Boris and the Question of What Dogs Are Thinking

A friend named Christine—travel blogger, proud dog owner—has a dog called Boris. She describes him as a charismatic face-contortionist with a rich inner life. What I’ve witnessed is a dog that lies in a corner, stares at the middle distance, pants occasionally, and maintains a studied neutrality about everything.

I find myself sitting across from Boris and genuinely wondering. What goes on in there. What he dreams about. What specific intelligence he’s gathering when he presses his nose into the backside of some stranger’s labrador at the park. Whether the thoughts are catastrophic or completely empty. I want to know what Boris finds funny.

Photographer Lara Jo Regan published a book full of dogs hanging out of car windows, all of them wearing an expression somewhere between rapture and bafflement. Around the same time, Keith Hopkin shot a new version of his Dogs in Cars video series, this time in and around Miami. I’ve watched it twice now. The dogs are receiving something—wind, speed, the whole blurring world—that I can’t access from the same seat. Whatever it is, it looks like enough.