Dr. Ronald Dwinnells of Poland holds up a copy of his new book, “Don’t Pick Up All the Dog Hairs: Lessons for Life and Leadership.” The founder and CEO of One Health Ohio, Dwinnells decorated his office in Youngstown with artifacts showcasing his Japanese heritage. He was born 66 years ago in Japan to a Japanese mother and an American serviceman father. (Staff photo / Burton Cole)

YOUNGSTOWN — Dr. Ronald Dwinnells shuddered at the thought of the dog. But he had made a report card deal with his youngest daughter and she earned the grades, so a drooling Labrador puppy moved into their Poland home.

Yellow dog hairs everywhere drove the self-proclaimed neatnik nuts — until it lead him to discover a talent he didn’t know he had.

It’s one of the real-life adventures the 66-year-old founder and CEO of One Health Ohio writes about in his book “Don’t Pick Up All the Dog Hairs: Lessons for Life and Leadership.”

A Publisher’s Weekly review states, “The common sense on offer here is nothing short of refreshing.” Dwinnells already is working on at least two other books and says he may have found a new career to retire into — except he’s not ready to quit what he’s doing.

DOG HAIRS

In the book published in September by Greenleaf Book Group Press, Dwinnells explores what not to do to succeed, and how FAME — Failure, Adversity, Mistakes and Enemies — taught him that. Chapters include “Don’t Turn Down FAME,” “Don’t Be a Squirrel,” “Don’t Fly with Turkeys,” “Don’t Ignore Crickets That Live in Walls,” “Don’t Dress like a Warthog” and “Don’t Run Over the Cat.”

“It’s not about just leadership. They’re about life lessons too,” Dwinnells said.

Such is the dog story, about a yellow Labrador named Charlie.

“At first, it was OK to have Charlie in the house,” Dwinnells writes. “Not long afterward, when I returned from a short business trip, Charlie had doubled in size and roamed all around the upstairs areas. Mounds of dog hair were piled everywhere.”

Dwinnells built a pen and decreed that Charlie needed to move outside. It didn’t work. Charlie burrowed or broke through any pen Dwinnells built. Charlie and all his mess moved back into the house.

“I cleaned like a fiend,” Dwinnells writes. “I was going crazy trying pick up every single strand of dog hair, and it wasn’t working. When I announced my retirement from household chores over dinner one evening, no one said anything; they continued to go about their business of eating. No one cared.”

Dwinnells retreated to his backyard and began building a dahlia garden. That was followed by a gazebo, a water garden with three-tiered waterfalls, a pergola, then a Japanese garden.

Talking about that adventure last month in his Youngstown office full of artwork reflecting his Japanese heritage, Dwinnells said, “The dog hairs story has two lessons: One — letting go. … Most leaders have a hard time letting go. They were good at what they do and it’s hard to let someone else do it. But we don’t know everything. We can’t win everything.

“Two — adversity turns to discovery,” Dwinnells said. “I had this beautiful backyard, like a park. I didn’t know I was good at that.”

JOURNEY TO FAME

Dwinnells was born in Japan to a Japanese mother and an American serviceman father who left shortly after his baby was born. Her family disowned his mother and Dwinnells said he was made to know that he didn’t fit into their family.

His dad finally came back five years later to marry his mother. They moved to Fort Knox, Ky., where his father was next stationed. Dwinnells was enrolled into first grade as a 6-year-old who spoke no English. Soon, he was speaking English as if he had been born here.

“It was a mixed-up childhood, that’s for sure,” he said.

After high school, Dwinnells studied medicine at the University of Kentucky. He took a residency at Tod Children’s Hospital in Youngstown in 1983. “I’ve been here ever since,” he said.

“When I was a resident at Tod’s, one of things that was very disheartening for me as a young, idealistic doctor was if people didn’t have insurance or even Medicaid, a lot of doctors wouldn’t take them.”

In his third year of residency, Dwinnells secured a federal grant to establish “safety-net clinics” for those who couldn’t pay for medical care.

“I wanted to create that from an idealistic perspective in 1986, and it grew into this,” he said, noting that One Health Ohio now has 10 locations, most in Mahoning and Trumbull counties with one in Stark County. “We have about 120,000 patients currently. About 60 percent of them are Medicaid and the rest are a mix of insured and uninsured.”

One of the first things Dwinnells said he discovered was, “I had a lot of education on how to be a doctor, but when I became a CEO, I didn’t know how to be a boss. There is no real leadership school. The leadership school is by doing.”

Dwinnells said that his ability to own mistakes and learn from them helped him and his business to grow. Besides One Health, Dwinnells is founder and president of the Butterflies and Hope Memorial Foundation, created to support and improve the lives of children, adolescents and young people suffering from behavioral and mental-health issues.

TELLING STORIES

Dwinnells said the writing came about somewhat by accident.

“About 25 years ago, I was asked by professors at then-NEOUCOM (now NEOMED — Northeast Ohio Medical University) to do a talk on leadership for the medical students. By then, I had 10 years of this and I was a physician,” Dwinnells said. “One day, I told a story about a mistake I made and how it affected my company. They liked it. I told more stories. People can relate to mistakes.”

Dwinnells said that people tend to remember stories better than standard lectures, and thus, remember what to do — or not to do — when they face a similar situation.

“I started writing these stories down as a handout. A friend sent some of my writings to a couple of publishers. That’s how it evolved over 25 years,” he said.

“I’m writing two more,” he said.

One book explores the creeds he lives by. The tentative title is “Why Not Wear Those Red Suede Shoes?: Reflections and Pursuits for a Better Life.”

He’s calling his other book, “Thirty Days Hath September,” a slice-of-life novel based on a time when he was on a one-month rotation in medical school. On Sept. 1, he admitted a patient with a spot on her belly, and over the course of the month, a fast-acting pancreatic cancer was discovered. “She died on Sept. 30, my last day.”

In his off time, Dwinnells climbs mountains, including mounts Rainer, Fuji, Hood, St. Helens and two continental high points of mounts Kilimanjaro and Elbrus, running competitive road races, gardening, traveling, reading and exercising.

He and his wife, Kathy, have four daughters, Erin, Sarah, Emily and Abbey, and one son, Adam.

bcole@tribtoday.com