Character Analysis
Ike, a big black Lab, was a fine hunter and a loyal friend. Like many of the dogs featured in the book, he wasn't actually Paulsen's pet. (He belonged to someone else—more on that in a minute.) Still, Ike served as Paulsen's hunting partner for about a year when he was just 13. A faithful companion during an especially lonely period in Paulsen's teens, Ike seemed to materialize out of nowhere just when he was needed most.
The dog filled a hole in the boy's life—and vice versa.
Ike's Secret Identity
So here's the deal: though Paulsen didn't know it at the time, Ike belonged to a soldier who left to fight in the Korean War. While his owner was gone, Ike joined Paulsen in the woods every day to hunt ducks. When his owner returned, Ike went home to be with him full-time.
Paulsen learned all of this some 30 years after the last time he saw Ike. By coincidence, he met a veteran at a presentation he was giving in his old stomping grounds. After the show, the veteran told him a story.
I had a Labrador that I raised and hunted with, and left him when I went away. I was gone just under a year; I got wounded and lost the use of my legs. When I came back from the hospital he was waiting there and he spent the rest of his life by my side. (3.57)
Paulsen put two and two together: the veteran was talking about his old friend Ike. Small world.
Friends and Equals
When Paulsen met Ike, he was a very lonely teenager who spent a lot of alone time in the woods.
I had not learned then to love solitude—as I do now—and the feeling of loneliness was visceral, palpable. I would see something beautiful…and I would turn to point it out to somebody, turn to say, "Look…" and there would be no one there. (3.6)
Then, one day, there was Ike. At the time, the dog's origin story was totally mysterious. "His coat was thick and he had fat on his back and sides," so Paulsen knew that he wasn't a stray (3.25). Every morning for about a year, Ike would wait for Paulsen in the woods so they could hunt ducks together.
With the smell of powder still in the air, almost before the duck finished falling, the dog was off the bank in a great leap, hit the water swimming, his shoulders pumping as he churned the surface and made a straight line to the dead duck. He took it in his mouth gently, turned and swam back, climbed the bank and put the duck by my right foot […]. (3.35)
Ike was very, very good at hunting ducks.
Ike's Legacy
Ike wasn't just there for the hunting. He was also there to listen.
I would cook an extra egg sandwich for Ike and when the flights weren't coming we would "talk." That is to say, I would talk, tell him all my troubles, and he would sit, his enormous head sometimes resting on my knee, his huge brown eyes looking up at me while I pelted him and rattled on. (3.49)
He was "one of the best friends [Paulsen] ever had and was in all ways an equal; not a pet, not something to master, but an equal" and "a partner" (3.10-3.11).
Ike sensed Paulsen's need (just as he sensed his injured owner's need once he was back from the war), and was there for him as a hunting partner and a friend. In return, Paulsen was a friend to Ike in return, providing companionship to a dog whose regular hunting partner was fighting in a faraway land. Paulsen learned two important lessons: that he wasn't alone, and that dogs weren't his inferiors.