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.

Barley, a dog, sems to strike a particularly dainty pose while considering her manta ray toys. One of the great joys of pet ownership is how often they coincidentally stumble into some or another amusing pose. When Barley gave this head-turn, I was immediately struck by a sense of a belle with a fan and coy reserve, who knows more than she’s telling. The reality, of course, is that Barley was likely curious if I was going to help her disembowel her prey or not.

Barley, a dog, sits happily in the sunshine with a lone palm tree in the background. With the weather finally feeling like summer, I can’t quite verbalize how disorienting it was when this palm tree came into view. Barley is, as noted in the past, a Florida Dog, but we’ve not been back to Florida in years at this point. There’s no sign that this is a freshly planted tree - I’ve surely walked Barley past it dozens of times - but it somehow never registered until I beheld it standing tall against a clear blue sky, as the hot sun beat down on our backs. Barley, for her past, betrayed no signs of any such nostalgia, and was simply happy to be out in the sunshine.

Barley, a dog, pointedly ignores a toy duck that appears to want her attention. One of Barley’s more curious quirks is that her desire to play flips on and off very suddenly, like a switch. She might, for example, bring me a toy with a hopeful look, tail wagging, and proceed to chomp, tug, thrash, and keep-away with all due enthusiasm. And then, just like that, sometimes after only a minute or two, the mood will pass. The toy, which she had been so happy to imagine as conquered prey, becomes inert in her eyes, just another pebble on the road. Even, as pictured here, when the toy would very much still like to play.

Barley, a dog, squirms vigorously on her back, her legs blurred from the motion of it. Barley only rarely gets proper tear-around-the-house zoomies, but that doesn’t keep her from getting all wound up. Unlike her outdoor wiggles, which usually reflect a need to cool off her sun-warmed back, her in-house waggling usually presages a bout of insisting that it’s Time To Play. If I hear her kicking at the sky on the futon and knocking pillows around, I can count on her happily approaching holding one toy or another moments later, hopeful that I’ll tug or chase.

Juniper, a dog, stands excitedly in her kiddie pool with a tennis ball in her mouth. Juniper’s relationship with bodies of water is… fraught. Some dogs happily paddle along once their feet no longer touch the bottom, but if Juniper finds herself in the deep end, her eyes go wide and she tries to get the bottom underfoot against as soon as possible. She’s gone to the ocean (and mostly hated it), and has been in a backyard pool or two (and hated those as well). Her ideal water depth turns out to be just about ankle deep, enough to make splashies and keep the water cool. Given a kiddie pool with that manageable depth of water, she’ll happily jump in when she’s hot, splash around, then jump out again, refreshed and ready for nonsense.

Barley, a dog, has spotted a duck! While the photo does not quite capture the urgency of the situation, I can assure you that Barley is very aware of the mallard she has just spotted, whose plumage is just barely visible at the top of the frame. A second, better camouflaged female is nearby, but Barley didn’t have a line of sight on her. Fear not, the ducks were not approached and I’ve since given the area a wide berth, but it took some considerable effort to get her to disengage from these intriguing additions to the neighborhood.