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.

Barley, a dog, looks back at the photographer, who is more concerned with capturing a waist-high cube-shaped hedge. There’s something perverse, I find, in planting a hedge and meticulously keeping it trimmed into shape made of right angles. Now, if the hedge forms a wall, I can understand where they’re are coming from - it’s nicer to look at than a sun-bleached fence. But to cube a hedge at a meter a side: That almost feels like a move by someone who secretly hates hedges.

Barley, a dog, peeks over the back of a sofa and through the window standing between herself and the photographer. As far as Barley is concerned, there is only one view from my parents’ home that is worth a damn, and that’s the view out the back that lets her monitor the comings and goings of people leaving and arriving by car. Keen-eared, she knows the listen for motors and will stand, excited on the sofa to see who has come home. It is only once a person has approached far enough that she scoots off the sofa and navigates to the back door. Here, we see a decidedly different energy: That of people departing for some adventure and leaving her behind.

Barley, a dog, rests her head on her paws on the edge of a big pillow, with her elbows and chest supported by a second, shorter pillow, and her body below the waist on the remaining extent of the sofa. It was only after I snapped this picture that I realized we have witnessed another first in Barley’s eternal quest for comfort: the Pillow Staircase. This arrangement seems to have suited her especially well, because for once her eyes didn’t pop open the moment I raised an arm to take the photo.

Barley, a dog, is out of focus in the foreground. Behind her, a steep hill descends to a body of water, and beyond, an industrial port. We've not the time for games! I swear, I swear! The fog that seasonally cloaks the shore Has just now parted and revealed to me A city bright with lights and with spires tall! Let's see ourselves what game she plays at now! [All walk to the window] By all the gods, I see you speak the truth!

Barley, a dog, raises her head from her dedicated pillow, which is repeatedly emblazoned with “bonne nuit”. When Barley visits my parents, she has a dedicated pillow on the bed. This reflects the lessons learned from my early attempts to give her pillows wholly unsuited to her needs: Her “bonne nuit” pillow has a low profile and broad, tapered edges, more of a soft speedbump than a curb, and Barley is much more inclined to use such a pillow to rest her big block of a head.

Barley, a dog, looks over her shoulder lovingly as she lazes on the grass. One of the signs of how people-oriented Barley is the manner in which she deploys her vigilance. Some dogs, if stationed in the middle of a grassy expanse, will scan the horizon and keep an eye on the movement of distant pedestrians. Others will watch for wildlife (read: prey). Barley? She checks in on what you’re doing.

Juniper, a dog, sleeps in a snuggly loaf atop her comically large and soft dog bed, in the company of her beloved plush toy named Husky. As big a game as Juniper presents to strangers in her yard and beasts on the screen, she reveals, in the vulnerability of sleep, what a fundamentally soft creature she is. While her weight is typical for her a dog her size, she has a lot of excess skin, especially around her neck. Perhaps the world of her dreams a little softer than ours.

Barley, a dog, stands on some steps as a baffling array of concrete terraces stretch up behind her. People who live on hills have to put up with some nonsense, to be sure, but it’s certainly a choice to lean way into the incline and reconfigure your yard into a ziggurat. The design of this “yard” centers on a three-story staircase of poured concrete, banked by vast concrete terraces. This is recent work, and I gather those terraces will eventually serve as planters for various trees and shrubs, which would make the approach feel less like scaling a temple. What’s not clear is whether the property owners have decided against installing a handrail out of neglect or out of active spite for any delivery-person who needs a package signed for.

Barley, a dog, lies like a rag doll as a blue plush monkey appears to gaze longingly at her. I’ve said it before, but I will never not be charmed by how completely Barley hits the brakes when she decides to stop playing. “Playful” is less a mood for Barley than it is an emotional surge that overtakes her and then abates. Thing is, she doesn’t really do this with other dogs, just with her soft toys. It’s almost as if she will decide to one of her toys needs a thrashing, as if suspending her disbelief about its animacy. Then, at some point, it no longer registers as “lifelike” and it falls back into the oubliette of being a mere object, unworthy of further consideration.

Barley, a dog, chomps enthusiastically on a stout branch while simultaneously wiggling on her back. This is officially unprecedented behavior. Barley approached this stick, snapped it up and in the same motion flopped into a vigorous wiggle while giving big chomps. I’ve never observed this in all our years together. There’s no telling how much more powerful she’s going to become if she keeps innovating like this.

Barley, a dog, sits beside an unpaved street so steep that her hind paws are are high as her forward elbows. There’s something very funny to me about urban planners who drop grids onto maps with hardly a care for their grade, creating a couple extra plots of land to sell to whomever is willing to make it work. This is especially true because, with modern civic tools, there are very real limits to how steep a road can be and remain paved. Once you get over 30 degrees, you start to run a very real risk of that the road will simply start to slide down the hill unless a lot of expensive stabilization is done underneath. For this reason, famously steep roads that must be paved will sometimes resort instead to cobblestones. Now, I’m no surveyor, and I’ve done no formal study of the matter, but I feel like the street in the photo is definitely getting close to a 40 degree grade for this single block, and I’m not at all surprised that the city simply gave up trying to pave it at all. It’s pretty difficult to even walk down - your foot slides a bit with every step. So I’m calling it: Steepest street. I will not be taking any questions at this time.

Barley, a dog, lies on brown grass facing sunward, with a monkey puzzle tree in the background. It’s said that Araucaria araucana is called the “monkey puzzle tree” because a 19th century British barrister quipped, of its thorn-plated branches, that “it would puzzle a monkey to climb that.” Perhaps my own inner primate echoes that sentiment, because I’ve always felt a vague bafflement when I encounter one. For her part, Barley found nothing whatsoever of interest when examining it, but was perfectly willing to take five in the sun while I snapped a pic.

Barley, a dog, lies on her side as she is viewed from above, lying on an abstract blue-gray sheet struck through with chaotic white streaks. Perhaps the most alien thing about a dog to a human is its aesthetic sensibility. There’s no sense that Barley has any opinion about this visually striking linen set, any more than a plain white sheet. It’s not clear that Barley would recognize an object as “artistic.” Her world is eminently practical: Food is good, and tasty food is best. Soft surfaces are nice, rough surfaces not so much. From a cynical perspective, this paints a picture of a life lived in a kind of aesthetic void, a world of wiremesh geometries, automatic scripts, and meters that need refilling. And yet. She has joys as well: Being close, making eye contact, reunion with familiar people. Barley’s aesthetic sensibilities, it seems to me, are entirely social, and all the world’s beauty is found in the living. She doesn’t watch our movies: We are her movies. She doesn’t listen to our music: We are her music. We are beautiful. You are beautiful. Just ask Barley.