Chance

Most of us live under the delusion that we control far more than we ever do. It's an endless source of frustration at best and leads to stress and depression in extreme cases, neither of which are on most bucket lists. Still, we insist everyone else ought to do what we want them to and get pissed when they don't. And God forbid some random event doesn't go our way.

The secret to happiness, if it exists, has to lie somewhere in the ability to roll with the punches. Hold a high degree of indifference toward anything you can't control, which basically means everything except your own thoughts and actions, and move on without emotion as if it doesn't matter, because in the grand scheme of things it doesn't.

My first bird dog was a Brittany and I've never had any desire to stray from the breed. I've always been partial to orange and white ones, especially those that are mostly white. But not all white. And male. Picky, yes, but that's my deal.

When I started poking around for news of upcoming litters the only thing on my mind was whether the sire and dam were the kind of bird dog I was looking for. Coloring didn't creep into the picture until I got the news on Monday that the chosen mom had whelped a whopping 10 pups over the weekend.

I started thinking about how I'd choose among the males. Where is the happy mix between color and temperament and, honestly, how much can you really know about temperament at a few weeks of age? Gotta be at least 4 or 5 males in there to choose from, right? At least 2 or 3 would be orange and surely one would be mostly white, maybe more. Surely.

One. That's not how many are mostly white. That's how many males in the whole pot.

Sometimes you take what life gives you. I think it's gonna work out just fine.

There's either one missing or buried in the pile

Lower right is our man