Watching The Sidelines

Barley, a dog, peers from a sofa through a window, her face overlaid by the reflections of blue sky and sun-dappled leaves.

As disinterested as Barley is in watching yard work from the confines of a deck, she’s more motivated to do so when inside a house. This speaks to her strong sensibility that Inside Time and Outside Time are very different mental landscapes for her. My suspicion is that when she’s outside, and we’re outside, she’s thinking, “OK, we’re doing this, cool cool cool, they’re gonna come get me and we’ll hang,” whereas when we’re outside and she’s inside, her mind goes to a place of, “You’re coming back, right? You’re not going far, right?” She’s not fussy, she’s not trying to get our attention; I think she’s genuinely keeping tabs on us because she wants to know where we’re at. And should we slip out of her visual range, she’ll try to scope us out, and failing that she’ll find a good vantage point to monitor our likely path of return.