Barley, a dog, sits in front of some front lawn Christmas decorations, including a large ball ornament and an even larger arch that, confusingly, is a kind of figurative ball ornament. I can think of all sorts of reasons why, but my overall impression is that the holiday spirit is fairly muted in general this year. My own family is celebrating in a more modest, scaled-back way, and that seems to be true for everyone else I talk to. Now, this could of course be an information silo problem, but I feel as though there’s more to it than that. Walking Barley at considerable length this month, I’ve seen fewer and smaller seasonal yard decorations than I’m used to. When driving after the annoyingly early fall of darkness, I see fewer lights. Even this photo is misleading, because it was taken some weeks ago, and when I walked past the same spot yesterday, these decorations had been taken down and the house apparently restored to its non-seasonal appearance. All of which is to say, if you’re feeling exhausted, I get it, and I’m right there with you. I hope you’re taking it easy, and sleeping in. Don’t bother keeping up with the Joneses, do what you gotta do to recharge those batteries for the year ahead.

Barley, a dog, shows off her taco costume, which doubles as a sweater during a cold snap so long as it’s not raining. Barley’s now worn her taco costume for multiple Halloween trips to my workplace, and she’s always a big hit when people realize what they’re looking at. However, I keep the taco handy all winter long because it’s also a surprisingly warm sweater. Being made from the cheapest, non-breathable plastic fibers, it retains body heat quite nicely, and is also very quick to put on. That said, its main shortcoming is that it is also quite cheaply build, so I wouldn’t risk using it on any walks that (a) have a risk of getting muddy or (b) during which are likely to be rained on. As fun as it is, it definitely wasn’t build to last, so I’m trying to limits how much it needs to be laundered, as I fear it might fall apart if handled roughly.

Barley, a dog, glances sideways at the camera as she trots across grass covered in autumn leaves, without breaking her stride. Most of my time walking Barley is spent either watching her directly, or watching slightly ahead of where she is going to scope out things before she does. She, by comparison, does not spend too terribly much time looking at me. My understanding of the scene is that “I am walking Barley,” but her understanding is clearly, “We’re walking.” She only really checks in as directly as you see here (while on the move, at least) when I address her directly, usually by name. After all, when she’s confident that I’m speaking to her directly, the next thing I might tell her might be very exciting indeed.

Barley, a dog, lounges on a futon while watching the world through a glass patio door. While I would think of it all as “walking the dog,” Barley’s “walking” mode is very different from her “tracking” mode. The latter requires a lot more vigilance on my part, partly because it’s much more start-and-stop (and so much harder to match pace with), but also because at any moment it might culminate in Barley deciding to take a nibble of something she oughtn’t. We’re much more likely to travel in this mode when we’re off the beaten path, but being on concrete is no guarantee that Barley won’t catch a scent and lurch off tangent to our heading with her nose hovercrafting just above the terrain’s surface.

Juniper, a dog, wades out into the waters of a lake to give a golden lab a piece of her mind. Barley, another dog, happily observes from the shore. Back when Barley & Juniper were a dynamic duo, we did what we could to try to make sure they were getting properly socialized, so we took them to various dog parks. Pretty early on, however, Juniper’s nervous energy began to get the better of her, a preview of the wary homebody she has since become. One dog owner during that time jokingly referred to her as “the fun police,” because she was only calm when all the dogs were standing or sitting around, and she would get agitated if anyone provoked any horseplay. Immediately prior to this photo, she got very out of shape when this golden lab decided to paddle out a ways into the water, and waded out about this far to bark until the situation had been remedied. Barley seemed amused by the whole situation, never making a peep.

Barley, a dog, walks with her head held close to the ground amid a light smattering of fallen leaves, sniffing as she goes. While I would think of it all as “walking the dog,” Barley’s “walking” mode is very different from her “tracking” mode. The latter requires a lot more vigilance on my part, partly because it’s much more start-and-stop (and so much harder to match pace with), but also because at any moment it might culminate in Barley deciding to take a nibble of something she oughtn’t. We’re much more likely to travel in this mode when we’re off the beaten path, but being on concrete is no guarantee that Barley won’t catch a scent and lurch off tangent to our heading with her nose hovercrafting just above the terrain’s surface.

