Scrabbletoes

Barley, a dog, is depicted from the elbow down, standing on cracking, compacted snow. Her claws are splayed out a little.

Once the powder has set and the cold fuses the top layer of snow into a crust, Barley’s locomotive style changes pretty dramatically. Rather than a stately high-steppin’ trot (of the sort she’d use amid autumn leaves), she favors a shoulders-low gremlin scrabbling (of the sort she’d use on loose gravel). This might just be more obvious than usual because the snow provides an unusual stark contrast to her dark nails, but I don’t recall an instance in which I was able to see clearly how much she was splaying her toes and really digging each of her nails into the ground for traction.