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.

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.