The Dog by Kerstin Ekman

the
    clearing on the other side of the ridge. The mother dog
    was loose and the grey dog followed her. They cornered three moose on the marsh. The snow reached way up over
    their bellies, so they couldn't move fast enough to prevent
    the moose from getting away. The flock dispersed and the
    dogs were left with just one, a yearling with long, white
    legs.
    After two hours the mother dog had had enough. But the
    grey dog kept it up. When his master came skiing to call him
    off, he had been barking for five hours. That was when the
    man realised he was a very special dog. That's what he said
    later, over and over again.
    He started training him, first on the ski track and then
    behind his bicycle. In September he took him along hunting
    for the first time. He wouldn't chase his prey very far, but the
    man said that was an advantage. Saved you standing around
    waiting for a dog that had gone his own way.
    That first season they shot five moose he had hunted
    down, four bulls and a calf. There would be more. He'd
    earned his name, the man said.
    Now he was able to take him in the car when he was
    going to meet the others, and he could also put a collar and
    leash on him. Not even the radio scared him any more.
    But he remained a one-man dog and no one could touch
    him but his master, and the woman who put down his food
    bowl by the kitchen sink. Both of them also knew they
    should speak gently. A raised, angry voice would make him
    retreat and not reappear for a long time.
    He was constantly watchful. Often he sat upright on the
    front porch or out at the top of the steep hill on which the
    farmhouse perched, ears and nose attentive. He followed
    things that happened far away. The brown, squinting eyes
    THE DOG
    in the black mask monitored movements in the leaves and
    the grass.
    Even indoors' he was on his guard. Often they thought he
    looked as if he were listening for something, though they
    couldn't imagine what.
    They would put a hand on his head and talk to him, but
    he would pull away and settle back down somewhere he
    would not be disturbed.
    He remained alone in his waiting.
    The tale ends there. No one knows what he was listening for
    or what he had been through out there where no one had
    been able to see him.
    No one even knows whether there's a word for whatever
    it is he's waiting for.