Man and his dog...

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 ice 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 leading 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 man. "Do you have any water?"

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

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

"This is Heaven," he answered.

"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 your name like that?"

"No, we're just happy that they screen out the folks who would leave their best friends behind."

Best Friends - The BEST animal rescue organization.

Best Friends put there money where there hearts were, and helped other people financially follow their hearts to help the animals! By far the best organization I saw that came down to help out in the Gulf region! Here is more about them.

Best Friends: The no-kill animal group grows steadily

By Matt Canham
The Salt Lake Tribune
Salt Lake Tribune

Dressed in white jeans and a purple cape, Michael Mountain spent years promoting his own brand of spirituality.
Now he leads one of Utah's largest nonprofit organizations: Best Friends Animal Society, which is spearheading an international effort to give every pet a home. He finally found his spiritual fulfillment in the redrock of Kanab.
Mountain was among a group of British intellectuals who shunned the establishment in the 1960s and bonded over a desire to seek the divine. Their search led them throughout Mexico and the United States.
Along the way, they created The Process church, controversial in its time, but also misunderstood, according to its members.
Mountain was one of the founders of The Process. He says the faith centered on kindness and the Golden Rule, but others said the group worshipped the devil and had connections to notorious killer Charles Manson.
The group later successfully sued a book publisher to clear its name.
But as the members grew older, they gave up their religious ministries for charitable works. Some moved to Arizona and began collecting the unwanted animals from the pound before they were killed.
The animals soon overwhelmed their property. In 1986, they created a pet sanctuary in what they named Angel Canyon in Kanab. The nation's biggest no-kill animal rescue group started small but has steadily grown.
They now own more than 3,000 acres in Kane County and their compound holds more than 1,600 animals. They also produce a magazine and run spay and neuter programs in Los Angeles and Atlanta.
Donations large and small - from animal lovers who are celebrities as well as those with modest means - feed new programs, which in turn attract more donors.
In 1995, the group raised $2.6 million, and almost every year that amount increased by a couple of million.
But 2005 was unlike anything they had ever seen before. Amid the human tragedy of Hurricane Katrina was an animal tragedy, too. Dogs treading water in rivers that were once streets. Cats starved in abandoned moldy homes. Best Friends sent in a team to rescue as many pets as possible.
As they braved the waters, the donations came flooding in. The result was the biggest one-year gain in the nonprofit's 22-year history.
"We put out an appeal to our supporters," said John Fripp, the animal society's treasurer.
And those supporters responded.
In 2005, Best Friends raised $32 million in donations, $11 million more than the year before. The society raised more than twice what other nonprofits such as Hogle Zoo, the Utah Symphony or United Way of Utah collect in a year.
Those supporters, 91 percent of whom are women, are once again sending cash in response to the group's current trip to Beirut to rescue 300 dogs and cats. Best Friends has raised $182,000 in the past few weeks.
Such disasters as Katrina and the Hezbollah-Israeli war feed into people's "latent desire to help," said Dave Jones, a fundraising consultant for nonprofits based in Salt Lake City. "When you see animals at risk, your heart goes out to them."
These cataclysms gave Best Friends a stage to present its mission and push its agenda and in the process sent a "remarkable" amount of money to the animal society, he said.
Such fundraising is expected, Jones said, just make sure the money goes where the organization said it would go.
Mountain insists: "It didn't go to anywhere else."
Best Friends had $3.5 million in leftover Katrina money at the end of 2005, according to Fripp. Best Friends spent the rest of the money caring for the animals they relocated to their Kanab compound.
The society still had a surplus, as it has for more than a decade. The money goes into a reserve account, which now tops $10 million, and Fripp hopes to create an endowment, although he says the organization probably needs more animal shelters on its Kanab property first.
Most of Best Friends' money comes from people who receive a fundraising letter or a quarterly newsletter. The average donation is $35. Nearly 300,000 people subscribe to Best Friends magazine for $25 a year.
Movie stars such as Charlize Theron, Jessica Alba and Hilary Swank show up at the annual "Lint Roller Party" in Los Angeles. This year's event took place on Thursday, with 700 people paying at least $125 to attend.
Francis Battista, who helped create Best Friends, now manages the Los Angeles programs and estimates the Lint Roller raised $230,000 this year.
Mountain says this money will help further Best Friends' mission, and he now is planning on reconnecting the organization to its spiritual beginnings. Best Friends is now reaching out to different congregations, hoping they will emphasize that helping animals is "Christian-like."
He calls it "restoring Eden" through showing kindness toward animals.
"Kindness, we consider to be one of the highest spiritual values."
mcanham@sltrib.com

Man dies Trying to Rescue Dog from Basin

This just happened yesterday. I am not sure I would have done anything differently, though I don't know the environment they were in. I think this is a testimony about how much some people love their pets and would certainly risk their lives for them. Unfortunately this gentleman lost his...
-Rachel

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/02/AR2006090201279.html


Man Dies Trying to Rescue Dog From Basin

The Associated Press
Saturday, September 2, 2006; 10:50 PM



TELFORD, Pa. -- A man who tried to rescue his dog from a flooded retention basin was sucked into a drainage pipe Saturday and died, police said.

Thomas V. Chipley and his wife were walking their golden retriever in a neighborhood park when the dog jumped into the overflowing basin fed by two drainage streams, authorities said. The remnants of Tropical Storm Ernesto had brought rain across the state.

The dog was drawn into the basin's outflow pipe, and Chipley went into the basin to try to rescue the animal but was also pulled into the pipe, police said.

His wife, whose name was not released, tried to pull him out but was unable to do so.

Emergency workers removed a manhole cover to gain access to the pipe, police said. Chipley was pulled out, but emergency room doctors were unable to revive him, Bucks County Coroner Dr. Joseph Campbell said.

Campbell ruled the death an accidental drowning. The victim's wife was also taken to the hospital for treatment.

The dog was found alive, although with scrapes and bruises, where the pipe empties into a stream, police said.

Bubbles- the last dog pulled out of a NOLA house alive...

Please see this website for the full story about Bubbles, the last dog pulled out of a house in New Orleans alive . It was on October 20, 2005, 7 and 1/2 weeks after Katrina!

http://web.mac.com/collofthewild/iWeb/Bubble%27s%20New%20Home/Bubble%27s%20New%20Home%21.html