Picture this: lucky dogs
Jan. 14—I write this on Friday the 13th, a day/date combination that some consider unlucky. Fear of the number 13 is called triskaidekaphobia, and fear of Friday the 13th is called paraskevidekatriaphobia.
It got me thinking about the notion of luck, and that I, as an adult, have always thought of myself as a lucky person.
During our Ada Sunrise Rotary meeting this morning, I talked a little bit about that, and the idea that luck by itself is just luck, but luck married to action is the path to good fortune.
And this week, I had a huge piece of good luck, which I married, out of necessity, to action.
Many of my readers who follow me on social media know that one of my dogs, Hawken the Irish wolfhound, experienced a life-threatening injury Monday.
For a little less than a year, Hawken has had a lump behind his left ear. A vet told me in the spring that it's a skin tumor, and harmless, so if nothing happened, we'd just leave it alone.
Monday, something happened. He spent Sunday night inside because it was cold out. I put him outside at around 7 a.m. and fed him. At some point between then and 1:30 p.m., he must have cronked that tumor on something, because when I went out back to walk him, there was blood on the back porch, and when he came around the corner, I could see he was bleeding.
I put pressure on it, but it didn't stop the bleeding, especially since every time he would shake, he would re-open it. I wrapped it with paper towels and an Ace bandage, which was enough to stop the bleeding while I drove him to the vet.
And of course, the back yard and the garage looked like a crime scene.
They sedated him and removed the offending tumor, but the way he was bleeding, it might have ended very differently if I had come out to walk him a couple of hours later.
While it was certainly stressful and decidedly not fun to deal with the situation, it was luck married to action that resulted in good fortune. Hawken is fine, and so am I.
