Barley, a dog, curls up against an egg-shaped cushion with the words “wake me up later” printed on it. While she remains a committed fan of soft surfaces, Barley’s sleep preferences vary with the ambient temperature. Over the summer, she has spent more time retreating to my bedroom to sleep (rather than her crate), and I suspect it’s because she can sprawl a bit more and keep from being overly warm. As winter approaches and my apartment gets that little but more chilly, my bet is that she’s gravitate back toward her crate, which her body warms up pretty quickly once she’s settled in.

Barley, a dog, trots along a forested path alongside a series of large ferns. I’ve had a soft spot for ferns ever since they became tied conceptually to dinosaurs in all manner of illustrations. Famously old, their ancestral roots go back over 400 million years. Since they predate the evolution of flowering plants, and are so strongly tied by scientific illustration to the dinosaur period, ferns have felt “old-fashioned” to me for as long as I can remember. Now, encountering them as I often do with Barley in tow, I have a newfound appreciation for how conveniently they are shaped: Broad enough for Barley to peek under inquisitively, but floppy enough to be easily brushed aside as needed and growing from a rugged central cluster that I don’t need to worry about Barley damaging if she rampages through the underbrush.

Juniper, a dog, is curled up on top of a comforter, her body partly covered by a pillow with a fuzzy pillowcase. Juniper’s general fussiness extends to her sleep preferences. She would like to snuggle up close, until she doesn’t and prefers something soft within earshot of humans, unless she instead wants some full-blown solitude. the precise combination of factors that set her moods is always mysterious, but those moods also rely on the stability of her circumstances. So if (for example) a bit of painting temporarily necessitates sleeping on a futon in the living room, such that her circuit of snooze spots is off limits, she will default to her core preference for uncertain times: Keep it close, and keep it cozy.

Barley, a dog, sprawls on the floor in an office, waiting for some visitor or meeting to add some zest to the work day. In keeping with the theme of waiting raised last week, Barley surely finds much of my in-office work to be quite dull. Her initial reaction to staying in the office was quite ambivalent, I think because she must find it to be almost spookily sterile locale. Now that she’s used to it, of course, she’s much less nervous (and her in-office crate no doubt has a comfortingly familiar ambiance), but there’s very much time that still needs killing. Fortunately, she never needs to wait longer than 20-30 minutes for someone who wants to say hi to pass by my open door, in which case she can trot up to the gate and receive a friendly hello from some fan or other.

Barley, a dog, sleeps deeply, konked entirely out on a sofa with her head nestled into the angle of the arm rest. As we approached the home of my parents on a recent visit, I rolled down the window to give Barley a sniff of the neighborhood air and she became very excited. Even as the car was still in motion, she became awkwardly pacing around in her back-seat hangout zone, and was all jazzed when I parked and let her out. She proceeded to bonk around the first floor for several minutes, only for her bonkers to be further elevated by being fed her dinner. Her arrival was so athletic that, twenty minutes later, as the three of us sat on the couch and chatted, Barley was out like a light on the adjoining love seat, sleeping off her exhausting opening number.

Barley, a dog, lies on her back in the grass, harness on and paws in the air as she wiggles. Motion blur reveals that she is giving an especially strong kick with her left hind foot. We are rapidly approaching the end of wiggle season. To my great relief, Barley isn’t much interested in wiggling in grass that’s wet, especially if the underlying soil is muddy. She craves a dry wiggle that yields satisfying scritches. I find her tendency to swing her hips by making big, alternating kicks to be especially endearing. I wonder if it’s tapping into a similar motor scheme as that which dogs use when doggie paddling through deep water.

Barley, a dog, stands in a college hallway beneath a bulletin board marked with various tags. One reads, “We are situated within the collapse of a civilization and the noise is deafening. Act now and the community will make it through.” Having now had a few days to ponder cohost’s closure as a platform and the not-too-far-future reality of the whole site being deleted, I find myself in a bit of a mood about the theme of community. I don’t intend for this to be a whole thinkpiece about social media platforms - you came here to see photos of my dog - but I nevertheless think there’s an opportunity here to reflect on what community means in a digital space. Some of you found Barley through the tags and have come to know her through my photography and authorial voice, without our ever having interacted directly. Cohost made a lot of those sort-of-one-way observational relationships possible, and I get the impression that some of the distress that people expressed stemmed from feeling that those cozy, safe connections were going away. Well, if you’re reading this, you’re still here, and I’m glad for it. All of us were already somewhere and many of us have planted new flags and tilled new fields. Additionally, I felt compelled to reach out directly to folks in September, and I have very much appreciated the fruits of that contact. With hindsight, I am willing to admit that I squandered many opportunities to be in…

