Dean R. Koontz - A Big Little Life: A Memoir of a Joyful Dog Named Trixie

The best portrayal Ive ever read of how a dog can change your life and affect your soul. A Big Little Life is beautiful, poetic.

The Dog Blog

[A] moving memoir.

New York Daily News

Far from just another memoir of a beloved pooch Trixie made Koontz ponder the nature of intelligence, interspecies communication, sympathy, intuition, love and the loyalty it engenders, and other species degrees of consciousness. Koontz leavens his musings on such weighty themes with plenty of both self-deprecating humor and Trixies comic lan to make this one dog book that everyone other than the most flint-hearted dog-haters will deeply enjoy.

Booklist (starred review)

A humorous, poignant portrait of his remarkable dog The media-shy author opens up about childhood poverty, love for his wife, and his spiritual beliefs. He also provides plenty of laughs [with] self-effacing humor and mastery of language.

Kirkus Reviews

A funny and poignant memoir a delightful read also an exploration of how a serious and successful writer came better to understand the gift and meaning of life, and had his sense of wonder restored, with the help of a golden retriever an unusually effective brief for the joy that dogs bring us.

The American Spectator

A tender, insightful, loving homage to a golden retriever an inspirational book of love, hope and humor.

Bookreporter.com

An unusually great story. For dog lovers of all ages, A Big Little Life is just perfect.

East County Times

A wonderfully positive book without being saccharine spirituality [that is] embracing rather than judgmental a wonderful story about an extraordinary dog.

Fantasy & Science Fiction

Trixies down-to-earth joy and antics are the cheerful squeaky toy at the center of this moving story. Part sitcom, part prose portrait, spiritual quest and eulogy a page-turner.

BookPage

Touching, meaningful, wise.

Orange Coast

An amusing love letter to his golden retriever.

People

The shimmering intensity of this memoir is certain to pointedly affect how you look at your four-legged friend. Poignant piercing realism and sharp-eyed analysis.

Seattle Kennel Club

Koontz writes hilariously of Trixies idiosyncrasies and movingly of the emotional bonds we build with dogs. Read this book to be entertained, uplifted and deeply moved.

The Bark

What the Night Knows Breathless Relentless
Your Heart Belongs to Me The Darkest Evening of the Year
The Good Guy The Husband Velocity Life Expectancy
The Taking The Face By the Light of the Moon
One Door Away From Heaven From the Corner of His Eye
False Memory Seize the Night Fear Nothing Mr. Murder
Dragon Tears Hideaway Cold Fire The Bad Place Midnight
Lightning Watchers Strangers Twilight Eyes Darkfall Phantoms
Whispers The Mask The Vision The Face of Fear Night Chills
Shattered The Voice of the Night The Servants of Twilight
The House of Thunder The Key to Midnight The Eyes of Darkness
Shadowfires Winter Moon The Door to December
Dark Rivers of the Heart Icebound Strange Highways Intensity
Sole Survivor Ticktock The Funhouse Demon Seed

ODD THOMAS
Odd Thomas Forever Odd Brother Odd Odd Hours

FRANKENSTEIN
Prodigal Son City of Night Dead and Alive Lost Souls
The Dead Town

2011 Bantam Books Trade Paperback Edition

Copyright 2009 by Dean Koontz

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Bantam Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

B ANTAM B OOKS and the rooster colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

Originally published in hardcover in the United States by Hyperion Books in 2009.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A big little life : a memoir of a joyful dog named Trixie / Dean Koontz.
p. cm.
eISBN: 978-0-345-53251-0
1. Koontz, Dean R. (Dean Ray), 1945 2. Golden retrieverAnecdotes.
3. Humananimal relationshipsAnecdotes. I. Title

SF429.G63 K66 2009 2009014466
636.752/7

www.bantamdell.com

Photographs by Monique Stauder

Cover design: Victoria Allen
Cover photograph: Monique Stauder

v3.1

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

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 upstairs 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 Gerdas 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 isnt 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 wasnt so cute, I wouldnt have wanted to play with her. Hall, dog, Kong, cute, playthe damage to the painting was inevitable.

So youre saying the dog is responsible because shes cute.