Barley, a dog, does a big chomp on her cow toy, getting so much of the neck in her mouth that she manages to cover part of the face. As with all toys, I took about half the stuffing out of this one after Barley’s first few rounds of vigorous thrashing resulted in a split seam. The cow, now that much floppier, stands up well to her attention, but the stuffing in the cow’s snout is a completely separate compartment from the rest of the body. As such, the cow’s head is now very top- and front-heavy, due to this higher density bulb of fabric. Now, when she thrashes the cow, it’s a very different sort of experience depending on which end she grabs it by, because that heavy snout can have real leverage if given the chance. Fortunately, Barley is more of a Carpe Jugulum girl, so I’ve been thwacked by a swinging cow face a couple of times.

Barley, a dog, investigates a favorite crawlspace vent on a building that’s been stripped of its siding. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that this hole retains its magnetic pull on BArley’s attention, but I’m struck by how little interest she has in all the siding having been stripped off. It’s a good reminder that even though humans, as a rule, tend to pay attention to big changes in their environment, dogs are keyed into a different set of changes. Barley can surely see that the siding has changed, and (I presume) has some memory of the area, so it’s more a matter that she does not consider this change to be interesting or relevant to her.

Barley, a dog, lies calmly on her side with her legs sticking straight out, but her eyes have popped open and her ears have pricked up, suddenly alert. It’s hard to imagine Barley being too tired to bother. Even when properly tuckered out (we see her here recovering from an enthusiastic playdate with a dog buddy), the spirit is eternally willing if some clue presents itself that mischief (or snacks) might be afoot. Seeing this photo now reminds of the very first day she came home, when she met Juniper for the first time, and proceeded to rough-house with Juni for about six hour, almost uninterrupted. By the time the sun set that evening, they were both lying on the living room floor, delirious with exhaustion, and even then, Barley was sort of waving a paw at Juni from across the floor as if to say, “hey, hey, let’s go again.”

Barley, a dog, trots down the middle of a neighborhood street on a sunny day, beneath a cloudless sky. I don’t know if it’s the “look both ways” mindset that was drilled into me during my youth, but I’m never entirely comfortable walking Barley through neighborhoods that don’t have sidewalks. It’s not as though there’s ever much traffic, nor do I walk in the middle of the road or anything, but I end up maintaining a degree of vigilance that’s tiresome to maintain for a full walk. given this, imagine my annoyance at crossing paths with more and more electric cars, which, while not quite silent, can still get way closer to me without me hearing them than combustion engines, especially if it’s rainy enough that I have my hood up. I’m all for reducing our use of fossil fuels, but would a commitment to sidewalks really be too much to ask? That said, this only bothers me when I’m walking Barley. It’s not that I think a car is at all likely to hit me. It’s that I’m nervous about the combination of a car passing a little to close at the precise moment Barley makes an unexpected move. The further way I can hear the car coming, the more time I have to shorten her lead.

Barley, a dog, snoozes in the fluffy corner of her new, absurdly proportioned dog bed, whose surface area is perhaps four times that of her old bed. Barley has, of late, been very fussy with her dog bed, and because it’s not very heavy, whenever she tried to stomp it flat before curling up, she ended up just sliding it along the carpet. So when I saw a deep Black Friday discount on this ridiculous object, I decided to bite the bullet. It’s truly enormous surface, which can fold and unfold into various configurations. Since it arrived, Barley has been very enamored with it, spending most of her snoozing time wedged into its nooks and crannies. Hopefully it holds up OK over time, because Barley might find it tough to go back after this level of luxury.

Juniper, a dog, is photographed in a bed from up close, her head reading on the pillow beside that of the photographer, tucked in a comforter up to her shoulder. A minute can seem like an eternity. It's beginning now... ten seconds... Oh, those seconds... how long they last... The minute isn't up yet... Now it has gone.

Barley, a dog, sniffs at a grassy shrub crowded about on all sides by fallen autumn leaves. Her shadow is long despite the brightness of the sunshine. Once again, it’s that time of year when the noonday sun often slips behind rooftops, or gets lost in the trees, and even at its most direct rays warm you more from the side than from above. Work has not been especially forgiving to my schedule during daylight hours, but I try to make sure Barley still gets her share of sunlight every day. Fingers crossed that next week we’ll be able to go about things at a much more leisurely pace.

