What’s Luck Got to Do with It?

As some of you already know, when I was a little girl, my mother saw a notice that some studio was looking for “the next Shirley Temple.”  Though I could not then and still cannot hold a tune, and while I was as far from a dance prodigy as you could get, my mother thought I was qualified because I had curly hair.  The studio disagreed.  My mother was sorely disappointed.

Even back then, I wanted to be a writer and a dog trainer.  As luck would have it, Margaret O’Brien was chosen to play Judy Garland’s little sister and I could hold tight to my dreams and eventually make them come true.

Sometimes you get exactly what you were hoping for.  Sometimes, not.  Sometimes you find just the right breeder or just the right rescue dog.  Sometimes, somehow, a dog walks into your life and he seems all wrong, but there he is.  And then it turns out that in order to reach this dog, in order to talk to him, in order to teach him what he needs to know, the world has to open up. Little by little, you see more, you hear more, you feel more.  Little by little, the wrong dog becomes the right dog.  Or, at any rate, your dog.  You change him.  He changes you.  And one day you are out together, maybe walking on a pretty trail in the country, perhaps walking on a city street, and you look down at him and he looks back at you, his round, brown eyes seeking yours, smiling.  And you think, what’s luck got to do with it?  Maybe something.  Maybe nothing.  Maybe, in your heart, you knew all along he was the right dog for you.