Based on material like that, Kate believed a Trixie book would sell. I thought Kate might have lost her mind. Six years later, I’m still not certain of her mental condition, but in my mind’s ear, I don’t hear the shrieking violins from Psycho when she’s around, just the eerie and disturbing music from Twin Peaks . Anyway, I agreed to work with her on Life Is Good, Trixie’s first book, and on other books thereafter.

Kate came from New York to Newport Beach for three days with an extremely talented book designer, Tina Taylor, and an equally talented photographer, Monique Stauder, who eventually took almost 1,800 photos of our golden girl, including fantastic shots of her in the pool, swimming and aboard her float.

From the day we met her, Trix posed for snapshots, and she had romanced the videocam when the Pinnacle crew showed up during her first week with us. But in those three days with Kate, Tina, and Monique, she revealed a patience and camera-awareness, no less professional than a top-ten model.

Because I couldn’t always be present to oversee Trixie during the photo sessions, Linda filled in when I was busy. At one point, along the entry walk, where there were beds of vivid orange-gold flowers, Monique wanted Trixie to lie among the blooms. Linda was concerned about damaging the flowers, but she also knew that Trixie never went in the flower beds, as if avoiding landscape destruction were another rule of her personal tao.

Sitting patiently on the walkway, Trixie listened to this discussion, and then settled the issue by crossing to the flowers, lying on the pavement, and gently lowering only her head into the blooms, so she would not damage any plants. Monique seized the moment: Trixie’s head, pillowed in the flowers-her eyes closed as if she is asleep and dreaming-is one of the most charming photos in Life Is Good.

On numerous occasions, Short Stuff seemed to understand what was being said, and she posed as Monique wished. The most impressive exhibition of this uncanny awareness occurred on the south lawn, when Monique wanted to get several photos of Trixie wriggling on her back, on the grass, with all four legs in the air. I was present, as were Linda, Kate, and Tina.

Monique had seen Trixie wriggling previously, when a camera was not at hand, and she assumed that I could get her to do this on command. I disappointed Monique when I explained that this was something dogs did of their own volition, when they wished, and I could not deliver such a performance with a word or gesture. No sooner had I said this than Short Stuff dropped to the lawn, rolled onto her back, and began to wriggle. Monique leaped at the opportunity and began to shoot pictures from various angles.

“How long does she do this?” Monique asked.

“Half a minute, a minute, never any longer,” I replied.

“Oh, I want her with her head to the left, and she has it to the right, I wish she’d move it,” Monique said.

Trixie turned her head to the left.

Monique got the shots she wanted, and then said, “I wish she’d stop moving, just lay on her back with all four legs in the air.”

Trixie at once stopped wriggling and remained on her back, all legs in the air.

Kate, Linda, Tina, and I thought this was highly amusing. But then as Monique continued to express her wishes, moving around Trix, shooting from a standing position, then kneeling, and then lying on the ground, the dog did everything the photographer asked of her as soon as it was asked. We stopped laughing and fell into an astonished silence. Monique had been working with Trixie for a few minutes when I glanced at my watch and started to time the event. When Monique had taken every shot she hoped for, Trixie had been on her back, posing this way and that, for eight minutes. Add the three minutes that Trix clocked before I’d begun timing. That, we all agreed, was strange.

Trixie’s Life Is Good went on to sell sixteen times as many copies as my first hardcover novel. She has since published two additional books for adults, a calendar, and has two children’s books coming from Putnam.

The Trickster has become not only a busy author but also an entrepreneur. PetSmart, the national chain of stores, will have a two-month promotion of licensed products in the Trixie Koontz/Dog Bliss You line during July and August of 2009. We are in talks with other retailers about additional Trixie products, from toys and clothing to video games.

Short Stuff has become a conglomerate.

All author royalties and proceeds from the Trixie books and products are donated to the Trixie Fund at Canine Companions for Independence, which pays catastrophic veterinarian bills for the companion dogs of people with disabilities who cannot handle such large unexpected expenses. In 2008, seventy-one dogs received treatment that they might otherwise not have gotten.

Gerda and I break into smiles every time we think about what a long shadow this little dog has cast even after moving on from this world. And she has just begun.

Her books and other efforts are about laughter, love, finding happiness, maintaining hope, achieving peace, earning redemption, and embracing the wonder and the mystery of this world. As Reader’s Digest reported in its “Quotes” feature, Trixie believes, “Love and sausage are alike. Can never have enough of either.”

XXII endings always come too fast

OUR FRIEND CHRISTOPHER CHECK is a former marine, a devout Catholic, a writer, a speaker, a man of many talents, who crackles with so much energy that he makes my hair stand on end from a distance of forty feet. When he visited southern California to give the commencement address at St. Michael’s School, which is a project of St. Michael’s Abbey, Chris brought two Norbertine monks from St. Michael’s-Father Jerome and Father Hugh-to our house for dinner.

I had corresponded with Father Jerome for a couple of years, but I had never met him. He generously wrote for me a lengthy account of daily life in a monastery, which was invaluable when I was writing Brother Odd.

When Chris burst through the front door, fortunately breaking no glass, Trixie scampered straight to him, greeting an old friend. By the time she got the attention she deserved, the house electrical system adjusted to Chris’s presence, the lights stopped pulsing, and Trixie turned to the fathers, clearly fascinated by their radiant white habits.

Her reaction to these two visitors could not have been more different from her reaction to X. Wagging her tail, wiggling her entire body, she offered them her belly without hesitation. During the evening, she stayed close to the fathers, even to the extent that, as we stood talking in the front hall, she sprang onto a sofa on which she’d never before perched, so she could be closer to our level, and at dinner she rested behind their chairs when usually she would curl up near Gerda or me.

Knowing me so well, perhaps Trixie expected that when Father Jerome and Father Hugh stood up from the dinner table, their white habits would appear to have been tie-dyed. I must say I was most impressed when, at the end of the evening, those habits remained spotless.

Gerda and I and our three guests had a grand evening full of stimulating conversation and laughter. One high point occurred when Father Hugh said to Father Jerome, “What do you think of this dog?”

Father Jerome said, “She’s special, mysterious in her way.”

“We’ve heard that before,” I assured them.

The Catholic church has a long intellectual tradition that has produced some of the most rigorously logical and beautifully reasoned philosophical works in Western culture. In their modesty, neither Father Jerome nor Father Hugh would ever claim to be an intellectual (and what a ragtag mob they would be associating with if they did), but they seemed to me to be intellectuals in the best-if not the most common-sense of the word, which includes humility and honor in its definition. Trixie inspired an interesting discussion of the proposition, explored in many writings about faith, that when the supernatural steps into time, into our world from outside of time, it does not work through dazzling wonders; instead, it manifests subtly, through elements of the natural world. Like dogs.