Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #20801 in Books
• Published on: 2008-04-01
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 212 pages

White House, First Lady Laura Bush letter of April 9, 2004
Thank you for your book and for the gracious inscription.

Dr. Jack Van Impe, TV Evangelist letter of September 2001
I read both of Gary's books and experienced great joy and blessing.

Susan Peterson, Hollywood Producer
I read this fabulous book. It is brilliantly written, sensitive, heartwarming and uplifting. It will bring you hope and comfort.

Customer Reviews

Very disappointing....
I actually found this book in my bookshelf several days after my beloved little dachshund died. I don't remember buying it, but there it was! Anyway, I was terribly disappointed in it for most of the reasons that have already been cited in other reviews.

My main complaint is that he effectively dashes the hopes of readers who are not Christians by stating that while God created us and loves all humans and all creatures, only those who accept Jesus Christ as their savior will see their pets in the afterlife. To my way of thinking, If God loves all the creatures He created (as stated in the book and the Bible), He will accept all His creatures into Heaven. To say that God will only accept Christians into Heaven is an insult not only to the billions who are not Christians but, in my opinion, to God Himself.

Cold Noses at the Pearly Gates
I bought this book for my sister who has recently lost a 14 year old dog.
He was everything to her. This book has soothed her grief and given her hope. Excellent.

Has some good interpretations of scripture but there's too much left out
I bought this book shortly after my much loved sheltie passed away very suddenly. Many friends have sent me the "Rainbow Bridge" poem, but I personally never found much comfort in a cute little made-up story about what happens to pets after they die. I needed more to convince me that they really would live on and that I might someday see him again. Being a fairly scientific and logical person (but still very much a Christian) I was looking forward to a good discussion of scripture and how it relates to the topic of animal afterlife and help for those that are grieving the loss of a pet, having more basis in a source I could trust and not just personal opinion. And while this book did give me some of that, I came away really wanting more and feeling like I didn't get what I had hoped for and expected from it. While there are some decent discussions of some scripture passages, it seemed that the author spent more time setting it up and validating his positions than actually discussing scripture. Much of what he does cover is repeated (often more than once) and he routinely rambles off on tangents that have little to do with the main topic. There were too many things included I felt were unnecessary and not really germane to the discussion (like a evolution vs. creationism discussion, which was not particularly well-argued and just didn't need to be in there), a discussion of animals being able to communicate in heaven (interesting to some degree but not sure it really added much to the book), a whole chapter of "humorous" animal stories solely to "cheer" a grieving pet owner up, and even discussions of how to pick your next pet (something that most grieving owners don't really want to even think about). And yet, there's virtually nothing in here about how to handle grief and get through the grieving process itself. It boggles me that he would just pass this off telling people to just buy other books on the subject (and goes so far as to say they are pretty much all the same so it doesn't matter which one you buy...clearly not the case just by looking at the reviews on this site!) and yet he includes stuff on choosing and feeding a dog...something that makes *far* more sense to just tell people to buy a separate book for information on, particularly as he is clearly no expert in this area. He spends a lot of time telling you what to do...and then how he doesn't even follow the rules himself! It really ends up being quite confusing and I could not figure out what they were doing in there, instead of far more useful topics on grief management. I enjoyed the daily devotions at the end (probably the best part of the book and good enough to even justify buying it), and the small amount of discussion on scripture does indeed convince me that God cares for all animals and does not create life only to end it, so in that respect the book does what it sets out to do. It just could have been much better in a lot of ways, and so it's hard for me to completely recommend it, given the number of other books on the topic that are very well written and easier to read (such as Eternal Life for Animals).