‘I needed him as much as he needed me’

Last Sunday, Frankfort township clerk Nella Piccolin headed out into the wintry weather with dog Lucky to build a snowman.

Piccolin didn’t have any design in mind when she started. But as the snowman took shape, she realized it looked like an Inca.

So Piccolin finished molding the snow to fit the design. Lucky apparently approved, for he sat contentedly in the snowman’s arm for a photo.

These days, Piccolin enjoys life where she meets it. She’s a breast cancer survivor, and she also fought tongue cancer this past year.

Her first symptom was difficult swallowing, Piccolin said.

“They found it right away,” she said. “So everything’s good – I hope.”

Piccolin adopted Lucky last June and she estimates he’s 6 years old. She said someone had found him in a storage shed and took him to a shelter, where he was deemed to be aggressive. He was almost “put down,” she said.

But someone posted about the dog on Facebook, she said. A friend of Piccolin’s saw the dog and contacted Piccolin.

“My friend said, ‘You should go pick him up,’” Piccolin said. “So I did.”

Piccolin said she’s had no aggression issues with Lucky. She feels any negative behavior from him might have been due to abuse.

“He was starved,” she said. “He probably only weighed about give pounds. I don’t know how long he was at that facility.”

Piccolin feels Lucky came along at the right time in her life. He was starving and she was battling cancer.

“I needed him as much as he needed me,” she said.