| NAME: | Fonzie |
| SPECIES: | Atlantic bottlenose dolphin |
| DATE: | 1990 to 2004 |
| LOCATION: | Key Largo, Florida |
| SITUATION: | Child partially paralyzed and disabled by a stroke |
| WHO WAS SAVED: | Three-year-old Joe Hoagland |
| LEGACY: | First cetacean to demonstrate life-changing benefits of dolphin-assisted therapy |
Joe Hoagland was born in 1986 with a rare congenital heart defect that required two open-heart surgeries by the time he was eleven months old. Despite this rocky start, he was a “delightful, normal two-year-old boy,” said Deena Hoagland, Joe’s mother. But when Joe was three, he required a third open-heart surgery, during which he suffered a stroke.
Joe was in a coma for eight days, and afterward, when he awoke, the right half of his brain was severely damaged and his left side was paralyzed. “He was less than a newborn,” said Deena. “He didn’t have a swallow response. He couldn’t talk. He couldn’t cry.”
Nor could Joe stand, hold up his head, move his left arm, or see out of his left eye. Doctors were doubtful that Joe would ever recover. They said he’d likely remain in a wheelchair and need constant assistance his entire life.
“This was the worst possible thing, next to death, that could have possibly happened,” said Peter Hoagland, Joe’s father.
A SPLASH IN THE FACE
The Hoaglands had recently moved to Key Largo, Florida, and during the six weeks after Joe’s stroke, Deena searched for a public pool where they could swim. Despondent and traumatized, Joe was not responding to traditional speech and physical therapy. Deena thought that being in the water, which Joe loved, might lift his spirits.
Yet she couldn’t find any local public pools, and area hotel pools didn’t want them. Increasingly desperate, Deena contacted Dolphins Plus, a dolphin research center that had a program of public dolphin swims in their own protected lagoon. Initially, Dolphins Plus also turned Deena away, but she persisted, and when owner Lloyd Borguss finally said okay, she hung up and went over that moment.
When Deena and Joe arrived, it was time for the afternoon feeding, so they joined the staff on the low dock to watch. The dozen or so dolphins were excitement personified; they leapt and chattered and caught fish in midair. Then one eighteen-year-old—a 600-pound male—buzzed through the party and stopped at the edge of the dock, eyeballing Joe in his mother’s lap.
“That’s Fonzie,” said Borguss. “He likes to make trouble.”
Fonzie made a lap of the lagoon and came back to stare fixedly at Joe, as if curious. Fonzie did this again, and again, and then with a playful flick of his powerful tale, Fonzie splashed Joe.
As Deena wiped seawater from her son’s eyes, Joe smiled and giggled.
“I was beside myself with joy,” said Deena. “I cried. I was overwhelmed at that moment because I had not heard that giggle for a long time. And this dolphin, it appeared to me that he pushed all the others away as if to say, this kid is mine. It was just a magical moment.”
After that, Deena and Joe returned every day. Though it defied explanation, the dolphin and the boy shared some kind of instant, unspoken bond. Each day the scene repeated; as one resident marine biologist said, “Fonzie would rush to the dock as soon as Joe came down, and he’d push the other dolphins out of the way.”
After a few weeks, the Dolphins Plus trainers urged Joe to get into the water with Fonzie. Joe was eager, but Deena was too nervous. Finally, in mid-September 1990, Deena agreed so long as Joe wore a life jacket, and the experience transformed not only Joe’s life but that of his parents and of many children like him.
FONZIE THE LEFT-HANDED DOLPHIN
For a few years prior to this, Dolphins Plus had been experimenting with the idea of dolphin-assisted therapy (DAT). They had no formal program, just some intriguing observations.
Betsy Smith, a Dolphins Plus researcher, said at the time, “As soon as I put a handicapped child in the water, the dolphin relaxes, becomes very different, very quiet and calm, and will stay with and work with that child for as long as it takes.”
This is what happened with Joe Hoagland. Lloyd Borguss said, “Joe was really our first full-time case. He was literally an experiment in progress.”
