Wild

I suspect the dog may be wild. Not wild at heart, but really wild, a feral animal lurking just beneath the domesticated surface.

A few times a week, we drive up to a dog park that borders a lake on the north side of town. Most of the park is cleared -- muddy half the year, ice-packed the rest. But the slice of park that hugs the lake is wooded, with thick underbrush. Small trails, like tributaries, branch off the main walking path and cut deep into tangled branches.

I let him lead the way. He stays about 20 yards ahead but pauses every now and then to look back, watching me, making sure I'm following. We head down a narrow trail toward a frozen stream that feeds the lake. All along its edge, the ice has turned from opaque white to a blueish clear. If I stepped on it, it would break. But the dog, tracking some scent, runs safely out onto the ice, oblivious to the line between land and water.

Most of the people and the other dogs stay in the big, muddy center. We are alone. Something catches the dog's attention, and he bounds over a rise, toward the lake shore. He runs, nose to ground, pauses, looks up with ears perked, then runs again, not in a straight line, but weaving around like a bumblebee. This is the closest to real wilderness he'll see this month, away from our city apartment and cramped backyard. He could not be happier.

He ignores the other dogs in favor of sniffing and tracking and burrowing through the reeds. Part spaniel, part fox. JK likes to say this dog could never survive on his own, that if we dropped him off in the middle of a field, he'd get eaten by a hawk. But at the dog park, I think him less domesticated, more able to fend for himself in the wild.

He runs ahead and through some trees, and for a few moments, I lose sight of him. I can hear him, though, the sound of breaking twigs and the plod of his footfalls on the ice-encrusted snow. Then, I hear a crash, something breaking, the sound of cracking ice, and I walk a little faster, calling his name. There, in a small clearing, he stands chest-deep in a puddle that, until a few seconds ago, had been frozen over with a thin sheet of ice.

I shake my head. "You deserved that," I say. He just looks at me, wagging his tail, then takes off running.