Barley, a dog, snoozes in the living room while her grand dogmother reads a newspaper. When visiting my parents, Barley immediately settles into a different routine than she maintains at home. Food first, obviously, and then a walk, but her next port of call is to hang out with my mom, whose own morning ritual follows a similar clockwork reliability. Like so many other dogs, the main thing Barley really wants most of the time is to hang out with loved ones (in direct sunlight where possible).

Barley, a dog, blends in suspiciously well with a bed of fallen leaves. Each of the seasons has its appeal and as we transition into Spring, I thought I’d cast an eye back to last Fall. Given Barley’s love of underbrush, it should come as no surprise that “leaves on the ground season” means every outing is a treasure hunt. Even then, though, it’s rare for Barley’s striking coloration to bend in as well as it did on this particular walk.

Barley, a dog, snoozes comfortably in her crate. Barley loves her crate. Its door is almost never closed, so rather than associate it with captivity, she instead associates it with being warm and dark and soft, the ideal place to withdraw later in the day when the needle shifts from “power naps” to “beauty sleep.”

Barley, a dog, tries to be her tallest self in order to see where a squirrel has gone. One of the many blessings of caring for Barley is that she has so little proficiency with the vertical. She is very hesitant to jump onto things and even more hesitant to jump over things. Despite some decent thigh muscles, her attempts to “be tall” have a hesitant, dainty quality, never a gymnast and always a kid trying out stilts. She’ll only stand at her full height if she has a visibly solid surface (or person) to “walk up” and lean against, as she has here in trying to figure out where a squirrel has run off to.

Barley, a dog, is nervous about scary lights in the living room’s sky. Barley’s most consistent fear is storms, no doubt having been caught in her fair share while living as a stray. Even the slightest hint of inclement weather puts her on alert and in search of shelter. However, since her concept of “storm” is rather broad, there are a number of false positives she regularly identifies as risky, and the most innocuous of these is when a lamp flickers (as happens from time to time with modern LED bulbs). Sometimes, the interruption is so brief that I only realize it has occurred when she quietly slinks beneath my desk, tail between her legs, to take shelter.

Juniper, a wee pup, snuggles with her first ever plush friend, a “baby” shark. Unlike Barley, Juniper was born in a shelter and was less than 4 months old when we rescued her. She was born in a little of 11 puppies, all of whom went up for adoption at the same time. We knew she was special right away because her many siblings focused their attention on the other dogs that were around us, but Juniper focused her attention on the humans instead. The entire time we’ve known her, she’s never not been trying to suss out what’s going on. One of her first toys, which she has taken care of all this time and still treasures to this day, was the above “baby shark.”

Barley, a dog, turns to ascertain the source of some distant sound. Indoor Barley and Outdoor Barley feel very different to interact with, because Outdoor Barley is in a state of continuous captivation by the world of stimuli she finds herself in. And she leans hard into those stimuli. Her head sort of flies through the world like a guided missile, with her body barely managing to keep up. I’ve heard it said of academics that many “treat their body like a vehicle for moving their brain from place to place,” and I acknowledge the validity of the shade that comment casts, but I’ve never met an academic as vehicular as Barley in her efforts to get her nose, ears, and eyes from one Point of Interest to the next.

Barley, a dog, sits at attention and stares intently at the action unfolding offscreen. From time to time, Barley will strike a particularly distinguished pose. This is almost always by accident, because “distinguished” is not how I would describe the way in which Barley carries herself. Consider this photo, which could easily serve as reference for a classical painted portrait. The context that this photo omits, without which Barley’s motivations could be misunderstood, is that she is watching a dad play laser tag with his kids about 40 yards away and is very keen to know what’s going to happen next.

Barley, a dog, peeks out from beyond the veil of sleep in response to the sound of the camera shutter. Barley sleeps a lot in any given day, but she’s also a very, very light sleeper. She can go from seemingly out cold to Ready For Launch if she hears the right cue. This makes catching photos of her sleeping quite difficult, even with a zoom lens. In the event that you do manage a candid snap, your follow-up option is almost always a photo of her checking out what you’re doing and whether she needs to get excited about anything.

Barley, a dog, balances a carnival mask on her nose and, in so doing, becomes someone’s sleep paralysis demon. I have to give Barley credit for being a good sport whenever the spirit moves me to balance something ridiculous on her head. In this case, however, the result was sufficiently disturbing that I don’t think I’ll be doing it again.

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.