Peeling Bananas: The celebrated accomplishments of a prodigy dog

By Jerry Stroud

When I first researched the notion of bringing Sam's life to these pages I discovered how many "Me & Fido" dog stories there really are. I mean, they fill the online book shelves like Alpo fills a Great Dane's dinner plate. Not surprising. I just thought Sam's was different. Why? Because it's not a cute story about a dog on a skateboard, or a scientific journey to educating ourselves on pet learning. There is no dog profiling, no complicated pet psychology or mysterious "Dog Whispering" going on.
Rather, PEELING BANANAS screams with the celebrated accomplishments of a prodigy dog who shares her unusual world with us the moment she enters our lives, and by doing so reveals our joys, our accomplishments and even our own transgressions in the most unconventional way. It's a journey delivered by a new generation of Weimaraner who allows us to share a life without the text book education we were raised to understand.
Here we discover a brutally honest approach to growing old with our companion, and in this case it's Sam who flushes out the humanity in me as professionally as a bird dog on point in a Sacramento cornfield. Sure, Sam's a Tom Boy who rocks the manscape with the intensity of a Jason Bourne franchise. She's the girl with the guns, the one who charges through the brush like a Panzer Tank, and yet at the same time she leaves us laughing and rolling on the floor as she enters our private world; a world where she's less at home flushing out pheasants in the field as she is at home on point in the Stroud house chasing up candid moments with bird dog abandon.
It's also a journey to the finish line. By that I mean if you're looking for a promise that "no dogs die in this book," you won't find it here. There is no portly promise enabling the reader to avoid the most bothersome and painful chapter in one's life, rather it has another approach, by allowing us to celebrate the inevitable season of life and its inevitable journey with candor and sensitivity.
Sam's story delivers a message of abundance, of life in flux, and that in the end every loss feels like a splinter in our being, but we heal, and move forward, with a clearer understanding that with each passing life goes on, and why these clumsy, hurtful feelings always overwhelm us, but never stop us, never do we feel so betrayed by life or hopeless in it to think the universal gift of life does not go on. It does. It always will. We know that. It's why we find ourselves again and again falling head first into the dog world with every passing

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Aug 2, 2023
• ISBN: 9798350916065

Book preview

PROLOGUE

When I first researched the notion of bringing Sam’s life to these pages I discovered how many Me & Fido dog stories there really are. I mean they fill the online book shelves like Alpo fills a Great Dane’s dinner plate. Not surprising. I just thought Sam’s was different. Why? Because it’s not a cute story about a dog on a skateboard, or a scientific journey to educating ourselves on pet learning. There is no dog profiling, no complicated pet psychology or mysterious Dog Whispering going on.

Rather, Peeling Bananas screams with the celebrated accomplishments of a prodigy dog who shares her unusual world with us the moment she enters our lives, and by doing so reveals our joys, our accomplishments and even our own transgressions in the most unconventional way. It’s a journey delivered by a new generation of Weimaraner who allows us to share a life without the text book education we were raised to understand.

Here we discover a brutally honest approach to growing old with our companion, and in this case it’s Sam who flushes out the humanity in me as professionally as a bird dog on point in a Sacramento cornfield. Sure, Sam’s a Tom Boy who rocks the manscape with the intensity of a Jason Bourne franchise.

She’s the girl with the guns, the one who charges through the brush like a Panzer Tank, and yet at the same time she leaves us laughing and rolling on the floor as she enters our private world; a world where she’s less at home flushing out pheasants in the field as she is at home on point in the Stroud house chasing up candid moments with bird dog abandon.

It’s also a journey to the finish line. By that I mean if you’re looking for a promise that no dogs die in this book, you won’t find it here. There is no portly promise enabling the reader to avoid the most bothersome and painful chapter in one’s life, rather it has another approach, by allowing us to celebrate the inevitable season of life and its inevitable journey with candor and sensitivity.

Sam’s story delivers a message of abundance, of life in flux, and that in the end every loss feels like a splinter in our being, but we heal, and move forward, with a clearer understanding that with each passing life goes on, and why these clumsy, hurtful feelings always overwhelm us, but never stop us, never do we feel so betrayed by life or hopeless in it to think the universal gift does not go on. It does. It always will. We know that. It’s why we find ourselves again and again falling head first into the dog world with every passing, and why we move on hopelessly seeking trust and acquaintance with another.

CHAPTER

1

Plum Trees in March

The wit makes fun of other persons; the satirist makes fun of the world; the humorist makes fun of himself, but in so doing, he identifies himself with people - that is, people everywhere, not for the purpose of taking them apart, but simply revealing their true nature.

- James Thurber

It was in the early sixties, I was six, and he was a black terrier mix named Boy my parents called a Heinz 57 dog. Wait a minute. Shouldn’t that mean he be ketchup red? Whatever, I sure didn’t get it.

Of course at a young age I was left in the dark often, and my parents use to have fun with it at my expense, like travelling in our Ford over the Montecito pass, my mom pointing at the day lilies growing wild along the roadside.

