The dog tilted its head to the left, as though considering what he had to say, and then looked directly at Sam and barked in affirmation.
Sam shrugged and pushed the gameboard and letter pieces toward the dog. “Okay. I don’t have much I can make with this anyway. See if you can do better.”
The dog stared at the seven letters. His brown eyes seemingly fixated on the strange writings, like an archeologist studying ancient petroglyphs with no apparent meaning.
Sam opened his mouth, a slight dimple forming at the corner of his lips. His gaze drifted toward Guinevere. “What do you think of this?”
“I don’t know.” She artificially set her voice deeper, mocking Sam, and said, “He certainly appears to be taking the game seriously.”
The dog stared at the letters, but after nearly a minute he did nothing.
Sam said, “Are you going to take your move, Caliburn?”
The dog barked, and nudged the small placard holding the seven letters over.
“Hey…” Sam said, his voice set in a tone of mock chiding. “I thought you wanted to play? You’re just making a mess. Besides, now Guinevere knows what letters I have. Don’t you know it’s meant to be a secret?”
Caliburn ignored him. Instead, he barked wildly, and nudged the letter pieces around.
Sam watched him. At first it looked like the dog was simply jumbling up the letters into random patterns.
After a few seconds, Sam leaned in to pack up the game, but Guinevere stopped him with a single hand gesture — let’s wait and see what the dog does…
Sam grinned.
Okay, I’ll wait…
Nearly a full minute later, the dog had arranged three letters side by side.
Sam’s eyes narrowed as he read the letters out loud. “DOG.”
Caliburn tilted his head again and barked. There was nothing difficult about interpreting the dog’s meaning.
It said, well, what do you think of that?
“Cute, Caliburn.” Sam grinned as he added up the score for each letter. “D’s are two points. O’s are just one, and G’s are two points. That’s just five points. You get double for playing first. That’s ten in total. Pretty lousy way to start the game.”
The dog placed its jaw on the wooden floor, and stretched both its paws forward, as though covering its eyes in shame. The dog mewled sheepishly, and tucked its tail between its legs.
Sam said, “Hey, don’t worry. I couldn’t do any better.”
Guinevere said, “Did Caliburn really just write DOG?”
Sam nodded. “I think he did. I told you he wasn’t just any old lost dog. Caliburn’s the smartest dog I’ve ever met.”
“Even so,” Guinevere replied, “I don’t think it’s possible for a dog to read, let alone spell.”
“What are you saying?” Sam turned the board so that the word DOG faced her. “This was a coincidence?”
“It might have been…”
“Sure, with odds of about a million to one that he’d pick that word in particular,” Sam countered.
“All right. If Caliburn can read and spell, let’s simply try him with another word.”
“Okay. That makes sense.” Sam emptied the rest of the letters on the floor beside the game board. He riffled through them, searching for some specific letters. “Hey Caliburn… do you want to play again?”
The dog’s tail started wagging again. Slowly at first, then fast and uncontrollably.
Sam nodded and placed seven new letters in front of the dog. “See if you can make the word cat.”
Caliburn stared at the letters.
AXOGDCT
The dog barked and repositioned the letters using his snout.
Sam grinned as he watched him form another three-letter word. “DOG. Well, there you have it. Someone trained this dog to recognize the name of his species. That’s impressive, but not impossible. Nowhere near as amazing as being able to spell any random word.”
Caliburn barked, as though still waiting for praise.
“Good try, Caliburn,” Sam said, giving him a pat behind the ears. “But I’m afraid the word we were looking for was CAT.”
The dog glanced at the board, and the letters, as though examining them better might provide another outcome. When it didn’t come naturally, he merely mewled uninterestedly, and returned to his predominant position of sleep as if bored by the whole thing.
Guinevere said, “Well, what do you make of that?”
“His owner has clearly taught him to recognize the word DOG. Neat party trick, but nothing more.”
She arched an eyebrow. “You really believe that?”
Sam sighed. “Not even a little.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
The next morning Sam and Guinevere took Caliburn to a local vet.
The doctor was a forty-something year old Texan who’d recently moved into the area to escape the dry heat. Sam filled the man in about how he’d found Caliburn in the Tillamook State Forest, about the dog knowing where the glovebox was, and about the bizarre trick of spelling the word, DOG. The vet was mostly unimpressed, arguing that dogs are smart animals and can be trained to perform any number of tasks.
Sam doubted there were many dogs that had been trained to read or spell simple words, but he bit his lip and let the doctor assess Caliburn.
The vet did a quick assessment and looked at Sam. “I can tell you one thing.”
“Yes?” Sam and Guinevere asked, simultaneously.
“The dog’s not a stray. Or if he was, he’s only just become so. The fact is, he’s very healthy despite being an older dog of say, ten or eleven years. His fur is clean and well groomed. His paws are clean and his claws trimmed. His teeth are superb. I don’t know if his owner was a dentist or something, but I’ve never seen a dog of any age with such good oral hygiene.”
Sam patted Caliburn. “That-a-dog. Well done.”
The vet continued, checking Caliburn’s temperature, and taking a small sample of blood for testing. He rotated the medical vial so that the blood mixed with the chemicals designed to prevent it from clotting. “The DNA blood tests might take a few weeks to come back.”
Sam frowned. “That long?”
“That long. Unless you know a geneticist who can do it for you quicker?”
Sam held his hand out for the blood sample container. “As a matter of fact, I do. I’ll send it to her today.”
“All right, I’ll leave that for you.” The vet ran a series of behavior tests to judge Caliburn’s logic and reasoning abilities. When he was finished, the vet said, “Caliburn’s a healthy dog in good shape and as you said, he’s very intelligent. He’s well behaved and his behavior tests, designed to assess his intelligence, are off the chart.”
“Thank you. That’s reassuring to hear.” Sam said, “Can you tell us anything about his background from his collar?”
The vet looked at the collar. It was made of a thick piece of metal and had the words, Caliburn neatly engraved on one side. “Anything in particular, you’re looking for?”
Guinevere said, “I thought dogs were meant to be microchipped or something? We were hoping maybe the collar might have the dog’s details.”
The vet nodded. “Yeah, most dogs are required to be microchipped when they’re sold, but that’s not always the case. Sometimes you have people who buy illegally from non-breeders, dogs who accidentally have litters, you know? But for the most part, dogs are microchipped.”
“But Caliburn isn’t?” Sam asked.
“No. Caliburn isn’t,” the vet confirmed. “A dog like this wasn’t an accident, and by the looks of things, the owners sure as heck didn’t try and take shortcuts.”
“So, what are you saying?”