Barley, a dog, is nervous about scary lights in the living room’s sky. Barley’s most consistent fear is storms, no doubt having been caught in her fair share while living as a stray. Even the slightest hint of inclement weather puts her on alert and in search of shelter. However, since her concept of “storm” is rather broad, there are a number of false positives she regularly identifies as risky, and the most innocuous of these is when a lamp flickers (as happens from time to time with modern LED bulbs). Sometimes, the interruption is so brief that I only realize it has occurred when she quietly slinks beneath my desk, tail between her legs, to take shelter.

Juniper, a wee pup, snuggles with her first ever plush friend, a “baby” shark. Unlike Barley, Juniper was born in a shelter and was less than 4 months old when we rescued her. She was born in a little of 11 puppies, all of whom went up for adoption at the same time. We knew she was special right away because her many siblings focused their attention on the other dogs that were around us, but Juniper focused her attention on the humans instead. The entire time we’ve known her, she’s never not been trying to suss out what’s going on. One of her first toys, which she has taken care of all this time and still treasures to this day, was the above “baby shark.”

Barley, a dog, turns to ascertain the source of some distant sound. Indoor Barley and Outdoor Barley feel very different to interact with, because Outdoor Barley is in a state of continuous captivation by the world of stimuli she finds herself in. And she leans hard into those stimuli. Her head sort of flies through the world like a guided missile, with her body barely managing to keep up. I’ve heard it said of academics that many “treat their body like a vehicle for moving their brain from place to place,” and I acknowledge the validity of the shade that comment casts, but I’ve never met an academic as vehicular as Barley in her efforts to get her nose, ears, and eyes from one Point of Interest to the next.

Barley, a dog, sits at attention and stares intently at the action unfolding offscreen. From time to time, Barley will strike a particularly distinguished pose. This is almost always by accident, because “distinguished” is not how I would describe the way in which Barley carries herself. Consider this photo, which could easily serve as reference for a classical painted portrait. The context that this photo omits, without which Barley’s motivations could be misunderstood, is that she is watching a dad play laser tag with his kids about 40 yards away and is very keen to know what’s going to happen next.

Barley, a dog, peeks out from beyond the veil of sleep in response to the sound of the camera shutter. Barley sleeps a lot in any given day, but she’s also a very, very light sleeper. She can go from seemingly out cold to Ready For Launch if she hears the right cue. This makes catching photos of her sleeping quite difficult, even with a zoom lens. In the event that you do manage a candid snap, your follow-up option is almost always a photo of her checking out what you’re doing and whether she needs to get excited about anything.

Barley, a dog, balances a carnival mask on her nose and, in so doing, becomes someone’s sleep paralysis demon. I have to give Barley credit for being a good sport whenever the spirit moves me to balance something ridiculous on her head. In this case, however, the result was sufficiently disturbing that I don’t think I’ll be doing it again.

Barley, a dog, is partially submerged in a nest of cozy bedcovers. At first, I fundamentally misunderstood Barley’s comfort preferences. I own a number of extra pillows purchased for her benefit that she completely ignores. No, the acme of comfort is, well, the comforter. What Barley desires most in a sleeping surface is a loose heap of insulating softness that she can really make a nest in.

Barley, a dog, is unaware of how many questions a sign about dog poop has raised. This is a brand new sign (it was put in someone’s yard in the last month), and I am beset with questions that it will do me no good to ask. Was this sign with a dabbing dog designed six or seven years ago and they just kept printing it? Are the Poop Cops who make novelty dog poop signs just that behind the times? Is the dog dabbing… as a celebration? Why is the dog wearing a clearly fake mustache? Is the dog in disguise, on the run from the Poop Cops? Is this dog… a villain?

Barley, a dog, grapples with the puzzle of how to extract last scraps from a tub of Nancy’s Probiotic Nonfat Yogurt. Barley, a dog, gingerly settles onto her dog bed while reorienting a tub of Nancy’s Probiotic Nonfat Yogurt. Barley, a dog, makes delicate licks to a tub of Nancy’s Probiotic Nonfat Yogurt resting on its side, so as not to push it away while doing so. When we first rescued Barley, she was problematically mouthy. It didn’t seem aggressive or dominance-oriented, she just kept kind of gently handling you with her big scary chompers. That behavior’s long been trained out of her, but what remains clear is that she only ever learned how to manipulate things with her mouth. She rarely paws at objects and even then it’s usually a crude stomp. So when she’s trying to get the last scraps from an empty tub of Nancy’s, it’s like watching a cross between a bomb being defused and bobbing for apples.

Juniper, a dog, needs to get a close look at the rat that has appeared on the television. Juniper watches television with more intensity than any other dog I’ve known. Often, this will involve long stretches of wide-eyed, motionless appraisal, but when a screen beast appears, she is on the case and gets right up to the TV to get the measure of this apparition. It’s not altogether clear how she assesses the beastly nature of a screen beast. Fur or feathers are obvious features, but she is also very interested in (read: concerned about) larger sea creatures whose bodies are smooth. If her viewing is perturbed too frequently by screen beasts, she will retire to her chambers to unwind.

