I have been decidedly mediocre at most things — a true jack of all trades, master of none. I know how to do a lot of things: I can shoot a gun, knit, make crabapple jelly, drive a stick shift, quilt, bird and make piecrust from scratch. But I am not particularly good at any of them, in my opinion, and my knowledge of each is pretty shallow. Nevertheless, I have always tried out new hobbies with great gusto. I get excited about learning new things. I just tend to move on before I really master any of them.
There is one exception: I have a superpower for finding four-leaf clovers. I can wander across almost any lawn or patch of grass, zero in and find one. It’s almost like a party trick. At picnics and park playdates, I casually look down, scour the green and pull one up.
A patch of clover is really just one large, interconnected plant, a family of stems sharing roots beneath the grass. When one of them grows four leaves, other ones nearby may carry the same mutation, as if luck has traveled underground. So, usually, I can pull up a few. I have delighted and surprised many a friend by handing them a bouquet of clover, a little bundle of luck.
But it really isn’t luck at all. It’s stopping, taking the time to look down and really see what is in front of you. Which is something that few of us do these days. The main thing I scrutinize and spend time looking at is my phone screen, the glow of it lighting up my face as I scroll through all sorts of shallow information. What wonders might I have missed with my attention focused so?
AT THE END OF THE SUMMER, our dog died. Lincoln was almost 10 and seemed in good health; he had an autoimmune disease and needed steroids, but he lived his life full steam ahead. The day before he died, he stole a hamburger from our daughter’s hand and chomped it down. He had been coughing and wheezing a bit, so we drove him to the Colorado State University Veterinary Hospital to get checked out. My husband reminded me how lucky we were to live next to one of the best veterinary hospitals in the country. Within the hour, Lincoln was diagnosed with pneumonia, and 12 hours later we made the difficult decision to put him down.
I was in a daze. I wept as we made the late-night drive to the hospital. On a small gurney, I held his paw and kissed his head as the vet gave him a series of shots. I smelled his scent and stroked his back. And just like that, the little heartbeat that had spent hours every day at my feet or cuddled up against me was gone. They let my husband and me sit with him alone in a room as long as we wanted. I cried and held him until he started to feel cool. But I didn’t want to leave him. I held his collar to my face and wept at our bad luck.
But really, Lincoln was the best luck. How lucky it was that I answered an online ad for him while scrolling — that this particular dog ended up in our particular life. Of all the dogs in the world, out of all the possible circumstances, our paths came together. It was almost like finding a four-leaf clover, but instead of something in the grass, I got a ball of fur, a living thing who gave me years of companionship.
He was singular in terms of the kind of relationship we had. All my relationships with humans have complications; there are histories, expectations, misunderstandings and obligations. With Lincoln, it wasn’t like that. Sure, he was a dog. Still, it felt almost radical to be loved by something that didn’t care what I had accomplished that day. No matter what, he was there, nuzzled up against me.
A DOG NOTICES THINGS we have trained ourselves not to notice. Lincoln was a master at it.
A smell.
A squirrel running along the fence.
A rabbit darting across the grass.
A package being delivered.
Someone cooking bacon in the kitchen.
Dogs live almost entirely through attention. And when we took walks together, I began borrowing some of that attention for myself.
So perhaps one of the greatest gifts he gave me was his way of being in the world. It was Lincoln who taught me to look down in a different way. He made that attention a daily ritual. With him, on our walks and through repetition, I began to notice the world anew. I knew when the milkvetch and fleabane bloomed. Learned the names of mountain mahogany and stonecrop. Where antelopes tended to graze. Noticed star lilies and cinquefoil. That one rock that looked like a scowling face. Where to avoid prickly pear, and where there was a little stream where he could get a drink.
Finding a four-leaf clover feels like a moment of improbable luck; having a dog is a long, sustained luck you don’t recognize until you realize how extraordinary the ordinary days have been. Luck is usually imagined as something unexpected and external: finding a lucky penny, a winning lottery ticket, that four-leaf clover. A dog makes you think about luck differently. It isn’t always something you find. Maybe you don’t understand how lucky you are until you’ve been living with it for years.
During the weeks after he died, as I sat crying, my head resting on his dog bed, I realized he was the extraordinary thing: this ordinary creature who was here with me all along. Lincoln was the kind of luck I overlooked, because he had become part of the furniture of our life. How many forms of luck are we surrounded by that don’t look like luck because they have become ordinary?
How many forms of luck are we surrounded by that don’t look like luck because they have become ordinary?
Lincoln taught me that luck isn’t always a four-leaf clover hiding among all the ordinary ones. Sometimes luck has four paws instead of four leaves. Sometimes it follows you from room to room, waits for you at the door, insists you go outside and stops to sniff a patch of sagebrush you would have walked right past. Lincoln taught me that being lucky doesn’t mean avoiding loss; it means noticing what you’ve been given while you still have it. For years, I thought I was the one taking care of him. But all along, he was teaching me to slow down, pay attention and notice what was right in front of me. And maybe that’s what luck really is — not finding something rare, but realizing how much of your life was lucky all along, that I was already living inside my good fortune.
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This article appeared in the October 2026 print edition of the magazine with the headline “Field notes on good fortune.”
