OCEANSIDE – He needed a small favor.
Who knew it would change his life?
Best-selling author Dean Koontz is describing how he and his wife came to donate more than $10 million to a worthy cause.
In 1988, Koontz was doing research for his book “Midnight.” He wanted to include a character in a wheelchair with a service dog named Moose, so he called the team members at Canine Companions for Independence in Oceanside and asked for help.
They invited him down and explained how they trained dogs for people with disabilities.
“Midnight” went on to become Koontz’s first No. 1 best-seller, and Canine Companions went on to offer him a retired service dog.
“We’re too busy,” he replied.
He’d always loved dogs, but he was writing several books a year.
“I knew having a dog was like having a child,” he says. “You need to devote a lot of time to it.”
The Newport Beach author stayed in touch with Canine Companions. He attended a graduation where dogs are matched with recipients, many in wheelchairs.
“I was so taken,” he says. “Everyone is in tears, but it’s a very uplifting event.”
Again, he was offered a dog.
Again he said, “We’re too busy.”
After several months, Koontz finally turned to his wife, Gerda, and said, “One day, we’ll be 90 and we’ll still be saying, ‘We can’t. We’re too busy.’ We’ve just got to do it.”
Fast friends
Koontz thought he was getting a pet.
But Trixie – a 3-year-old golden retriever retired from service after leg surgery – grew into a friend, a family member and a teacher who restored a sense of wonder to Koontz’s world.
In 2004, Koontz ghostwrote his first book as a dog, called “Life Is Good,” by Trixie Koontz. It sold about 60,000 hardcover copies.
“My first hardcover only sold about 5,000, so there was intense jealousy in the family for a while,” he deadpans. “But I got over it.”
Trixie’s popularity spawned a cottage industry for Koontz, who wrote several more books by and about her – donating all author profits to Canine Companions for Independence.
“That dog utterly, totally changed our lives, all for the better,” he says. “When she passed, I’d never known grief quite so intense.”
Since then, dogs have appeared in many Koontz novels, including his latest, “Ashley Bell,” which he will discuss at two Register Book Club events in Santa Ana on Jan. 14.
To date, Dean and Gerda Koontz have donated more than $10.3 million to Canine Companions’ Southwest Regional Training Center, now named The Dean, Gerda and Trixie Koontz Campus.
In 2000, those donations funded dormitories to house clients and families during their two weeks of on-campus training.
“We’re involved in every way we can be,” Koontz says – including his support for a newer program that provides assistance dogs to wounded veterans. “It’s wonderful to see the relationship between a disabled veteran and a dog.”
Koontz, who has written 14 New York Times No. 1 best-sellers and sold more than 450 million books worldwide, rarely appears at public events. But last year, after ghostwriting a book by his current golden retriever, Anna, called “Ask Anna: Advice for the Furry and Forlorn,” he appeared at Canine Companions in Oceanside, drawing about 400 fans.
“Life’s been awfully generous to me,” he says, noting that when he and Gerda married, they had $150 and a used car between them. “It’s fun to give something back.”
Scary to cool
In one room, puppies are flipping room lights on and off.
In another, they’re staring at doggie treats – but not eating them.
Elsewhere on the grounds of Canine Companions for Independence in Oceanside, young dogs learn to pick up phones, open doors and tug wheelchairs for their future masters.
Then there’s the old pro, Gabrielle, a Labrador-golden retriever mix who graduated nearly a decade ago.
“Show him love,” Kim Haydel says to the dog beside her son Chris, who sits in a wheelchair.
Gabby lifts her front paws up onto Chris’ lap and licks his face like a bowl of ice cream.
In the past nine years, Gabby has joined Chris, who has cerebral palsy, on rides at Disneyland; on the gondola at Mammoth Mountain; and sometimes at Foothill High School, where Chris is a sophomore.
Like all dogs trained here, Gabby knows more than 40 commands. But mostly, she has been Chris’ companion and bridge to a world that isn’t always welcoming to a boy whose legs can’t run, whose hands can’t toss a ball and whose tongue can’t speak clearly enough for many to understand.
“To the outside world, a kid in a wheelchair is scary,” says Haydel, who now sits on the organization’s board of directors. “But a kid in a wheelchair with a dog is really cool. The number of people that want to talk to Chris because of the dog is tenfold, or a hundredfold. It’s huge.”
When Chris watches TV, Gabby watches with him. When Chris goes to bed, Gabby jumps on the bed with him. When Chris plays with his iPad, Gabby brushes up against him.
Asked to describe his companion dog, he says: “Oh, oh, I know! She is my friend and she loves me.”
No one here likes to think about the day Gabby will retire. What will they do?
“Cry,” Haydel says. “And apply for another dog.”
Miracles and mystery
Stories like this are the reason Koontz and his wife continue to support Canine Companions.
He has visited enough and seen his own miracles here – including a girl with a neuromuscular disease who opened her hand for the first time to pet her new companion dog. And he has seen firsthand the effect of service dogs on Afghanistan war veterans who lost their legs in combat.
At Canine Companions, he says: “They say their job is creating miracles every day, and it’s true. I’ve seen it so often.”
Since opening in 1975, the Santa Rosa-based nonprofit has placed nearly 5,000 dogs nationally.
The organization once used many breeds, including corgis, poodles and collie mixes. Now they primarily use a Labrador-and-golden-retriever mix.
“Goldens love people, and labs love to work,” says Southwest Region Development Director Margaret Sluyk. “So they’re a perfect mix.”
Though qualified clients receive the dogs for free, the estimated cost to breed, raise, train and place each dog is $50,000.
Vital in this chain are volunteers who raise the puppies from 8 weeks until about 18 months old, when they must return the dogs for six months of professional training.
“We call it a happy sad day,” puppy raiser Mary Segall says of turn-in day. “You know that dog is going to maybe make an immediate change in someone’s life, but you know it’s also the end of your time with it.”
Is it worth it?
“It’s an amazing feeling to know that you played some small part in changing someone’s life. You can count on one hand how many times that happens in a lifetime.”
Maybe that’s why Koontz, a man known for telling tales of the supernatural, still likes to include golden retrievers in his books. “Ashley Bell” features one golden retriever that appears out of nowhere and another that vanishes into thin air.
To Koontz, they hold a mystique – in fiction and in real life.
“There’s a mystery about what happens between a dog and human if they’re open to it,” Koontz says. “It can touch you deeply and move you and improve you – not just emotionally, but intellectually and physically.
“It’s a mystical kind of relationship.”
Contact the writer: tberg@ocregister.com
