I'm a Bear: Autobiography of a Golden Doodle as told to Don Ranney

I’m a Bear is the story of a small creature, born in a world of giants, who struggled to understand them and grew to become their equal. This is a series of bedtime tales about how wonderful life can be if we show love to each other—something to ease the worries of life as you drift off to sleep.

Everyone called Bear a puppy but this golden doodle knew he was something much better than that--a bear. He likes to challenge things like that noisy rolling pin. But why does he get blamed for making a noise when it makes all the noise, growling back at him every time he nudges it with his nose? Life has many mysteries, like why do birds keep going up after they jump but he just falls back down? He decides he must go to university to find out. Bear is a family creature. He gets lonely when people go away--even when he has to sleep all alone. Don and Danielle sleep together in bed, but they put him in a cage so he won't chew things, even though some things are asking to be chewed. He just wants to crawl in bed with them and be happy. He loves everybody and just wants to make everyone happy. He watches everything, studies people and other animals and finally learns the secret of a happy life. Snake is angry and wants to bite him. So he doesn't play with Snake. Frog lets Bear hold him in his mouth. But when Frog wants to swim, Bear lets him go. So the secret of life is be good to everyone, make everyone happy and respect the fact that we are all different and never use bad words like Squirrel does.

Don Ranney grew up in Toronto, studied anthropology and linguistics at Victoria College and graduated in medicine at U Toronto in 1958. After 6 years studying surgery in Great Britain, where he married and became a Captain in the Special Air Service, with a Fellowship in the Royal College of Surgeons he went with his wife and three children to India to spend his life performing reconstructive surgery on victims of leprosy. Political problems there, described in When Cobras Laugh, led to a return to Canada to become Associate Professor at U Waterloo, where he taught for 24 years and established the School of Anatomy. There he became known as a Renaissance man because of his broad interests and widely disparate areas of expertise. Years earlier, as a member of the American Federation of Musicians, he had established a jazz band and club in Kingston, and introduced lacrosse to the children of Toronto by establishing the East Toronto Lacrosse League. While at U Waterloo he obtained a diploma in television production at The Banff Centre, researched biomechanics of dance, and was team physician for many local and national sports teams including the Canadian Men’s Softball Team that won the Pan-American Gold Medal in 1983. While teaching anatomy and sports medicine, he published more than a hundred scientific papers on topics that varied from anatomy, biomechanics, muscle physiology, and surgery of the hand, to work-related injuries, and neuroanatomy of chronic pain. At the same time he ran a part-time clinic for athletes and those injured at work or in motor vehicle accidents. He has a diploma from the American Board of Disability Analysts and is a member of 15 professional organizations, including The Writers’ Union of Canada. In his eighth decade he decided to slow down a little and tell about his exciting life. He hasn’t jumped out of an airplane for thirty years, but if you look in the right places you may still catch him on his rollerblades.