Tails From Rainbow Bridge: Don't Believe Every Blog - All Dogs Do Go To Heaven

There are many names for the place where I live.  Some call it The Bridge.  Others call it Heaven.  Some call it the checkout line at Arby’s.  Those people are usually reassigned.

There is a dog side where people can live, a people side where dogs can live, a people side where no dogs can live, and a cat side where the cats decide who they want around them and shun the rest.

I don’t know what side you will decide to join but I do know if you were loved you will be here and if there is something you love it will be here too.

But there are some who try to teach otherwise.

Which brings me to Dominic Lynch, a recent graduate of Loyola University who writes for The Federalist,  Among blogs recently posted there was one stating that the Jedi were really the villains in Star War because the Empire was trying to preserve law and order.  I can’t make these thing up.  If I did I would be reassigned myself.

Many leading theologists have written that dogs are indeed allowed into heaven.  But they, unlike Lynch, are not political bloggers, which, as we know, is the closest to the Lord someone can get, according to 99% of political bloggers.   Lynch spends a long time explaining the words of Thomas Aquinas, who stated that dogs do have souls, but not eternal souls and therefore we are not allowed into heaven, a conclusion Aquinas never reached.  I know Thomas Aquinas.  I see him nearly every day.  Nice guy.  He gives me a treat.  Here in heaven.

Lynch maintains that when a human reaches heaven they will have no need for dogs, or anyone else, since reaching heaven brings you to a state of euphoria.  So to Lynch heaven is  meth.

Mr. Lynch and I have a lot in common.  We are both bloggers.  We both have opinions.  I have a lot of opinions about politics.  But I don’t blog about them because I don’t know much about it.  Being an angel in the afterlife I do know a lot about what happens when souls cross the River of Life.  I wish those souls who have never crossed over wouldn’t write about it.  

Perhaps you don’t believe me.  Perhaps you even think that there is a human sitting at a computer writing this instead of me.  To believe it’s me is to have faith.  To believe in God, heaven, afterlife is faith.  To believe that your beloved pet is waiting for you is faith as well.

Why would anyone crush someone’s faith?  I guess for the same reason Mr. Lynch and his ilk write many of the things they write about.

Take the word of a pup who has been there, never lose faith, and always believe.

An Autumn Walk By River Song

I do loving walking this time of year  I was born snoutless so walking in the hot weather is hard.  Since I am from Florida I would prefer being a snow dog which means I could fly down to Florida during the winter.  Mom doesn’t want to go so I am stuck up here  But that doesn’t mean I am going to walk in the wet cold winter weather either.

Spring is great with the new flowers and smells and I get caught up on my tree mail from my friends.  But autumn is the best.  The weather is nice and cool and there are less bugs.  Plus nature lays before me a smorgasboard.  Leaves, twigs, acorns, mulch washed into the road:  It is all you can eat.

On Monday after garden day, which is now down to pull stuff out of the ground day, the four of us went for a walk.  Pocket I and got our business done quickly. Mommy and Daddy don’t do their business outside.  I think it is against park rules.

As we approached our house we saw a nice woman who had one of those machines that vacuums the leaves. It is bad enough that humans vacuum the inside now they are vacuuming the outside.  This is why we have to unionize.

Anyway Pocket and I do what we always do when we see someone.  We react like two members of the Uruguayan rugby team after scaling the Andes and seeing the green fields of Chile.

We have two different techniques when approaching humans.  I run to a person, lick her hand, jump a little, and get head scratches.  Pocket lunges at the person, barks, and then backs up when she gets scratched.  Then she wiggles so much in excitement she almost tips over.  I know why Foley complained about her being unprofessional.

Needless to say my way works a lot better.   While Pocket is running and jumping and barking and darting I get my scratches and rubs  And when she is getting scratches I eat the leaves and twigs.  The only things that goes wrong it that my beard betrays me and one of nature’s edibles ends up lodged there.  After Mommy and the woman got done talking we moved on, with Pocket barking and me savoring the taste of smoked leaves.

Yes, I do love an autumn walk.

Wordless Wednesday

Beat This Caption

Mama June's new boyfriend

The Three Little Pugs are our October 25, 2015 Pups of the Week

I have three wonderful friends in Blogville. They write the wonderful  Three Little Pugs blog. Their names are Stella Rose, Angus Mac and Maggie Mae and man do they have troubles.  

I know we all have troubles but the Pugs’ troubles have not just come in threes they have affected three generations of their family.  Let’s begin with the youngest.

This little cutie is Macey-Elizabeth Jean.  She is seven years old and she is a hero.  She has a rare illness called Lymphedema which only affects one in 740,000 children.  The condition causes fluid retention and tissue swelling in her legs.  The swelling can be painful and it interferes with some of her activities but she still dances, cheers, and proves that, with the right attitude nothing keeps you down.

The Pugs’ Dad worked in the warm weather out on the highway.  But in the cold weather he moved to what the pugs called “The factory from hell.”  The factory from hell indeed.  While I have never been able to uncover the exact details the pugs Dad had an unfortunate encounter with a 450 pound object which left the L-5 and L-1 vertebrae in his back broken and the L-3 shattered.  

As you can imagine these injuries were very severe and the Pugs dropped from Blogville for a short time while their Dad recovered, moving from intensive care, where he gave everyone quite a fright when he developed, and successfully fought off, pneumonia, and then to skilled care where he received a brace he will have to wear for three months and extensive physical therapy.  As you can imagine all of this made their Dad quite crabby and when a human is in the hospital they tend to take out their frustrations on whoever visits them the most which, in the Pugs Dad’s case was their embattled Mom.  She hid her tears and put on her amazon warrior costume when she was with him.  She said she was hiding the fact that she was a mouse but she really seems like an amazon to us.  

