Barley

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.

Follow Barley and Juniper's further adventures by clicking on this button and bookmarking their new home online!

I absolutely did not appreciate the unusual intensity of Juniper's relationship with television until after Barley had joined the household. In this ancient photo, we see Juniper at the very boundary of adulthood, still less than a year old, transfixed by the glowing noisebox. She was a bit less anxious, then, and a lot less picky, and would sit and watch just about anything with us, calm and quiet (unless some screenbeast wandered into frame, of course). Today, it's easier to identify her comfort genres (sitcoms and cooking shows) by how every part of her body relaxes when she watches them, except her eyes, which remain wide.

Once Juniper has patrolled the perimeter and persuaded herself that all is well on the property, she will often plop herself down in a central location and hang out for a bit. If she has one of her tennis balls with her (as she often does), she may gently fuss with it a bit, although it is wholly unclear what she hopes to accomplish while doing so. As a dog who uses tennis balls as comfort objects, I have to wonder: Is she doting on it? Maybe, just maybe, she gains a sense of calm and relief from the burdens of the world by conveying to this inanimate object, in her own way, that "everything's going to be fine."

Juniper is not a fan of playing tug. Nevertheless, she has a well-developed sense of "this is mine at the moment," and is a little fussy about this sense of ownership. If teased with threats to take the object away, she has the opposite of Barley's response - instead of flaunting the object defiantly, she slinks off with the object to some place she won't be bothered so much. I suspect this is why so many of her toys make their way into her crate. Best way to keep her treasures safe, after all.