I loved your book. My husband bought it for me for my birthday. I read the book jacket and started crying. I got mad at my husband for buying it for me. After having it sit on the end table for over a month, I picked it up last night and finished it this morning. I cried and cried.

I have owned 3 dogs and 3 cats since I married. All were strays or from a shelter. I had to put 2 down, I couldn’t stay in the room with them when they were put down. I could barely see through a blurrey vision of tears to get out the door. I knew I was doing the right thing, they were very sick, and old. I couldn’t believe that I was actually taking a life that I loved so much. I have a huge problem with people who get animals and don’t take care of them, or flat out abuse them. God put them here for us to love and for them to love us.

God Bless you Mr. Levin and may God Bless Sprite and his spirit.

Sherry from WA

Murphy and his ferkocta “law” has prompted me to your humble corner. We’re bird owners & do have heart tugging stories but we decided to opt out cuz they’re birds….

This past weekend my husband’s 80 yr. old father accidently killed their beloved cockerspaniel with the car. Describing how he feels isn’t necessary. But they’re path to heal required adopting a new cockerspaniel puppy right away. It doesn’t help lady but it was essential to help the grieving.

God Bless you and yours Mark Levin.
The dog’s name was Smokin ‘Black Lady or lady for short.

Fay from MI

Dear Zeus,

My dear Zeusy, you were the best kitty there was. You are always the first one to great me when I came home from work. You were there when I needed a friend. You were my alarm clock. What am I going to do now? I had to put you to sleep today and I miss you terribly. I hope you are in the catnip field in kitty heaven.

Love, Mommy

Janet from NY

We have a dog named Kurt. He has given us a life of happiness and joy. He once ‘ walked himself to the vet the day before his appointment. He knew who takes care and provides him doesn`t he. He slip out of my mothers sight and walked down this busiest street at rush hour made it passed the cross streets and down to the vet no lie. Very funny story. He had no collar with license because I took it off of him the night before he was having neck problems.

Thank god the Vet did know who he was and called us. We make sure he has his license on and made up a ID tag with name and number.

I dread the day he has to go to doggy heaven. Your book was a god send and you are a wonderful person. Yours Truly,

Linda and our loved K-9 Kurt and family from NJ

I just got done reading your book and cried my eyes out.
My husband and I adopted a 7 year old female Beagle from the Humane Society on September 30, 2007. I have been a dog lover all my life, but my husband..not so much. After six years of marriage I finally convinced him to get a dog. The one we picked out we named Violet. She had been abandoned and left at the shelter for 3 weeks. After we got her home she slept a lot but I just took that to her being a little bit older. She had never been spayed so I made an appointment on October 15 to get her spayed. The vet called once she was under anasthethia to let me know that she had found a tumor in her intestines and could not get to her uterus to spay her unless this tumor was removed. Of course this would make the cost of the surgery go up to $2,400 with all the testing that needed to be done, etc. I was torn because I didn’t want to not get her spayed but I also didn’t have that kind of money either. I did not have time to call my husband so I took a deep breath and told the vet to go ahead and remove the tumor and I would worry about how I was going to pay for it later.

The vet called back a few hours later and said they had to remove over 4″ of her intestines to get all of the tumor and had to reattach some of her intestines and were keeping her overnight. I was worried, but the vet had high hopes that everything would be fine. When we picked her up the next night the vet informed me that there was a risk that the sutures in the intestines would not hold and might start to leak. Of course I was scared but just happy to have our little Violet home. By Wednesday night, Violet had not been keeping food down, which was one of the signs of intestinal leakage, so I called the vet (luckily they are an emergency animal hospital and open 24 hours) and they told me to bring her in right away. The vet on duty wanted to start with an x-ray of her stomach to see if they could see if the intestines were holding. When the vet came back in, she had a strange look in her face. She said ” I think I know what’s wrong…there is an unborn puppy in her belly.” My jaw about dropped to the floor. I really thought she was joking. I didn’t understand how the vets that operated on her just 2 days before had missed an unborn animal fetus. (more…)

“Our daughter-in-law, Lauren, has a tiny little toy shih tzu dog named Skittles. My wife fell in love with the dog and started asking me to get her one “like Skittles.” Because we have had a big eighty-pound Labrador retriever, Jet, for eight years, the thought of bringing a tiny dog into the house to share space with a well-established “only child” of a dog seemed like a bad idea.

Months of her dropping hints and outright pleading finally took their toll. For Christmas 2005 I gave Janet her own little toy shih tzu, who at 7 weeks old weighed only a pound and a half. She had already told me that if she got a puppy she would name him Sonic because of her affinity for the Sonic drive-in restaurants where she is a regular customer, alternating between cherry limeades and vanilla root beer. I presented Sonic at our staff Christmas party, and brought the little puppy to her in a forty-four-ounce Sonic drink cup. He fit quite comfortably!

The next few months were quite interesting as we watched our well-trained, well-bred, and well-behaved Lab try to figure out what to do with this tiny little creature that he surely thought must have been something other than a dog. Whatever indifference Jet may have shown the little interloper, it didn’t deter Sonic one bit.

From day one Sonic acted as if he, too, were a big dog and whatever Jet did, Sonic tried to do also. Sometimes Sonic would even challenge Jet for a bowl of food or a toy. Jet, being ever the typical, docile, easy-to-please Lab, would often simply walk away rather than engage in a fight with a dog a fraction of the size of the ducks he retreived during hunting season.
As I watched the dogs learn to get along and establish their own space, I was reminded of a truth I had heard years before: “It is not the size of the dog in the fight, but the size of the fight in the dog that determines the outcome.”
A quality absolutely necessary for leaders to lead and ultimately to win is to display perseverance. The only certain way to lose is to quit before the end of the game. One of the most inspirational speeches I ever heard was given by Clebe McLary, a Marine who had been severely wounded in Vietnam, losing both legs, one arm, and his sight in one eye. It was a miracle enough that he was alive, but a greater miracle was his unquenchable spirit and optimism. I will never forget one statement he made: ‘I have never lost at anything. Sometimes the game ended before I finished playing, but I never lost at anything.’ ”
-taken from FROM HOPE TO HIGHER GROUND, by Gov. Mike Huckabee (p.184-185, Center Street, 2007)..

Mark, you’re the best…I know this probably doesn’t really fit the format and won’t get posted….just thought I’d share the story…..

Thanks,
Boyne from TX