Chapter 1: Section 1: Page 5: Line 39

 He had learned with the readiness peculiar to dogs how with the utmost delicacy to turn pages using nose or paws, and anyone observing him thus engaged could not help noting the changing expressions of his face, in particular the uncommonly articulate eyebrows, which contributed to an overall effect of interest, sympathy, and—the conclusion could scarce be avoided—comprehension.

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Big deal! Pugnax can turn the pages of a book! My cat can yell at me and paw me and knock stuff over until I do exactly what it wants! Of course, my cat doesn't have the weird nearly human eyebrows of the dog. As George Carlin pointed out, cats just have all them fucking whiskers stuck up all over the place. Or whatever. What am I, the quote section of IMDB?!

My cat, Gravy, also knows that the doorknobs open the door but she can't quite figure out how to turn them with her stupid thumbless hands. That doesn't stop her from trying. Whenever I'm in the bathroom, I wind up thinking some murderer with a debilitating muscle disease is fumbling weakly with the doorknob, unable to quite get it turned.

In essence, Pynchon is saying, "Look at dogs! Just like people!" He once said, "Dogs do such human things which is totally an attribute of dogs and not commentary on how we humans humanize them! They really do read and turn pages and speak German and talk with famous surveyors! They're so cute the majority of humans don't mind picking up their warm steaming feces in their bagged hands to carry back home (or, for the worst of the dog owners (and, to be as judgmental as possible, we all know dog owners are already the worst of the humans! Oh, don't get offended! Don't tell me when you see somebody who smokes walking a dog with an acoustic guitar on their back, you don't immediately think, 'There goes one needy motherfucker!'), carry only so far as the next house's garbage can)."

Just try to prove that's not a direct Pynchon quote!

So can Pugnax read or did he just learn, the way dogs learn by just watching and then by encouragement when they mimic their human friends, to turn the pages of a book? Pynchon sort of leaves it open to interpretation here. Here we see a dog doing that thing dogs do when they learn a trick and that trick looks like it's doing something absolutely human to a human watching it.

My money is on Pugnax being able to read. Pynchon's world is always better than the real world.