Barley, a dog, viewed in closeup as she lies on a hill of dry summer grass, chomping the heck out of a stick and seeming very satisfied as she does so. Barley gives me the impression that she’s a real creature of the senses. Unlike Juniper, who always seems to be trying to deduce something, Barley is quite content to lose herself in a pleasant experience. With a belly full, a back warmed by the sun, a friend close to hand, and a branch coming apart under the force of her jaws, she has all she needs in the world.

Barley, a dog, encounters a blue Yard Orb. Slight motion blur suggests that she is already moving on to other things as the photo is being taken. I will, at times, try to make photographic fetch happen. While I wouldn’t say I stage photos I take of Barley, I will sometimes inspire her natural curiosity with an encouraging “whazzat?” to get her to investigate something so I can take a picture of her doing so. Turns out, Barley has no time in her schedule for the pondering of orbs. Get outta here, orbs, you don’t even smell interesting! Thus concludes Barley’s brief adventures in orbposting, regular posting resumes tomorrow.

Juniper, a dog, is hidden beneath a futon. Only her hind legs peek out, as viewed from above in this photo. Like so many Internet denizens, Juniper must sometimes take steps to quell the exquisit agonies of Being Seen. Fortunately for us, her limited canine perspective taking is such that she often doesn’t quite achieve full stealth mode. These days, she mostly retreats to her crate, but back in the day she used the cozy stratum beneath the guest room futon as her refuge of choice, and her skooch-to-get-under technique almost always left her toes exposed.

Barley, a dog, sploots in a fenced yard beside and parallel with a golden retriever. Each chews a hunk of wood enthusiastically. Barley was very fortunate to have many playdates over the summer months, and in doing so was able to share in her passion for chewing on crumbly hunks of wood. Her interest in “social chewing” turns out to be quite general, and is practiced in the context of acquaintanceship. She chews while hanging out with guests, whereas when she’s with people in her close ingroup, she’s much more inclined to relax or sleep. So the question is: Does she love to chew socially because it’s an outlet for her excess excitement, or is it a social performance?

Barley, a dog, relaxes in the grass with a pensive look. Not too long ago, I took Barley on a longer-than usual walk on a lovelier-than-usual day. Our route was largely familiar, but one of Barley’s great strengths is that she finds an eternally renewing interest in the world, so she was no less enthusiastic for it. As we made our way back and came within sight of the doorway that would bring us back indoors, her pace slowed, and she resolutely plopped down onto the grass. There she stayed for some minutes, sniffing the light breeze, soaking up one last coatfull of afternoon warmth as I waited, before we returned to the office and the remaining work of the day.

Barley, a dog, glaces up from a nondescript concrete alcove. In the foreground, out of focus, is a secure keypad/callbox, on which is balanced a textbook titled “Introduction to Nuclear Engineering.” There nothing noteworthy about walking past a locked door. Best to assume most doors you walk past are locked, frankly. And should that door have a card-swipe, no big deal, you see that all the time. Now, a door with a card-swipe and a number pad? That’s a little more unusual, how come you need a multi-factor locking mechanism. And if that electronic lock has an armored camera pointed at it? Then maybe, maybe you take notice. What I want to know is, do you finally start asking questions when someone drops off the copy of Introduction to Nuclear Engineering that they borrowed?