Barley, a dog, snoozes on the futon with her now-defeated cow, happily sleeping of the excitement of breaking the new toy in. No matter how exciting a plush toy is, Barley almost never sustains that high energy for more than perhaps 10 minutes or so before her mediocre stamina signal that it’s nap time. I can sometimes extend this play time a bit, but Barley generally knows when she’s done and simply stops reacting to toy, transitioning instead to giving me kisses and affection directly. In her mind, I think every one of these sessions is a hunt, and once the prey is subdued (and immobile), there’s no further need to subdue it. What follows is instead the celebration amongst pack-mates for another successful hunt.

Barley, a dog, chomps and worries at her new cow toy, slapping it with one paw while holding it in place with the other. When we first rescued Barley, she was very mouthy, almost exclusively so. She didn’t really seem to know what her paws were good for, and would push toys around on the ground until they got wedge somewhere. She also used her mouth, somewhat problematically, to get our attention or otherwise interact with us, so we had to dissuade her from doing so quite diligently. Mostly, we got there by reacting to even the slightest nibble as if we had been bitten hard, play-acting yelping in pain and shrinking away. As we shaped Barley to avoid nipping at us, we also shaped her to give “Paw.” Then, and even somewhat today, she doesn’t so much give you a paw to shape as she slaps her paw into your hand with quite a bit of force. We noticed, during those early months, that as she got better and more controlled at handshakes, she was also starting to manipulate her toys more with her paws. She seems to understand, now, that she can stabilize a toy by wedging it between her paws to facilitate chomping, so she’s become more dextrous, but her approach remains rather short of delicacy.

Barley, a dog, is a predatory blur rapidly approaching a plushie cow toy. While Barley has strong preferences about her chewin’ toys, she treats her plushies as mostly interchangeable. The exception to this is that she’s quite good at recognizing a new toy, which is much more exciting. Older toys that have been out of circulation for a long time are also something she gets very jazzed about. Here, a doofy little cow, brand new, is about to get mauled for the first time. After being told to sit and “Stay!” we see Barley releasing her pend-up excitement and sprinting into action.

Barley, a dog, tromps about in some freshly fallen leaves on a sunny day. November gave us a mix of sunny and rainy days, with few long stretches of sun (and then, always at a low angle in the sky). For a while there, piles of leaves, once rain-soaked, were not really getting fully dry again. As such, you could only count on finding piles of of crispety, crunchety freshly fallen leaves on day 2 or 3 of a sunny spell. Fresh leaves have the fewest opportunities to gain fruitful treasures that Barley might want to snarf down, so I’m happy to let her root around. Once patches of leaves had made their transition to damp, slippery carpets, I needed to be more vigilant of her exploratory sniffing, ready to intervene if she discovered something questionable. Now, however, temperatures have become sharply colder and the weather drier, and the longer stretches of cold, sunny days make it a lot harder to tell which leafpiles are new and which have merely been moved around by area leafblowers.

Juniper, a dog, holds a plush beachball in her mouth. She seems somewhat at a loss how to proceed. Juniper loves her big ball toy, as she does all her toys, but she also seems somewhat confused by it. On the one hand, it’s a ball, and she loves balls. Great to chase, great to chomp, no notes. But on the other hand, it’s also fuzzy, like all of her beloved creature toys, and those are her friends with which she must be gentle and nurturing. So if playtime is signalled, she’ll rush to chomp it, and then sort of… hang out with it in her mouth for a while. Eventually, it of course must suffer the secret fate of all toys, which is to be squirreled away in her crate for safekeeping.

Barley, a dog, sits politely with a purple llama toy leaning affectionally against her, ear-to-ear. I will admit to posing some of my photos, but only mildly. Barley was already in this expectant sphinx pose after having played with her llama, which lay beside her. I merely picked it up and gingerly laid it against her, which she did not object to in the slightest. I am, as always, bemused by the daffy, oblivious cheer that toys like this are designed to express. If you had seen what unfolded mere moments before this photo was taken, you’d be wondering what the llama was so darned happy about.