The dog in The Call of the Wild is Buck. He begins the novel as a powerful, pampered household dog in California before being stolen and sold into the brutal Klondike gold rush, where he must learn to survive as a sled dog.
Buck’s transformation is the story’s driving arc. He adapts to cold, hard labor, competition, and violence while gradually reconnecting with instincts that the novel describes as ancestral. His bond with John Thornton gives him a period of trust and affection, but the wilderness continues to call him away from human society.
Jack London published the novel in 1903. Buck is sometimes confused with White Fang, another famous London canine protagonist, but White Fang is a wolf-dog who appears in a separate 1906 novel. Lassie and Balto are also famous dogs from other stories and historical traditions, not characters in this book.