Barley, a dog, lies sprawled on her side, her hips on her dog bed, her body relaxed, but her ears flopped into an upward position, and her eyes open. For all my efforts to give Barley a full and interesting life, there is no denying that she spends a great deal of time waiting. She hovers in the early afternoon when she anticipates that she’s due a walk. Her stomach marks the hour for dinner like clockwork, and she’ll gently remind me if it seems I might need reminding. For the most part, however, she appears to simply take for granted that I must be waiting for that same event to occur. Not resentful, not impatient, but vigilant. Something is coming after this, in just a little longer, a little longer…

Barley, a dog, pauses to drink from a broad, shallow stream of water flowing down a sidewalk from a broken sprinkler head at the edge of a patch of grass. I try to avoid letting Barley drink from standing pools of water, mostly out of an abundance of caution. I recognize that, if some fresh rainwater gathers on a shady, sleepy sidewalk, there’s probably not much harm in Barley wetting her whistle, but my prior experiences of living in urban environments makes it hard for me to shake the memory of such pools being rainbow-slick with visible films of motor oil. In this particular instance, the day was hot, a sprinkler head had broken, and water was bubbling forth in real time as if from a natural spring, so I relaxed my ordinary paranoia and let her shed some heat with an infusion of delicious Underwater Cool.

Barley, a dog, watches quizzically from inside a car whose windows are caked in a scattered powdering of tree pollen. The summer months are the only period during the year that Barley really needs a semi-regular bath. While not a stinky dog even on the worst of days, she can develop a little bit of aura after a week of heat-wave weather, a scent that’s just characterful enough that it would be within the bounds of good taste to freshen her up for the benefits of a sensitive guest to my office. So, too, does my car seem most in need of some intervention during these months, in which much of the local flora (particulars the many trees) tries its luck and unloads pollen into the air. For both, the coming of the rains provides a tasteful freshening up at regular enough intervals to keep them pleasing to the senses.

Juniper, a dog, sleeps on her comically large bed in a cable-knit sweater that clings to the contours of her body. As we all prepare to bid cohost a quiet passing into archival memory, we would all do well to keep our respective creatures close, and keep them warm. Theirs is a simple world, as compared with ours and its abstract and convoluted problems, and there is comfort to be had in bringin comfort to theirs. This is Juniper’s 85th post, on cohost’s final Juniper Friday, but an 86th entry will appear soon, as all our adventures will continue in all our widening worlds.

Barley, a dog, is photographed relaxing on the futon. The image quality is weirdly grainy in a way that only the lowest-cost image sensor on the market can provide. There is a slice of time in the photo-record of Barley’s adventures in which the images, while digital, have a kind of grain that feels unnatural in an era of surprisingly powerful phone cameras. Its trademark is an even scattering of dark motes, as if the photo had received a very light dusting of soot from a passing chimneysweep’s broom. During this period of time, my phone of many years had given up the ghost: It was never not hot to the touch, and (despite multiple battery replacements) could no longer hold a charge for more than a couple hours. So, as a stopgap, my phone company provided me what I thought of as the Pity Phone: a burner in all but name, retailing at around $30, whose CPU was so underpowered that it needed to run a comically toybox custom fork of Android. The phone had a camera, as all modern smart phones do. Nevertheless, the combination of the cheapest sensor money can buy and a puny CPU with no spare clock cycles to gussy up a noisy image resulted in photography that was literally the least one could do: Simultaneously blurrier and crunchier than you would want, a look so distinctive it effectively becomes its own data-moshed aesthetic.

Barley, a dog, sleeps deeply on a sofa in a sunbeam. The light scattered off of her orange body tints the fabric of the sofa, creating an impression that she is giving off a golden glow. It’s hard not to play favorites when one has a dog, because it’s very natural to reflect their intense and unconditional affect back at that in whatever form they express it. Even so, I can’t help but notice how often people speak of Barley’s warmth and friendliness, even relative to their own dogs! While she is a bit rambunctious, I don’t think I’m overstepping the bounds of good taste when I say that there seems to be a consensus that Barley has a palpable aura that is a bit special even among members of this very special species.

Barley, a dog, puts her paws up on a retaining wall and locks eyes briefly with a goat who, lying on the ground in the shade, has turned its head to face her. I’ll still stop by the neighborhood goats from time to time, but Barley has expressed such resolute disinterest in them (and they in her) that I was quite surprised by this moment. I assumed I would simply catch Barley on camera walking past, but she hopped up to check, and the goat looked back. And just as I snapped the picture, the moment ended: the goat turned away, and Barley proceeded to sniff a bit at the grass up top before hopping back down to street level. It seems wholly understood by both parties that what the other is up to is none of their concern. But a moment like this tells me they are definitely still aware of one another.