Lucky the Dog Runs Away
April 22nd 2008 21:00
Having Chinese relatives means that I am confronted by their culture. Part of their culture is the emphasis on luck, wealth and success. So every time one of my relatives or their friends got a pet they called it Lucky. So it was Lucky the dog, Lucky the cat, Lucky the goldfish. I told my parents this was stupid as if any of their pets were lost, it would make it harder for them to locate.
My uncle had a Jack Russell called Lucky. When his daughter Suki was two, she used to try to choke him. My parents were given a puppy one day and they also called it Lucky. My father tied it the house so it wouldn’t run away. He then went to work.
After school, I went to my parent’s Chinese restaurant. It was there I first heard about Lucky. My parents told me they had gotten a dog. This was before the days we were allowed to have pets so I was a bit mystified as to why my parents were finally letting us have one. I asked what breed it was and they said they didn’t know. I was a bit apprehensive; for all I know they had gotten a Rottweiler or a Rhodesian Ridgeback installed in our backyard.
To my surprise, when I came home there was no dog around. There weren’t even any rope or dog turds on the ground. It was as if the dog never existed, just a figment of my parents’ vivid imagination. Then I ran into my neighbour Mr Harry. I asked him if he had seen a dog in our backyard and he said he had. I told my parents the dog had gone missing and that was the end of that. We concluded it must have run away.
My best friend Andrea likes to joke about how unlucky Lucky was. Whenever I mention how close I was to owning a dog as a child, Andrea will interrupt and say, “Yeah, and it ran away,” before bursting out laughing.
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My uncle had a Jack Russell called Lucky. When his daughter Suki was two, she used to try to choke him. My parents were given a puppy one day and they also called it Lucky. My father tied it the house so it wouldn’t run away. He then went to work.
After school, I went to my parent’s Chinese restaurant. It was there I first heard about Lucky. My parents told me they had gotten a dog. This was before the days we were allowed to have pets so I was a bit mystified as to why my parents were finally letting us have one. I asked what breed it was and they said they didn’t know. I was a bit apprehensive; for all I know they had gotten a Rottweiler or a Rhodesian Ridgeback installed in our backyard.
To my surprise, when I came home there was no dog around. There weren’t even any rope or dog turds on the ground. It was as if the dog never existed, just a figment of my parents’ vivid imagination. Then I ran into my neighbour Mr Harry. I asked him if he had seen a dog in our backyard and he said he had. I told my parents the dog had gone missing and that was the end of that. We concluded it must have run away.
My best friend Andrea likes to joke about how unlucky Lucky was. Whenever I mention how close I was to owning a dog as a child, Andrea will interrupt and say, “Yeah, and it ran away,” before bursting out laughing.
Photo supplied by Golhen. Courtesy Wikimedia Commons.
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