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.

Barley, a dog, relaxes on a futon with Tico, a dog toy, once a sloth and now something lesser. Tico is another of Barley’s long-time toys and he, too, is a victim of Barley’s literal defacement. I suspect she has removed the face specifically because Fluff and Tuff, the company responsible, uses stitching instead of plastic for features like eyes and these slightly denser parts of the toy are especially pleasant to chew. Tico’s claws were also immediately excised by steady application of chomp, I imagine for the same reason.

Barley, a dog, warms herself under a rumpled scarlet blanket. An advantage of Barley having such fine fur and living in a rainy climate is that she only needs the occasional bath - a bit of rain followed by a vigorous drying-off counts for a lot! Even so, she still gets a bath from time to time, and this when it’s most clear how easily she gets cold. So after drying her off as best I can, I usually bundle her up on the futon in her dedicated post-bath blanket. What can I say, it’s fashion.

Barley, a dog, appears to give a questionably-shaped baby carrot a mean side-eye. Barley, a dog, reconsiders her initial appraisal of the questionably-shaped baby carrot. This is absolutely lying with photography: I accidentally took this photo in burst mode during one of Barley’s innocent head-swivels, but I’m tickled by the story these two frames appear to tell and so feel compelled to share it.

Juniper, a dog, is rather overwhelmed by the overbearing affection of Barley, another dog. This is Juniper the day she met Barley. If the vibe you’re getting from Juniper in this picture is, “Please, help!” then you’ve just about got the measure of it. Barley was bursting with energy after leaving the shelter, and came on a lot stronger than Juniper was comfortable with. Still a puppy and much less assertive than she is now, Juniper proceeded to run away from Barley for about three days. To her credit, Barley gradually picked up what Juniper was putting down, ramping down the enthusiasm of her approach until the two finally clicked on their fourth day together.

Barley, a dog, would like the viewer to pick up and throw Manny, a beleaguered dog toy that is still recognizable as a lobster. Manny’s best days are no doubt behind him, something that can be said of most of Barley’s toys. for one thing, he definitely started off with a face. Following Phase 1 of play with a new toy (which involves a lot of shaking, tugging, and prancing about), Barley will sometimes transition to Phase 2, in which she finds the toy’s weak spots and systematically attacks them. Her back teeth have a scissor-like quality, and she’ll use them to worry away stitching until the stuffing is exposed. (Thankfully, she’s not interested in the stuffing). The secret to her toys’ longevity lies in what comes next: So, Manny struggles along, blind and tailless but at least enjoying a stable existence despite Barley’s powerful chomps.

Barley, a dog, surveys what little snow remains as the sun reasserts itself. Walking Barley is generally enjoyable but it’s never precisely relaxing. Like many dogs who were rescued from stray, Barley is a relentlessly opportunistic omnivore. Even on a normal day, she will take her chances trying to snaffle up almost anything that she even suspects might be edible. Leaving aside some of the unmentionables she considers edible, her gut is also fairly delicate (probably as a consequence of her past opportunism), so both she and I will have a bad time later if I don’t keep a close eye on what she’s sniffing. This makes the thaw after a snowfall especially dicey, as winter peels back its extra layer and the invisible cushion of water vapor at ground level wafts up the odorants of all the cursed goodies being freshly revealed.