The other problem was that the dog refused to do his strange tricks on camera. Whenever Amy tried to record Rover, he not only stopped doing anything strange, he acted sillier than usual. He would shove his nose in the camera, or roll on his back, or try to jump up and give Amy licks on the face. For any other dog, Amy would’ve thought that was normal behavior, but given how calm and quiet Rover was most of the time, it stood out as odd.

It took nine days to finally catch him.

Amy had given Katie her iPad, to see if whatever bond the dog had with her sister would pick up a lot quicker with Katie holding her tablet. She recorded Katie with her phone as her sister did her usual routine of petting Rover and baby-talking to him.

“Rover, wanna see something?” said Katie. She pressed something on the tablet and held it out in front of the dog. “Look! Who’s that? Who’s that good boy on the screen, yes!”

Katie had turned on the camera, but had switched the view around. The image on the screen was Rover staring back at himself, reflected in the video mirror.

Rover froze. He slowly leaned forward and stared, transfixed by his own image. Amy felt whatever small amount of dog-ness that the animal had seep out of him. She had a flashback of the way he had stared at her in the vet’s office, during his shaking episode—that was the creature who was sitting in front of her now, staring at his own reflection.

Rover made a soft whuff.

CLICK—the tablet took a picture of Rover.

Without thinking, Amy gasped. Katie looked up at her with a surprised grin.

“Did you take that picture?” asked Amy.

“Nope,” said Katie proudly. “That was all him!”

Amy glanced down at her phone screen. The button was red; the numbers kept spinning.

She’d gotten it. She was going to blow everyone’s minds with this footage.

Amy spent the next day at school in a haze. Whenever a teacher looked away or she had a second alone, she rewatched the video in disbelief. There, onscreen, was her dog taking a picture of himself, using his mind. It was an exciting discovery. She’d be hailed as a scientific pioneer, the Nikola Tesla of her sixth-grade class.

But something about the video bothered her—something weird and confusing that she couldn’t quite put her finger on.

It hit her during lunch, as she cracked a notebook and began scribbling down name ideas for her presentation. The Wireless Dog, The Digital Dog, The Canine Mind, What’s Wrong with My Dog? …

There. It came to her at once, and she sat back and put the end of her pen between her teeth.