A modern-day story incorporating elements of Jack London&s classic short novel Christopher Lloyd stars as a recently widowed man living in Montana who takes his young granddaughter Ryann in for several weeks while her parents are out of the country When a wild hybrid wolfdog shows up injured on the back porch one night Ryann wants to take him back to Boston as a pet but her grandfather knows the animal will eventually have to return to the wild To help his granddaughter understand he begins to read her Jack London&s Call of the Wild each night but Ryann has ideas of her own & helps a local boy train the magnificent animal to become a sled dog leader Timothy Bottoms plays a dark-hearted local bully who tries to claim the dog as his own & Wes Studi stars as a mysterious mountain man who always seems to appear on the fringe of the action