ALL WHO WANDER

My Goofball Dog and Me

WE SET OFF ON OUR DAILY HIKE in the predawn dark, my goofball dog and I.

Lobo nearly yanks me off my feet in his muscular exuberance, before falling into step alongside me. I look east and note the lightening of the soon-to-rise sun as Lobo dances along on his spring-loaded legs, his big wet black nose scanning the darkness with the joy of a heartbeat.

I know he yearns for the ridgeline where I will let him off the leash and he can run free, all stretch and leap and nose and tail. Lobo's passion for freedom has already upended my once restful routine. Now I must stumble out of bed, rub my eyes raw and shamble off into the darkness so I can finish walking the dog in time to shower, gulp breakfast and make it to work by 8:30.

Mind you, I didn't want another dog.

I didn't know he was a wolf.

And I definitely don't identify with him-no matter what my wife says.

I just had a weak moment, when he trotted all coyotelike toward us. We watched him check out every front door on the street-like he was selling wolf timeshares. Then he got to us, friendly but dignified. So my son's girlfriend ran into the house and got him water and food.

My fate was sealed.

I have no plausible excuse. Hopi, our loving little 15-yearold pound dog, is on her tottering last legs, after having raised our three sons. Now I have an empty nest and plans to travel every weekend. But here is this mangy, hungry, 65-pound tough guy with "oh-my-what-big-teeth-you-have" mischief in his brown eyes and a tongue the size of a kid's sleeping bag.

I way knew better.

But the minute we allowed his cold black nose through the tent flap of our affections, we were doomed. He eats couches if left alone, jumps the 6-foot-high back fence, leaps onto the kitchen counter to clean the plates in the sink and steals food out of unattended grocery bags. Moreover, after a month he toppled over in a dead faint. Turns out, he has a thyroid problem-Addison's disease. So the vet prescribed steroids (for the dog) and billed me $800.

Oh, by the way, adds the vet-Lobo's a wolf hybrid.

A wolf? What the heck was I thinking?

So as I tromp on through the darkness up a ridge of South Mountain with my joyful, sickly, steroidal wolf dog, I ponder the pinballness of my life.

Atop the ridge I let Lobo loose. He bounds down the trail, like a falcon in an updraft.

Abruptly, the brilliant orange sliver of the sun breaks through the Earth at the horizon, immolating the clouds. I stand, stupefied by the sight until Lobo locates some fresh coyote scat. He gobbles, I holler, he drops.

We move on, with Lobo running ahead of me like water in a cataract. A glower of thunderheads rolls towards us, held together by a stitchery of lightning.

I stop on a highpoint, caught between the sunrise and storm. The rain overtakes us, with our hilltop still bathed in light from the rising sun. I look down upon the refracted rain as it falls past me onto the hidden coyotes below. With a mental effort, I freeze the raindrops, which makes me fall upward through a great glitter. I do not think Lobo notices the effect, for he is getting high off some delicious scent on the tip of a creosote bush.

Distantly, I hear the coyotes again. No. Not coyotes. It is the siren of an ambulance, the primal yip of the crazed subconscious of the urban. Lobo pays it no mind and sniffs the breeze while we stand together on this ridged boundary of the wild.

As he leads me back home, my heart prances.

For I know that tomorrow well before dawn my foolish and troublesome dog will come and stand beside my bed in the darkness. If I do not stir, he will put his cold black nose in my hand.

I can hardly wait.