Watchers

The window exploded, and he fell out into the rear yard, rolling through construction debris. Splintery scraps of two-by-fours and chunks of concrete poked painfully into his legs and ribs. He scrambled to his feet, spun toward the house, and emptied his revolver at the broken window in case the killer was in pursuit of him.
    In the settling night, he saw no sign of the enemy.
    Figuring he had not scored a hit, he wasted no time cursing his luck. He sprinted around the house, along the side of it, and out to the street. He had to get to the patrol car, where there was a radio—and a pump-action riot gun.
3
    On Wednesday and Thursday, the second and third of June, Travis and Nora and Einstein searched diligently for a way to improve human-canine communications, and in the process man and dog had almost begun to chew up furniture in frustration. However, Nora proved to have enough patience and confidence for all of them. When the breakthrough came near sunset on Friday evening, the fourth of June, she was less surprised than either Travis or Einstein.
    They had purchased forty magazines—everything from Time and Life to McCall’s and Redbook—and fifty books of art and photography, and had brought them to the living room of Travis’s rental house, where there was space to spread everything out on the floor. They had put pillows on the floor as well, so they could work at the dog’s level and be comfortable.
    Einstein had watched their preparations with interest.
    Sitting on the floor with her back against the vinyl sofa, Nora took the retriever’s head in both hands and, with her face close to his, their noses almost touching, she said, “Okay, now you listen to me, Einstein. We want to know all sorts of things about you: where you came from, why you’re smarter than an ordinary dog, what you were afraid of in the woods that day Travis found you, why you sometimes stare out the window at night as if you’re frightened of something. Lots more. But you can’t talk, can you? No. And so far as we know, you can’t read. And even if you can read, you can’t write. So we’ve got to do this with pictures, I think.”
    From where he sat near Nora, Travis could see that the dog’s eyes never wavered from hers as she spoke. Einstein was rigid. His tail hung down, motionless. He not only seemed to understand what she was telling him, but he appeared to be electrified by the experiment.
    How much does the mutt really perceive, Travis wondered, and how many of his reactions am I imagining because of pure wishful thinking?
    People have a natural tendency to anthropomorphize their pets, to ascribe human perceptions and intentions to the animals where none exist. In Einstein's case, where there really was an exceptional intelligence at work, the temptation to see profound meaning in every meaningless doggy twitch was even greater than usual.
    “We’re going to study all these pictures, looking for things that interest you, for things that’ll help us understand where you came from and how you got to be what you are. Every time you see something that’ll help us put the puzzle together, you’ve got somehow to bring it to our attention. Bark at it or put a paw on it or wag your tail.”
    “This is nuts,” Travis said.
    “Do you understand me, Einstein?” Nora asked.
    The retriever issued a soft woof.
    “This will never work,” Travis said.
    “Yes, it will,” Nora insisted. “He can’t talk, can’t write, but he can show us things. If he points out a dozen pictures, we might not immediately understand what meaning they have for him, how they refer to his origins, but in time we’ll find a way to relate them to one another and to him, and we’ll know what he’s trying to tell us.”
    The dog, his head still trapped firmly in Nora’s hands, rolled his eyes toward Travis and woofed again.
    “We ready?” Nora asked Einstein.
    His gaze flicked back to her, and he wagged his tail.
    “All right,” she said, letting go of his head. “Let’s start.”
    Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, for hours at a time, they leafed through scores of publications, showing Einstein pictures of all kinds of things— people, trees, flowers, dogs, other animals, machines, city streets, country lanes, cars, ships, planes, food, advertisements for a thousand products— hoping he would see something that would excite him. The problem was that he saw many things that excited him, too many. He barked at, pawed at, woofed at, put