About Gail's Koi

Gail’s Koi started out as no more than a hobby for my wife Gail and me. Hi I am Marshall Dunlap.

We started a little pond and put in about 5 little Butterfly Koi. We just enjoyed watching them. There is something soothing about feeding koi fish and then watching them eat, then swim around looking for more. At that time we had no idea how therapeutic it would turn out to be.

Then on Sept 30th of 2005 Gail got real sick, and was subsequently hospitalized It was touch and go for a while; we came close to loosing her. She was in intensive care for 2 weeks, and then remained hospitalized for over 2 months. I finally brought Gail back home on Dec 6^th. Turns out she had contracted West Nile Virus. Gail was suffering from full body neuropathy, resulting in quadriparesis related to West Nile Virus, meningoencephalitis, with associated Bells Palsy, and Guillain-Barre syndrome. Simply put, She was paralyzed from the neck down. But I was happy that she was still 100% there mentally, and emotionally. (Well back to normal anyway) LOL.

 Even though I got a lot of help from family members providing care, I still had to miss a lot of work to provide care and consequently lost my job. Let’s not go there. That’s a whole different amazing story.

 Gail's recovery was a long and slow process. Starting with, her just barely being able to slightly move one finger, and it seemed to take all her might to do so. Then it was two fingers, then moving fingers on both hands, and so on. This went on for months and months. I will never forget the fist time she stood up and actually took a few steps on her own with a walker.  Because I was right there behind her, you know just in case, and I was not fast enough to catch her when she fell. It was like she went from, having some running power to none in the blink of an eye. She fell to ground so fast and hit so hard it really scared us both. After we got her back up and realized nothing was broken we celebrated the victory

Then when everything seemed to be going ok Gail suffered from Congestive hart failure in Sept of 2009 and had to have triple bypass surgery.  Talk about a strong women she had surgery on Thursday and come home on the following Sunday. I guess she feels like; she has spent enough time in hospitals. I tend to agree with her.

Now almost 6 years later Gail is back to about 80% now, and we are both getting healthier all the time.

Watching the Koi.

During Gail's recovery we would spend hours watching our koi, and they seamed to help sooth the frustration, as we waited for Gail to regain the use of her limbs And as she got better we spent more and more time with our koi. Then things even got a little worse financially for us as we ran out of savings and had to move to a smaller place by the next fall. We could not take our koi with us and we both missed them terribly through the winter.

We thought the koi would have surely died over the winter. The following spring I had an opportunity to go back to our old house and look at the pond. It still had water in it. But the water was green and looked stagnant. I remember thinking it looks like pea soup. There was no movement no matter how hard I stared. I had some koi food with me so I through some in. Then I saw something move in the water. Could it bee? Could they have survived for 3 months with no food, or any aeration? So I waited a little longer and then I saw it again. It was a little koi fish. But wait. That is not the color of our koi. We did not have a koi that was all white with black markings.  Then I saw another one that was all white. I thought well maybe some one has put other koi in this pond. Then I saw him. It was Hank! He was one of our original koi. He was alive! We had two that were orange and black, and we named them Hank and Hilda. And hank was alive. I watched a little longer and then I saw Hilda and Spot, and eventually all of them. The koi had not only survived but had multiplied. And now had 5 new babies. I immediately caught the koi and brought them home. I put them into a 55 gallon aquarium, that they very quickly outgrew then I moved them to a popup pool from Wal-Mart, and eventually back to a new 65,000 Gallon mud pond. Were they have started our brood of breading stock.

Gail and I were so exited that we were once again able to spend time enjoying our koi.. After allot of trial and error, we started to learn more about what we were doing. Then we started sharing our newfound information with friends. Then we decided to start breeding butterfly koi.  And somewhere along the line we have became a full time butterfly koi farm.

Natural Or Chemical

While we were in the design faze of our koi pondering, it became clear that we had to choose between a natural or chemical solution for the obstacles that arise. So we made a commitment to always keep a focus on the environment. And we are still keeping that commitment today.

Gail’s Koi is committed to providing quality service to the local and online community. We believe that while others seek to profit by cutting corners, or recommending unnecessary services just to boost profits.

We believe that a good honest reputation and consistent customer service will reap greater rewards in the long run.

By striving to be honest and trustworthy stewards of the environment, we believe that we will help provide long-term benefits that can serve both our customers, and the environment.

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