Dogs in Cars

I have a friend with a dog named Boris. According to her, he’s this charismatic little face—always making expressions. What I see is something else. Boris mostly just lies in the corner, staring at nothing, panting. He’s not particularly animated about anything. He’s neutral, mostly. But I find myself watching him and wondering what’s actually happening in there. What he dreams about. What he’d tell me if he could, when he’s at the dog park sniffing around other dogs’ asses, what thoughts are turning over in his head. What deep, world-shifting, utterly destructive things might be churning around inside him.

Then I found out photographer Lara Jo Regan published a whole book of dogs in cars. Keith Hopkins shot new versions of his ’Dogs in Cars’ series in Miami. I watched them and couldn’t stop thinking the same thing—what are they seeing out there? What goes through their heads while they’re being driven somewhere, noses to the window, completely absorbed in whatever they’re looking at?

You know you won’t get an answer. But you watch anyway.