Barley, a dog, sleeps awkwardly on a dog bed that has been temporarily put up on a futon, such that her butt hangs over the edge. Barley will often take refuge on her bed when I put it up to vacuum, having learned that the vacuum “can’t get her” when she’s up on a piece of furniture. This does, on occasion, degenerate into bad all-around compromises, as we see here, in which Barley has managed to somehow fall asleep despite her butt hanging unambiguously over the edge, her dog bed providing only the illusion of support.

Barley, a dog, lines herself up parallel with the floor to reach the deep recesses of a jar of peanut butter. Since Barley will happily eat just about anything, our societal norms around packaging waste provide a steady supply of momentary toys in the form of flavored vessels. Yogurt goes the fastest, and is already a staple of Barley’s diet, but every once in a great while, the emptying of a jar of peanut butter will herald a prolonged licking campaign. To her credit, Barley doesn’t try to lift or carry a glass jar, perhaps because it’s heavy enough that it stays more or less in place as she snakes her tongue as far in as she can, and we always keep an eye on her for the duration, but she’ll keep it up for a long time before she decides the last remaining dregs are beyond her reach.

Barley, a dog, bleps after dropping her monkey onto a sunlit porch. Barley has fully embraced the return of Hot Sunny Days, and is here seen channeling her Inner Juniper by showing a monkey some sunshine. Since she loves this one patch of porch so much (it being the only area that remains sun-baked across the whole of an afternoon), I have to keep an eye out because she will often bring toys in her excitement to be outside, only to then leave them behind when she comes back in.

Juniper, a dog, bleps ever so slightly when presented with a dog treat decorated to commemorate her birthday. As noted the day of on a recent BarleyPost, it was also Juniper’s birthday recently, and in the last week I have come into possession of this delightful bit of photo evidence of her own celebration at the time. This photo subtextually tells us a lot about the difference between Barley and Juniper. When you proffer a treat unto Barley, her eyes lock onto the treat, glancing back at you only occasionally to see what you might do with it. When you proffer a treat unto Juniper, her eyes focus squarely on you instead of the treat.

Barley, a dog, sprawls out snoozy at her full length on a couch, her back snug against its backrest. From Barley’s point of view, the couch is a chart-topping variety of furniture, eclipsed only by the human bed, because both provide the opportunity to snooze comfortably in the immediate proximity of (and even in physical contact with) a buddy. In days of yore, Barley would often seek out wherever Juniper was napping and snuggle up with her, and if she today perceives a human spending time on a sufficiently large piece of furniture, she’ll want to join them to do the same. In practice, Barley is game to spend her time doing just about anything, so long as she gets to do it with you.

Barley, a dog, braces herself to pursue a squirrel that has just bolted across a set of train tracks. Fear not, Barley was immediately dissuaded from diving into the ditch, scrambling up the rockpile, and crossing the tracks in pursuit of the prey animal that her posture so plainly signals she has seen. But were it not for the leash, she absolutely would have done so. It is precisely this thrill of the chase, which I can’t really compete with, that makes keeping her on leash a necessity in any unfenced area.

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.