considers some recent tags on a wooden fence. You don’t tend to see a lot of graffiti in lower-density residential neighborhoods. What I’ve come across, though, has given me the feeling that I might be finding some sort of code of the road. While many accounts of such codes appear to be fanciful apocrypha, I wouldn’t rule out the possibility that there is either a local variant being used, or that someone is imitating that style in an effort to signal their turf.

Barley, a dog, gazes longingly at the camera from the comfort of her crate. Barley, a dog, is viewed in the closeup of an extreme digital zoom, with substantial digital artifacts resulting from the camera’s smoothing algorithms. I have to be careful using the zoom function on my camera because the optical zoom is rather limited and the digital zoom kicks in more or less without warning. I’ll occasionally forget this, and when I zoom in all the way, I’m immediately struck by the squishy, smeary weirdness of the smoothing that the phone does automatically, presumably to reduce the color noise from across the image sensor.

Barley, a dog, sniffs at the base of a very peculiar looking plant. A perk of living in a climate with so much precipitation is that you run into some pretty wild species, just happily growing along the sidewalk. Barley’s interest, as usual, is in any shrub of the right form factor to attract the social markings of other dogs, but I can amuse myself with the notion that she’s an explorer, collecting readings on hitherto-undocumented native life.

Barley, a dog, absolutely wrecks a hidden treat puzzle made of particleboard. Although Barley is much less destructive than she used to be with cloth toys, she’ll still receive a toy from time to time that is not engineered with her in mind. This “sliding peg hidden treat toy” is made from some sort of wood pulp reconstitution that’s right at the border between cardboard and particleboard - think “IKEA knockoff that’s aiming for an even lower price point.” Being a big sniffer but no great mechanical genius, Barley proceeded to clobber the poor thing trying to thrash the treats out of it. That’ll teach some thick cardstock to stand between a dog and her treats!

Barley, a dog, checks out the grass while near some goats. Very gradually, Barley has shown more and more interest in eating grass. It’s only certain types, which leads me to believe it’s flavor based, but given her history of having a delicate tummy, I’m disinclined to let her cultivate this new interest. Even so, I had to laugh when, moments after I snapped this photo with the neighborhood goats, she tried to take a chomp of the grass on her side of the fence. When in Rome!

Juniper, a dog, wears a tiara with pink gems and feather accents. While Juniper is more enthusiastic than most puppers to runway some fashion, even she has her limits. I would describe her experience with headwear of any sort as “tolerant” at best. That said, she does want very badly to be a Good Girl, so it doesn’t take much convincing to get her to showcase the latest accessories.

Barley, a dog, glances back from assessing a gravel road stretching into the distance. Barley seems to appreciate the many unimproved roadways around town. Never so rough as to be hard on her feet, they’re surely more pleasant of her to walk on that hot asphalt. Besides, given their varied surfaces and irregular boundaries, there’s consistently more to sniff and investigate per square inch than on a conventional road, and far less risk of traffic to contend with while doing so.

Barley, a dog, lies flat on her belly with her legs stretched out behind her, and looks back over her shoulder at the camera. It’s shots like these that help me to appreciate how fundamentally conical Barley’s body plan is. Toes back like this, and with the benefit of a pillow for support, she forms a near-perfect inclined plane. No doubt it’s that big ole’ blockhead of hers that leads people to regularly overestimate her size and weight, but even at her beefiest, she still tapers right off at the back end.

Barley, a dog, stands on a small platform decorated with a fading abstract mosaic of blue, yellow, green, and orange tiles. On the one hand, it’s clearly too much to expect Barley to appreciate this mosaic. After all, even the unimpeachable beauty of a simple rose is lost on her, so what hope is there for our pale human imitations of the natural world? On the other hand, I’m curious what the rationale was for this piece, situated in a playground and presumably executed by a child, to be presented horizontally in this way. Really unclear to me what these platforms are for, if not for standing on the art.

Barley, a dog, has managed to bundle herself up a big in a comforter. As much as Barley wants to stay close (as described in a previous post), she has her limits. So whenever I’m doing something mildly vexatious (using the vacuum cleaner, running the shower, etc.), she usually takes refuge in the bedroom and wiggles her way into a comforting ball. She definitely doesn’t understand how one would, mechanically, get under the covers, but she manages to pretty effectively rumple things around herself when she wants to comfort herself with some coziness.

Barley, a dog, lies happily in the cool shade and surveys her surroundings. One of Barley’s most endearing traits is that, overwhelmingly, her motivation is to hang out in your company. Whatever you’re doing, she’s into it, so long as she gets to stay close. A resolute team player. So, whether we’re own walking on a hot day or at home, she’ll immediately take five and relax if I just sit down on the ground next to her. “Oh, this is what we’re doing now? Cool, yes, I dig it.”

Barley, a dog, has her back feet planted firm as she thrashes a blue monkey. Probably the best decision made by the manufacturers of this very cheap toy was to install the squeaker in the toy’s throat. Barley has been entranced by its viability as a prey substitute, and gets herself really riled up every time she goes for the throat and feels that extra bit of resistance to her chomp. The squeaker itself is just about dead at this point, but Barley is so much more consistent about biting this toy on the neck that I’m persuaded she really likes that it has a sinewy, cartilaginous mouthfeel.

Juniper, a dog, squints through sunshine from a stately sit on mulch near a brick wall. Probably the biggest difference in Barley and Juniper’s daily routine is that Juniper not only has access to a yard, but has command of it, as its appointed guardian. On any given day, she’ll make patrols of the property a half dozen times or more, and will sometimes spend hours observing patiently from one of several vantage points. A favorite spot of hers in cooler months is a patch of mulch inset into a corner, as this pocket reflects and captures the warmth of the sun. We see her here, sizing us up with an attitude that says, “Hey, you’re blocking the view.”

Barley, a dog, sleeps in a manner that looks less relaxed than it does exhausted. I’ve given a lot of thought to why Barley seems to nervous when she goes to the vet. She didn’t used to, and I don’t have reason to think they’re treating her badly. However, a majority of her visits are to have her teeth cleaned, which requires general anesthesia following a pre-treatment dose of benzos. We see Barley here deflated in the hours following her return home from the vet, a funk that takes her about a day to shake off. What I’ve begun to suspect is that she really doesn’t like the experience of emerging from an amnestic sleep, stoned and disoriented, in a strange place, and that the reason she gets so nervous when we got the vet is that she anticipates that she’s about to sail once more down Willy Wonka’s Tunnel of Terror.

Barley, a dog, peers ahead along a footpath worn into a grassy clearing. On the occasions that Barley and I find ourselves in less residential surroundings, I always find myself feeling more nervous about the trouble she could get herself into. Given the option, she would absolutely disappear into the underbrush and worm her way through the shrubbery, discovering paths I could never follow her down. It’s a wholly irrational concern - her leash is sound and any animals she might tangle with will have made themselves scarce long beforehand. But she’s bold enough in her desire to explore that it’s not a sentiment I’ve been able to shake.