Look! Naked ladies, she’d say with astonishment.

Ever see a slouching kid in a Galaxie 500 hundred raise his head in a hurry? Well that was me, wide eyed and disappointed. Lilies! Every time she said Look! Blah Blah Blah, I fell for it. And I fell for a lot of things as a kid, and was nothing more a sucker for than dogs. That’s right. I was born one, a dog person. They never disappointed me. I could count on them to be there, to listen, whether it was licking the jam from my chin or a tear from my cheek their companionship transcended everything I could have hoped for in my youth.

My infatuation for dogs began in Sonoma County California in a small community called Rincon Valley. The valley was spacious, and to an adventurous young boy growing up in the country it was a land begging to be discovered, where grass drenched mountain sides colored Irish Green in spring, and ripened to a blonde straw crisp in summer; to the west a timber lined ridge captured dramatic sunsets profoundly and often, defining an abundant world where discoveries and friendships were made with one’s entirety rather than at the tip of one’s finger on a screen.

Growing up in the sixties was a life experience, a tech free era, a time when an Apple was known only as a fruit that grew on trees and a Blackberry was something I picked by the bucketful from the truck sized thickets growing wild along the many creek banks.

In the summers I fished the creek behind our house sneaking quietly up on the native rainbow and brook trout, slipping a bare hand beneath the undercut bank, carefully stroking them with my fingers. I was always surprised with their complacency because they never spooked with my touch, until I tried gripping them and they’d fight like a battling handshake.

A mile or two downstream from home is where Brush Creek forked. It was wide here and the unusually large biscuit shaped boulders anchored to the creek rose several feet above the water in midstream. I journeyed down the creek in summer, wading between the brush choked banks in my ragged converse kicks searching for the friendly ring neck snakes that warmed themselves on those rocks. They were docile creatures, and I’d wade out to pick them from their sun bathing and take them home, building sanctuaries for them in cardboard boxes, and make shift aquariums. In all it was a cornucopia of self discovery. So, I believed anyway, with its woodpiles, sublime forests, its ponds, creeks and many fields. It was here, where the dinosaur sized Valley Oaks inhabiting the foothills invited me to climb their bench like limbs to look with wonder on the country that embraced me.

Every day was an adventure and always more enjoyable when accompanied by my soulful four legged companions who led me to places I’d otherwise fear to go.

Our modest single level house was built around old plum trees a hundred yards down a clunky dirt road. On the western side of the road, before the fir studded mountain tops half a dozen horses were stabled in a twelve acre field spotted with Gravenstein apple trees.

It was here at home, across from this orchard, where my earliest memories of Boy come to mind, both of us falling asleep together in the backyard sandbox. It wasn’t until Boy became blind with age, and departed from my world that my parents decided to adopt strays, two dogs named Baggins, and Dalmo. You can thank my oldest brother for those names. It wasn’t really his fault. The sixties had a lot to do with it. You probably know the generation, hippies, drugs, wigged-out hairdos, and those cool psychedelic posters lit by black strobe lights in the bedroom. Yeah, it was some heady times back then. A poor dog didn’t have a chance surviving a decent name in the sixties.

Of course these days parents are naming their own children, Sunshine, Apple, Rain, Orange and every other fruit under the blue sky, and they’re not even on drugs.

No, today we call them Meds.

I thought as a kid, if you named your dog after a hopeless character in a science fiction novel or fairytale, they’d turn out like one -- a bad story. Today I know better. I’ve known some pretty lame names taken from some seriously out there novels, but it never stopped those characters from being leaps and bounds ahead of the rest. Maybe my ill-perceived feelings stemmed from the fact that our Baggins, another Heinz 57 dog had an affection for the neighborhood kids butt cheeks, and Dalmo, our Australian Sheppard was threatened by the local sheep rancher so many times my parents decided it best that we give them both away before kids ass and lamb chops became a staple.

And that really hurt. Why? Because I was for a moment in time dog less. Those I shared my world with were altogether gone, given away, and even though we had six kids in the family, I felt I was alone, that I’d been forsaken.

Then, I looked across the dirt road where the horses played. The void in my life was large but so were they, and more importantly, they meandered, bucked, and played with each other like canine giants. I was falling for them. Sure, they seemed a hundred times bigger than any dog I’d known, I’d need an extension ladder to scratch the top of them, and a large snow shovel to clean up after their massive leavings, but so what.

Why couldn’t they be a Kid’s best friend, and why not me?

Well, they soon did, and the emptiness that left a hole in my being was again overflowing with four legged companionship. I began crossing our dirt road, squeezing between the rusty barbed wire fence to greet them with carrots and snacks and everything else the owners told me they shouldn’t have. And yes, the barbed wire scratches I suffered climbing into the orchard were worth it, and the rusted yellow and black lettered tin NO TRESSPASING sign riddled with pellet gun dents never stopped me because the horses enjoyed the company, and if I wasn’t out