This is Kodi's Gate

Dear Lord, please open your gates and call St. Francis to come escort this beloved companion across the Rainbow Bridge.

Assign her to a place of honor, for she has been a faithful servant and has always done her best to please me.

Bless the hands that send her to you, for they are doing so in love and compassion, freeing her from pain and suffering.

Grant me the strength not to dwell on my loss. Help me remember the details of her life with the love she has shown me. And grant me the courage to honor her by sharing those memories with others.

Let her remember me as well and let her know that I will always love her. And when it's my time to pass over into your paradise, please allow her to accompany those who will bring me home.

Thank you, Lord, for the gift of her companionship and for the time we've had together.

And thank you, Lord, for granting me the strength to give her to you now.

Amen.

"The Best Place to Bury a Dog"

...Beneath a cherry tree, or an apple, or any flowering shrub, is an excellent place to bury a good dog. Beneath such trees, such shrubs, he slept in the drowsy summer, or gnawed at a flavorous bone, or lifted head to challenge some strange intruder. These are good places, in life or in death. Yet it is a small matter. For if the dog be well remembered, if sometimes he leaps through your dreams actual as in life, eyes kindling, laughing, begging, it matters not at all where that dog sleeps. On a hill where the wind is unrebuked, and the trees are leafing, or beside a stream he knew in puppyhood, or somewhere in the flatness of a pastureland where most exhilarating cattle graze. It is all one to the dog, and all one to you, and nothing is gained, and nothing lost--if memory lives.

But there is one best place to bury a dog. If you bury him in this spot, he will come to you when you call - come to you over the grim, dim frontiers of death, and down the well remembered path, and to your side again. And though you call a dozen living dogs to heel they shall not growl at him, nor resent his coming,for he belongs there. People may scoff at you who see no lightest blade of grass bend by his footfall, who hear no whimper, people who may never really have had a dog. Smile at them, for you shall know something that is hidden from them, and that is well worth the knowing. The one best place to bury a good dog is in the heart of his master.

( Paraphrased From the Portland Oregonian, Sept. 11, 1925. By Ben Hur)

When I'm gone, release me, let me go. You mustn't tie yourself to me with tears. You can only guess how much you gave me in happiness. Grieve for me a while, if you grieve you must then let your grief be comforted by trust. And then when you must come this way alone, I'll greet you with a lick and bark, "Welcome Home."

-Author Unknown

All Dogs Go To Heaven

A man and his dog were walking along a road. The man was enjoying the scenery, when it suddenly occurred to him that he was dead. He remembered dying, and that the dog walking beside him had been dead for years.

He wondered where the road was leading them.

After a while, they came to a high, white stone wall along one side of the road. It looked like fine marble. At the top of a long hill, it was broken by a tall arch that glowed in the sunlight. When he was standing before it he saw a magnificent gate in the arch that looked like Mother of Pearl, and the street that led to the gate looked like pure gold.

He and the dog walked toward the gate, and as he got closer, he saw a man at a desk to one side. When he was close enough, he called out, "Excuse me, where are we?"

"This is Heaven, sir," the man answered.

"Wow! Would you happen to have some water?" the man asked.

"Of course, sir. Come right in, and I'll have some iced water brought right up."

The man gestured, and the gate began to open. "Can my friend," gesturing toward his dog, "come in too?" the traveler asked.

"I'm sorry, sir, but we don't accept pets."

The man thought a moment and then turned back toward the road and continued the way he had been going with his dog. After another long walk, and at the top of another long hill, he came to a dirt road which led through a farm gate that looked as if it had never been closed. There was no fence.

As he approached the gate, he saw a man inside, leaning against a tree and reading a book.

"Excuse me!" he called to the reader. "Do you have any water?"

"Yeah, sure, there's a pump over there."

The man pointed to a place that couldn't be seen from outside the gate.

"Come on in."

"How about my friend here?" the traveler gestured to the dog.

"There should be a bowl by the pump."

They went through the gate and sure enough, there was an old fashioned hand pump with a bowl beside it. The traveler filled the bowl and took a long drink himself, then he gave some to the dog. When they were full, he and the dog walked back toward the man who was standing by the tree waiting for them.

"What do you call this place?" the traveler asked.

"This is Heaven," was the answer.

"Well, that's confusing," the traveler said. "The man down the road said that was Heaven, too."

"Oh, you mean the place with the gold street and pearly gates? Nope. That's Hell."

"Doesn't it make you mad for them to use heaven's name like that?"

"No. I can see how you might think so, but we're just happy that they screen out the folks who'll leave their best friends behind."

Excerpts from Bible Scripture

GENESIS 9: 14-17

When I gather the clouds over the earth and the bow appears in the clouds, I shall recall the covenant between myself and you and every living creature, in a word all living things, and never again will the waters become a flood to destroy all living things. When the bow is in the clouds I shall see it and call to mind the eternal covenant between God and every living creature on earth, that is, all living things. `That' God told Noah, `is the sign of the covenant I have established between myself and all living things on earth.'

ISAIAH 11:6-9

And the wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid, and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them. And the cow and the bear shall feed, their young ones shall lie down together, and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. And the sucking child shall play on the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put his hand on the cockatrice's den. They shall not hurt or destroy in all My holy mountain, for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.

JOB 12:7-10

You have only to ask the cattle, for them to instruct you, and the birds of the sky, for them to inform you. The creeping things of earth will give you lessons, and the fish of the sea provide you an explanation: there is not one such creature but will know that the hand of God has arranged things like this! In his hand is the soul of every living thing and the breath of every human being!

PSALM 50:9-11

I have no need of a bull from your stall or of goats from your pens, for every animal of the forest is mine, and the cattle on a thousand hills. I know every bird in the mountains, and the creatures of the field are mine.

PSALMS 50:10-11

For all forest creatures are mine already, the animals on the mountains in their thousands. I know every bird in the air, whatever moves in the fields is mine.

ECCLESIASTES 3:19-21

Man's fate is like that of the animals; the same fate awaits them both: As one dies, so dies the other. All have the same breath, man has no advantage over the animal. Everything is meaningless. All go to the same place; all come from dust and to dust all return. Who knows if the spirit of man rises upward and if the spirit of the animal goes down into the earth?

LUKE 12:6

Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies? And not one of them is forgotten before God.

WELCOME TO KODI'S GATE

Rainbow Bridge

The Original Poem

A Parting Prayer

Excerpts from Bible Scripture