The days with their Dad in the hospital stretched onward.  The physical therapists tried to get him to climb stairs because he had to do that before going home but his pain level was too high.  The pugs thought they could put their Dad in a sleeping bag and drag him up the stairs but their Mom said no.

Their Mom had to order a walker, a shower chair, and a hospital bed, amongst other items, and get a room ready for their Dad’s return.  

This week their Dad returned home.  He was slowly helped in the house by their Mom and put  in his chair where Angus immediately broke the no jumping on Daddy rule.  Dad was only allowed a short time in the chair before it was back to bed.  It will take up to six months for their Dad to be back to normal and he is going to need lots of prayers to get there and the Pugs’ Mom is going to need lots of prayers to help him without killing her.

I know you are thinking that no family could possibly bear any more pain but the Pugs’ family has more to endure.  Their Mom’s Mother, their Grandma, had been diagnosed with breast cancer.  She had an operation, took lots of drugs, went through treatments, went through cat scans and it looked like she was cancer free.

But the doctors examined 21 vials of her blood and they showed that she had high cancer markers which meant it was likely that the cancer would return, not just in the breast, but in the liver, brain, or any other vital organs.  The treatment plan for Grandma was followed to the letter.  Doctors promised that Grandma would be fine.  Of course there was a sight chance….there is always a slight chance.  And this time the slight chance paid off in all the wrong ways.  I could explain to you how this made the Pugs’ Mom feel but I will let her tell you in her own words:

“Tomorrow she starts her first round of chemo.  We really don't know anything more than that.  And if we did it probably would be incorrect...that is what I have finally figured out when it comes to cancer and the person we love.  Nothing goes by the book, nothing goes by what the doctor tells you, or the internet, or the pamphlets..................cancer is powerful awful stuff, and we are scared.  It’s our Mom and at her age, we want to protect her and make promises, that could turn out not to be the truth.   And then somehow we will have turned into the very things I am so mad at.  The liars.  Please pray for my Mom.”

Since then her Mom has gone through chemotherapy, and mother and daughter even went shopping for a short time, but Grandma soon became tired and had to return home.

There isn’t much us friends can do when multiple tragedies strike but our friends Hailey and Zaphod decided to gather some blogging friends together to send the Pugs some hugs using this picture.  If any of you would like to do the same go to http://stellroselong.blogspot.com/. and post the hugs image below on one of their blogs.

We all have our crosses to bear but right now the Pugs and their Mom, and their Dad, their Grandmom and Macey-Elizabeth seem to be bearing a lot of crosses.  Luckily they have some brave and true Pugs on their side who have brought them lots of hugs and prayers.  Hopefully you will join in and bring health and peace to this wonderful family and their little dogs.

Tails From Rainbow Bridge: The Last Picture Show

When I was a mortal pup I hated having my picture taken.  Sometimes I posed but mostly I bobbed and weaved so my Mom could never get a good shot.  This is a growing concern amongst dogs everywhere.  People used to have to own a camera to take a picture.  Now they can take it with their phones, their watches, and, I believe with glasses.

It is harassment by camera.   Our foredogs Moms used to have to say:  “Oh look, she’s doing the cutest thing.  Oh honey get the camera!  Hurry get the camera!  She’s still doing it!  Hurry!  Get the lens cap off.  Focus!  Focus it!  Oh crap, she’s not doing it anymore.  Maybe next time.”  And we would win.

And we were gland.  But along came Steve Jobs.  People say he was a genius but he was just a guy trying to get a picture of his dog playing with a stuffie.

He created a phone that you could take pictures with because people were more apt to carry a phone all the time than a camera but by the time humans got the phone out of their pocket we had stopped being cute.  Then he made a phone that humans could text on so it would be in their hands more often.  But it wasn’t in their hands all the time and when it was in their hands we stopped being cute.  Then he put a computer on the phone, it was in human’s hands all the time, and we couldn’t stop being cute fast quick enough.

Twenty five years ago a dog may have his picture taken ten times.  Now we get our picture taken 10,000 times.  It was very frustrating when I was on the mortal side of the the Bridge but now that I am on the immortal side I realize I should have made myself more available for posing because once you arrive here your parents will never have another picture of you.

All of us dogs here have parents who keep that one last picture of us.  Sometimes they knew it was the final picture, sometimes they didn’t.  But every time the look at it they know that’s the last one.  

Mine was after I had left for the Bridge.  It was at the doctor’s after I was gone.  My body was still in my Mom’s lap.  My little tounge out like it always was.  It looks like I was sleeping.  Just sleeping that’s all.

There are two other pictures:  One of me in my oxygen tent, on my back legs, begging to be taken out, even though, if I had, I would have crossed over in less than a minute, and one before that, of me and Pocket on the steps.  That’s the one that bothers my parents the most because they look at it and see how much my fur had changed, the pain in my eyes, the things I had hidden from them through my illness.

But the rest are happy pictures.  It is like they could reach into the picture and once again stroke my soft fur,

So next time your Mom turns the phone/computer into a camera try to keep being cute.  Because like heartbeats, there are only so many pictures they can take of you, and someday those pictures will mean the world to them.

Hugs for Deb and Butch

We are joining our friends in sending healing hugs to Deb and Butch, Mom and Dad to Stella Rose, Maggie Mae and Angus McConnell

From your friends Angel Foley, Pocket and River Song