a big little life
a memoir of a joyful dog
DEAN KOONTZ
To Gerda, who shared the wonder and the loss, who knows that the pain was so great because the joy before it was even greater, and who had the courage to do it all again. Bliss to you.
Dogs live most of life in Quiet Heart.
Humans live mostly next door in Desperate Heart.
Now and then will do you good to live in our zip code.
—TRIXIE KOONTZ, Bliss to You
Table of Contents
I a spooky moment around which the entire story revolves
III anticipation, adventure, and anal glands
IV “if this dog does something wrong, the fault will be yours, not hers”
V if she could talk, she’d do stand-up comedy
VI she poops on command, but not just anywhere
VIII i screw up, dog takes the rap
X please don’t send my sweet dog to jail
XII things that go bump in the night
XVIII elbow surgery and meatballs
XIX “may i tell you a wonderful truth about your dog?”
XXI critic, author, dog entrepreneur
XXII endings always come too fast
XXIII “in my end is my beginning”
I a spooky moment around which the entire story revolves
THE SPOOKY MOMENT central to this story comes on an evening more than ten years ago.
Trixie, a three-year-old golden retriever of singular beauty and splendid form, adopted the previous September, is in her fourth month with my wife, Gerda, and me.
She is joyful, affectionate, comical, intelligent, remarkably well behaved. She is also more self-possessed and dignified than I had ever realized a dog could be.
Already and unexpectedly, she has changed me as a person and as a writer. I am only beginning to understand the nature of those changes and where they will lead me.
January 1999:
Our first house in Newport Beach, in the neighborhood known as Harbor Ridge, had an exceptionally long up-stairs hallway, actually a gallery open to the foyer below. Because this hall was carpeted and thus provided good traction for paws and because nothing breakable stood along its walls, I often played there with Trixie on days when the weather turned foul and on cool winter evenings when the sun set early.
Initially, I tossed a ball and sometimes a Kong toy down the hall. The Kong was about six inches long, made of hard rubber with an inch-wide hole through the middle. You could stuff a mixture of peanut butter and kibble in the hole, to keep your dog occupied for an hour or longer. I tried this twice, but Trixie managed to extract the tasty mixture from the Kong in five minutes, which was less time than I took to prepare it.
One evening the rubber Kong bounced wildly and smashed into a small oil painting, splitting the canvas. The painting was very old, and it was one of Gerda’s favorites.
When she noticed the damage a few days later, I fessed up at once: “The dog did it.”
“Even standing on her hind feet,” Gerda said, “the dog isn’t tall enough to do it.”
Confident that my logic was unassailable, I said, “The dog was here in the hall when the damage occurred. The Kong toy was here. The Kong belongs to the dog. The dog wanted to play. If the dog wasn’t so cute, I wouldn’t have wanted to play with her. Hall, dog, Kong, cute, play—the damage to the painting was inevitable.”
“So you’re saying the dog is responsible because she’s cute.”
I refused to allow my well-reasoned position to be nit-picked. I resorted to my backup explanation: “Besides, maybe she isn’t tall enough, but she knows where we keep the stepstool.”
So, because the dog had damaged the painting, in sub-sequent play sessions in the hall, we could not use the rubber Kong. Furthermore, I would not throw the tennis ball anymore, but would only roll it.
I explained the new rules to Trixie, whose expression was somber. “This is a valuable teaching moment,”