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
