The story of Lucky started on the 30th of December 2006. It was a cold, rainy Saturday afternoon, I went outside to appraise a car and saw a dog wandering in the field across from our body shop. I drove up to see if everything was okay and the dog ran off out of sight. I got a phone call from one of our employees that had been working that day in the shop, he called to tell me he was going home for the day and that there was a dog that had been scratching on the shop door. When I went to lock up the shop for the night the dog was outside, she was obviously cold, under nourished, and scared. We put some food on a plate for her and she waited until we went inside before she would go near the food. Once we went inside she ate all the food on the plate and ran out of sight.
The next morning I had to go to the shop to install a new hot water heater, before I left home I put some leftovers in a bag just in case the dog was still wandering around the shop. My dad was at the shop when I got there and started to tell me that he had seen the stray dog outside; before he finished his sentence the he saw the dog walk out from between cars in the shop. His reaction was "You let that dog in?" I reminded him that it was cold and wet outside, I told him the dog was hungry and scared, she needed a little break to help her out. After she ate I put a blanket on the floor, she laid down and watched as I installed a new hot water heater, never making any noise. She seemed content to just watch and was happy to be warm and have something to eat. It appeared that she had been outside for quite some time and she was more than content spending New Year's Eve inside where she would be safe and warm.
When all the guys in the body shop returned after the New Year's holiday we put signs out at the local gas stations and asked around to see if someone had lost a dog. After a week without a response from the "lost dog " signs we decided we needed to find her a good home, but we had ALL gotten attached to her and she appeared to have found a home. Our next decision was what to call a stray dog that was going to have a body shop as a home. There were some goofy names thrown out, like Bondo. In passing I said we should call her LUCKY, since she was lucky I let her inside and fed her. The name stuck. One day shortly thereafter she disappeared for quite some time, when she finally came back she had a small rubber wheel, it appeared she had brought her worldly possession with her and made the decision she had a new home.
The funny thing with having her around for a few weeks I found out that she really wasn't LUCKY that I let her inside on a cold, wet December day; I realized that I was the lucky one. She could have stopped anywhere, scratched on anyone's door, but she chose to stop at our shop and she found me. She has a safe place to live, she's well fed, she gets regular visits to the vet, she gets tons of attention form people all day and in return I get the loyalty and friendship of a GREAT dog. Man's best friend. After 7 years I can say that I still feel lucky she found me, she's been a great friend and a whole bunch of fun to have around. She still loves to be close to me when I'm in the shop working, maybe she just wants to be the supervisor. Dogs are so smart, Lucky knows when things aren't great for me, she can always make me feel good by just rolling over so I can rub her belly; who's making who feel better?
The most ironic thing of all is that shortly after Lucky came into our world my dad had mentioned to my grandmother about her and one day when he went to visit her, she handed him a picture. It was a picture taken when he was 8 years old holding up a dog; on the back of the picture my grandmother had written "Mike and his dog LUCKY". He had long forgotten a dog he named lucky 60 years as a young boy.