Barley, a dog, looks back in disbelief when confronted with what appears to be a bug stoned out of its goddamned mind. I would not describe Barley as an “art appreciator.” Her aesthetic sensibilities are strictly practical, living at the intersection of, “delicious,” “friend-shaped1,” “prey animal,” and “object I have permission to play with.” Any forms of artistic expression that cannot be interpreted in these terms is treated as a static feature of the landscape. Occasionally on our walks, we encounter something that the very edges of her categories, such that she needs to check it out and, still uncertain, looks back to me for some clue as to whether she should engage or disregard. I use the word “shape” here to include both visual appearance and scent profile. “Friend-scented” is central to Barley’s assessment of an object.

Barley, a dog, hangs her head off the top of the stairs to catch a bit of sunlight. My parents live on a north-facing hill, so only a few spots in the house get direct sunlight during the winter. Barley’s favored spots their house vary accordingly throughout the day. Sometimes it can be a little bit of a struggle for her to receive the Toasty status.

Barley, a dog, snuffles about in a patch of ivy. Barley’s favorite outdoor surface is a broad mat of ivy or other leafy underbrush, ideally about ankle deep. Once she’s got her paws in, she hunts for treasures with the focus of a seasoned beachcomber weilding their favorite metal detector, sweeping her snoot from patch to patch with rapid-fire sniffing. She almost never finds anything noteworthy, but the mere possibility of goodies hidden from view will inspire her to tug towards any leafy patches she glimpses, even from a considerable distance.

Barley, a dog, sits beside three plush seahorses, once identical and now showing varying levels of wear. One of the things that makes dogs so easy to shop for is that if they love a thing, they will definitely love that same thing again. Barley has received Stella the Seahorse as gift for three consecutive Xmases, and has loved each one just as enthusiastically as the last. The result is a gradient of abuse and repair, leaving no doubt as to which is Stella I, or Stella II, or Stella III.

Barley, a dog, walks ahead on a secluded bath around behind the back of a brick building. When the opportunity presents itself, I like to give Barley the chance to really run across large expanses of grass. This happens a lot less than I’d like. First, I do not trust her off-leash unless I’m inside a fenced perimeter. Second, and more perniciously, is Canadian geese. Barley must not be allowed near a patch of grass they have contaminated, or else she will be unable to resist the siren’s scent of their waste. Since Canadian geese are only facultative migrators, they only go as far south as they need to keep ahead of sub-freezing temperatures, and it seems this area’s going to remain overrun with them for the foreseeable future. So, I’ve had to diversify where I walk Barley, which has taken us to some of the neighborhood’s more remote corners.

Barley, a dog, plumbs the final depths of a quart of probiotic yogurt. In the months following Barley’s adoption, she has intermittent digestive difficulties, likely due to the scavenger’s diet she has been used to. The long-term remedy, which has kept her almost entirely trouble-free for years, has been a healthy serving of the plainest no-frills probiotic yogurt available on supermarket shelves. Usually, I buy Nancy’s in hefty half-gallon tubs, but from time to time, sales favor buying by the quart instead. This complicates final extraction somewhat. Barley remained in this pose, unmoving as she meticulously finished the job, for almost three minutes.

Juniper, a dog, settles in for a nap atop the rump of Barley, another dog. As amusing as last week’s photo was, I don’t want anyone to come to the conclusion that the relationship between Barley and Juniper was always adversarial. Here, we see the overall vibe after Barley had been with us for about two weeks. At this point, Barley’s adoption had been finalized and the two had settled into their shared routine. The profound differences in their perception of the world never seemed to interfere with their mutual acceptance as pack members.

Barley, a dog, examines a gift-wrapped package clearly intended for her. One of the curious wrinkles of having a rescue whose past is a blank slate is having no concept of what her precise age is, or when her birthday might be. People ask how old she is more often than you might think, and I now have a range of answers whose level of Storytime Energy varies based on the apparent interest of the asker. However, this has given rise to an unexpected benefit: Barley tends to ride the coattails of every other birthday in her orbit. Considered over the course of a year, I think she ends up with net positive received gifts, relative to what I would expect if we actually knew her date of birth.

Barley, a dog, captured in profile as she scans the road from the passenger seat. Barley is always enthusiastic to take a drive (so much so that if she sees people getting into or out of cars nearby, she hopefully pulls in that direction on the off chance we’re going for a ride with them), and inasmuch as her fondest wish is to be snuggled up close with folks, cars probably seem to her like dens with bay windows. But when sitting in the passenger seat, it’s equally clear that she feels the same duty to scan the horizon that she does when on walks. So even on somewhat longer drives, she remains upright and alert for a long time, her head tracking other cars, pedestrians, and especially other dogs as we pass them by.

Barley, a dog, overcomes her fear of a ball of snow. In most contexts, Barley runs toward anything that catches her attention. She has things she’s afraid of, of course (thunderclaps, lightning flashes, and fireworks all come to mind), but when it comes to objects she’s afraid of, Public Enemy #1 is “a large, bright, basic shape.” Here we see a ball of snow, no doubt rolled by students during the recent snow and slowly succumbing to the sun’s heat. Barley spotted this snowball from about 20 yards away and immediately started growling. The hair on her back stood up and her tail tucked between her legs. When I tried to get her to approach the offending sphere, her first instinct was to try to orbit around it with the leash at full tension. Only with much cajoling did I get her to approach the sphere and, after much hesitant sniffing, she seems to have concluded that it was all a false alarm.