He was quite clearly distraught.  Totally focused on trying to find his human companion.  There seemed an almost panic reaction in his behaviour.  Completely ignoring our presence, bypassing us on the trail by a wide margin, he ran forward and beyond us, clearly anxious and clearly intent on finding the place where he had diverged from contact with his owner, and moving off from there.  He passed us first in one direction, ears flapping, tail succeeding his sniffing nose.  And then, a short while later, in the opposite direction.

Earlier, we had come across a pleasant young woman walking a fairly small Golden Retriever.  At first we couldn't place her to recall that we'd seen her on a previous occasion months ago.  We passed some pleasantries on the utter beauty of the mid-afternoon trails, liberally littered with the brilliant foliage that had piled in plush height on the forest floor and the trails.

A short time later we noticed the fleeting form of a dog racing along behind backyards that backed onto the ravine, visible now as a result of the defoliation of the trees, in that particular stretch of trails.  Before long, the dog had looped around onto the trail itself, heading in our direction, its intent anxiety obvious to us.  It was a large dog, a Labrador Retriever mix; light brown, with a better conformation than a pedigreed Retriever. 

After the dog had passed us back and forth several times we began to worry about its welfare, touched by its evident distress.  Then it was gone, for the last time.  Soon afterward we came across a middle-aged man we'd seen on a few previous occasions walking his standard Poodle, and we explained to him what we'd witnessed.  He knew the dog and its owner, said he'd look out for the dog which would follow him and his own dog, then we parted.

Accessing another linked trail, we saw the woman we'd earlier come across, and alongside her the Golden Retriever seen earlier, and the mixed-breed dog that had been so desperately attempting to rejoin his owner.  As we approached we could see serenity in the dog, a contentment as he walked quietly alongside the woman, then leaped forward to race with the other dog after a squirrel.

We recounted to the woman what we had witnessed, her dog's distress in trying to find her, and she laughed ruefully, explaining to us that her dog had a habit of wandering off behind those houses where we'd first seen it, because someone, she theorized, must put meat bones on a compost pile there.  Her dog retrieves them from time to time, and she has a devil of a time persuading it that the bone should be surrendered to her, fearing it would splinter and cause internal harm.

She would never, she assured us, leave the ravine without her dog.  But did find it disquieting that he kept returning to the source of those delectable meat bones.  She has the option of leashing her dogs, or allowing them free reign to wander and run about to discover all the natural marvels available to them in the forest of the ravine.  That freedom is weighted by concern over her dog's penchant to wander where he shouldn't, then panic over losing contact with her.