The Story of Lucky (standard:other, 1088 words)
Author: Jim Spence	Added: Apr 17 2002	Views/Reads: 3370/2316	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
rescuing a puppy ... and finding out how lucky I really am ...

LUCKY 

I was doing an audit at a coal mine in southern Boone County, West
Virginia on the last Friday of September, 1996.  The mine was closing 
and they had to settle up all of their affairs.  It was a little cold 
for September, and fall was definitely in the air. 

While I was in the shop office talking to a customer, I noticed a small
dirty white ball of fur in the corner, no bigger than a soft ball.  
Turned out to be a puppy.  It was one of the shop dog's puppies. 

You see, every coal mine has a shop dog.  It's a dog that's wandered in,
or was dropped off by somebody, and it's been adopted by the miners and 
welders.  It usually lives around the shop, though occasionally one of 
the employees will take it home, if it's sick, or extraordinarily cold. 


This particular shop dog was a female.  A typical West Virginia brown
dog -- about 40 pounds of dirty fur, and as friendly as any animal 
could be.  I'd seen this dog a few times on my trips to this account. 

On one of its trips home, the shop dog had apparently gotten pregnant,
because it had four puppies; born at the mine site.  According to the 
foreman I was talking to, three of the puppies had been eaten by bears, 
and this was the last puppy. 

The foreman told me that the shop dog was being taken home, but that no
one wanted to take this puppy, so he offered it to me.  I thanked him, 
but declined.  I love dogs, but I don't really have a home suitable for 
a dog. 

I left and went home. 

That evening at dinner, I told my wife and daughter about the puppy, and
the story behind it.  They both gave me ten kinds of hell for not 
bringing the puppy home.  I assured them that this puppy was just too 
cute to leave behind, and I was sure someone would take it. 

I thought about that puppy every day. 

The following Wednesday was a cold, rainy early October day.  At about
2:00 in the afternoon I was traveling down a haul road at a different 
coal mine when I saw a dog limping up the side of the rode.  It had 
been hit by some vehicle, probably a coal truck.  My heart tugged.  It 
was cold, and rainy, and all I could think about was that little puppy. 
So ... off I went. 

It's about 100 miles between these coal mines, so, by the time I got
there, it was beginning to become dusk.  I'd stopped at a McDonalds on 
the way to buy two hamburgers, figuring this puppy, if it was still 
there (and alive), had to be hungry.  I drove up to the top of the 
mountain, only to find the gate padlocked shut.  I turned my little 
pickup truck around and backed into it.  Even though it bent my bumper 
a bit, it wasn't that difficult to knock down. 

I made it to the shop around dusk.  That was the last place I'd seen the
puppy.  I didn't bring a flashlight, so I wandered around quickly 
trying to find it before it got dark.  I looked for quite awhile, 
carrying the hamburgers, hoping that would help find him. 

In case you don't know, bears have an incredible sense of smell.  I knew
that every bear for two miles around could smell those hamburgers. 

I didn't find the puppy. 

I sat back down in my truck.  It was almost dark.  I turned on my
headlights, and, as I was sitting there wondering what to do, figuring 
that I was too late, I saw this little wisp of white.  I could make out 
the little puppy's tail wagging. 

The employees of the mine had placed a piece of tarp in a frame against
the shop wall as a lean to for the puppy.  There was a bowl on the 
ground, with some water in it, probably from the rain.  I figured 
whatever food they'd left was long gone. 



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