This paper describes the design, implementation, and evaluation of a proximity-based dynamic path shortening scheme, called DPS. In DPS, active route paths adopt dynamically to node mobility based on the "local" link quality estimation at each own node, without exchanging periodic control packets such as Hello packets. Each node monitors its own local link quality only when receiving packets and estimates whether to enter the "proximity" of the neighbor node to shorten active paths in a distributed manner. Simulation results of DPS in several scenarios of various node mobility and traffic flows reveal that adding DPS to DSR and AODV (conventional prominent on-demand ad hoc routing protocols) significantly reduces the end-to-end packet latency up to 50-percent and also the number of routing packets up to 70-percent over DSR, particularly in heavy traffic cases. We also demonstrate the more simulation results obtained by using our two novel mobility models which generate realistic node mobility: Random Orientation Mobility and Random Escape Mobility models. Finally, simple performance experiments using DPS implementation on FreeBSD OS demonstrate that DPS shortens active routes in the order of milliseconds (about 5 ms).