Dean Koontz: A Big Little Life: A Memoir of a Joyful Dog

To us, Trixie was more than a dog. She was as a child, entrusted to our care, so that we might find in ourselves greater tenderness than we had imagined we possessed. But she was other than a child. She was an inspiration who restored our sense of wonder. She was a revelation who by her natural virtues encouraged me to take a new, risky, and challenging direction in my writing.

I am in fact the fool who, throughout this account, I have said I am, so you may make of this what you will: I believe that Trixie, in addition to being a dog and a child and an inspiration and a revelation, was also a quiet theophany a subtle manifestation of God, for by her innocent joy and by her actions in my life, she lifted from me all doubts of the sacred nature of our existence.

T. S. Eliot again, in “East Coker,” lays down a truth that both comforts and terrifies: “And what you do not know is the only thing you know.” By “know” he means not our schooling as much as our learned convictions, the ideologies and fatuities and platitudes by which we define ourselves to ourselves and to others-and which are ignorance passing for knowledge. Such knowledge is of things that do not last, of systems that do not work, of pathways that lead nowhere. What we do not know-the destiny of the soul, the nature of eternity-is the knowledge that matters most, and only when we recognize this truth can we live with the humility required in the face of eternity.

What I do not know is the only thing I know, and in that paradox sits Trixie. I do not know what she was in the fullness of her being, other than a dog, but I know the effect she had on us, and I know that she was both flesh and mystery, and therefore I know that she was something more than I can know.

ON WEDNESDAY, JUNE 22, 2007, Trixie seemed listless, not her usual self, and I took her to the veterinarian. Bill Lyle thought she might have an infection, and he put her on an antibiotic.

Thursday, she seemed already to be more like herself. I hid each capsule of medication in a gob of peanut butter, and in return for the treat, Trix pretended to be fooled.

At eleven thirty Friday morning, Trixie refused food for the first time in her life, declining to take a single piece of the apple-cinnamon rice cake, one of her favorite things. Nothing could have been more ominous than this chow hound suddenly without appetite.

Bill Lyle had the day off, and I took our girl to see Bruce Whitaker. That afternoon, in an ultrasound scan, he discovered a tumor on the spleen. “It could burst at any time, and she’ll die if it does. You have to get her into surgery right away.”

A young vet tech, David, accompanied me to the SUV with Trixie, to lift her into the vehicle without putting pressure on her abdomen. He said, “Don’t drive too fast, you don’t need an accident. God is with her, you’ll get there in time, she’ll be okay.”

His concern and kindness helped settle my nerves. On the drive to the veterinary specialty hospital, the facility at which Wayne Berry had performed Trixie’s spinal surgery, I did not exceed the speed limit more than did the other traffic. But mine was not the slowest vehicle on the road, either.

In spite of not feeling well, Trix sat up in back, gazing out one window and then another. Regardless of the circumstances or the destination, a car ride was an adventure to be enjoyed.

The day was warm but not insufferably hot, the sky cloudless, the air dry and limpid. The mountains rose purple in the east. This was a perfect afternoon for chasing tennis balls on the pepper-tree lawn, for sitting together on the outdoor sofa in the cool shade of the game-room terrace, watching hummingbirds hovering among the roses, the ocean in the distance. How much it hurt to think that this beautiful day was beyond our enjoyment now, and that perhaps all other days in the future would be less beautiful for the absence of her golden grin, her shimmering coat, herself.

Gerda had left the house on errands before Trixie refused her eleven thirty treat. She didn’t know that the day had taken a dark turn.

Sometimes, when going places where she felt ringing cell phones would be an intrusion-we are old-fashioned in that regard-Gerda did not switch on hers. This was one of those times, and I couldn’t raise her. I called Linda, told her what had happened, and asked her to track Gerda down and tell her to join me at the specialty hospital, which was in Irvine.

Trix and I arrived at the hospital shortly before four o’clock. When I led her to the front desk, she surprised me by standing on her back legs, putting her forepaws on the counter, and greeting the reception staff with a big grin. We occasionally called her Miss Sociable, and she was not going to let illness rob her of that title.

Because Bruce Whitaker had called ahead, Dr. Adam Gassel was ready to see her when we arrived. He came out to the waiting room to explain to me the couple of tests he needed to perform before surgery and to give me a very preliminary prognosis. He inspired confidence, much as Wayne Berry had done four years earlier, and I knew Trix was in good hands.

Gerda arrived, aware that our girl’s condition was serious, but she didn’t know how grave because I had not spelled it out in detail to Linda. Dr. Gassel thought there was a good chance that if this was cancer, it had spread to her liver. In spite of ultrasound scans, which had to be done, he would not know for sure how bad things were until he opened her to remove the spleen. In the kindest and most direct way-directness in such moments is the essence of kindness-he warned me that there was a possibility he would find cancer so widely spread that he would have to come out of surgery, leaving her on the table, so we could decide whether to close her up and revive her without taking further action-or end her suffering while she was already anesthetized.

Gerda said sharply, “Don’t be so negative.” She pressed her lips together because they were trembling. I realized that I should not have done an information dump on her. I had learned these details and possibilities in stages, and I’d had time to absorb them. She was hit with it all at once, which made hope harder to hold on to. And we both needed hope.

In the large waiting room, on a Friday evening, a few people came and went with their pets, but we were often alone. We sat side by side, sometimes holding hands, anchoring each other in the shallow optimism that circumstances allowed.

Wayne Berry heard that Trixie had been admitted. He came to reassure us that she could have no better surgeon for this procedure than Dr. Gassel. “She’s a tough one, your girl. Never count her out. She’ll stand right up from this.” He hugged Gerda, then me, and reminded us how little fazed Trixie had been after spinal surgery.

Sometimes kindness can devastate, perhaps because we see so little of it day to day that we are unprepared for the way it pierces when we experience it in a time of crisis.

Alone again, Gerda and I tried to talk of other things than our girl, but nothing else mattered enough to be worth the words. So we recalled the best of those daily moments when Short Stuff made us laugh, and the memories could still raise a smile, though they also raised tears.

Between us, we demolished a box of Kleenex. We assumed some people must have thought we were a pair of basket cases-until we realized that five large boxes of Kleenex were distributed around the room. Anguish was common in that place.

We were told by staff that Dr. Gassel had opened Trixie, that the tumor had begun to burst, that a half liter of blood had poured into her abdominal cavity, but the situation had been addressed in time. The surgeon would report to us later, after he had closed her and assessed her recovery from anesthesia.