In the water, Fonzie sensed that Joe’s left side was immobile, useless. Fonzie nuzzled Joe’s left leg gently, as if moving it for him, and the dolphin also liked to approach Joe from below and rub against his whole body, which made Joe laugh. Always, Fonzie modulated his tremendous strength to the limits of a partially paralyzed, forty-pound boy.
“Then Fonzie would present his dorsal fin for Joe to hold on to and he’d pull him around the pen,” Deena said. “Joe would bob along in his little life vest, grinning from ear to ear.”
Most of all, the joyful, trusting relationship they developed gave Joe the motivation to do the physical therapy necessary to rehabilitate himself. Joe would “do anything” to play with the dolphin, Deena said, “so I created left-hand Fonzie. I told Joe that Fonzie was a left-handed dolphin, so if he tried to feed him with his right hand or tried to throw a ball with his right hand, then Fonzie wouldn’t play with him.”
After that, Joe worked at his left hand night and day, all so he could hold a fish for Fonzie. He worked so hard that his parents once found him trying to clench his limp hand in his sleep as he talked to himself: “Open, shut them. Just keep trying, and you’ll get it.”
“His doctors had given us a long list of ‘nevers,’” Deena said, but over the following months, Joe overcame almost every one. Sometimes with help and always with difficulty, Joe learned to move his left leg enough to swim independently, to throw a ball overhead with both hands, to hold a hoop for Fonzie to jump through, and to hold a fish—always using his left hand. With each breakthrough, Joe’s confidence and determination soared.
At the end of a year, Joe’s recovery had reached the point where he could walk down to the dock by himself carrying a bucketful of fish for Fonzie. Though his full recovery would take years, Joe’s dramatic transformation stunned everyone.
“I like to say what happened to my son may not be a miracle,” Deena said, “but it certainly seems miraculous.”
FUN WITH DOLPHINS, GUARANTEED
Joe continued to work with Fonzie for the rest of the dolphin’s life. When he was fourteen, Joe said, “Fonzie and I are so close, we are like brothers. Fonzie understands things about me that other kids can’t. He knows that I’m different and he doesn’t care—he really likes me the way I am. Whenever he sees me, he gets excited because he recognizes me.”
What is it that happened between Joe and Fonzie? Marine biologist Chris Blankenship called it “emotional therapy.” Still, Blankenship admitted that “there’s an aspect to dolphins that no one yet understands.”
Beyond the motivation to heal himself, Joe said, “What the dolphins have given me is just more faith in myself and a sense of belonging. I know I can just jump in the water, and they’ll accept me.”
It’s hard to say what the dolphins know and intend, but they are active, not passive, participants. Like Fonzie, certain exceptional dolphins will sometimes seek out and focus on disabled, autistic, or injured swimmers. This may begin as simple curiosity, but if it’s allowed to, this fascination can develop into a deeper, more profound relationship, one characterized by mutual caring, trust, and devotion. As with therapy dogs, the loving attention people experience in this human-animal relationship is healing in itself. Joy inspires breakthroughs and provides a focus and purpose for getting better. In fact, as Joe alluded, the nonverbal communication people experience with dolphins may be what allows it to strike the heart so directly.
Whatever the case, as dolphin-assisted therapy worked near-miracles for her son, Deena Hoagland became determined to share it with others. In 1997, she and her husband, Peter, founded Island Dolphin Care at the Dolphins Plus center. Deena was a trained therapist herself, and the Hoaglands developed multiday dolphin programs for kids with a variety of special needs, including autism, cancer, cerebral palsy, cystic fibrosis, depression, developmental delays, heart disease, and others.
Island Dolphin Care continues its work today, and the only thing the program guarantees is fun, since there is a mystery at work that can’t be quantified in specific criteria. Yet participants regularly report children achieving many “milestones” as a result: the first word spoken, the first sentence, new motor skills, the first laugh.
Naturally, as Joe grew up, he also came to work for Island Dolphin Care. Fonzie died in 2004, but other dolphins like Squirt, Sarah, Bella, and Fiji continue to do for others what Fonzie did for Joe.
“When you come close to these animals,” Deena said, “you know you are close to something amazing. Something extraordinary. When they come up close to you, and look at you, it takes my breath away.”