I will lend to you for a while, a Shetland Sheepdog pup, God said, For you to love while he lives and mourn for him when he's dead. Maybe for twelve or fourteen years, or maybe two or three, But will you, until I call him back, take care of him for me. He'll bring his charms to gladden you and (should his stay be brief) You'll always have his memories as solace for your grief. I cannot promise he will stay, since all from earth return, but there are lessons taught below I want this pup to learn. I've looked the whole world over in search of teachers true, And from the folk that crowds life's land I have chosen you. Now will you give all your love, nor think the labor vain, Nor hate me when I come to take my Shetland Sheepdog back again. I fancied that I heard them say "Dear Lord Thy Will be Done" For all the joys this Shetland Sheepdog will bring, the risk of grief we will run. We will shelter him with tenderness, we will love him while we may, And for the happiness we've known, forever grateful stay. But should you call him back, much sooner than we've planned, We'll brave the bitter grief that comes, and try and understand. If, by our love, we've managed, your wishes to achieve In memory of him we loved, to help us while we grieve, When our faithful fluffy bundle departs this world of strife, We will have another Sheltie and love him all his life. Unknown author Our Shetland sheepdog "Tico" passed away two weeks ago, at  twelve years of age, after seven years in our care. I'm not ashamed to say that I loved him, but I'm not overwhelmed with grief. It was past his time, and the Lord answered our prayers for a little more time when he was deadly ill this Christmas. He was one of a kind, yet it's hard to describe how. He was messed up from when we got him. He was never obedient and all his life he thought he was a cat, but he was faithful and good and even if it simply was instinct he cared about his family. He was a companion and a member of the family. It was worst for my sister who has taken care of him these last years. But there is a miracle in this grief - she was given Buster, a now ten week old sheltie--heartwarming, sharp and healthy. You have to realize how rarely this breed is available where we come from. And during the winter! It doesn't happen. But for God all things are possible! He was ready two days after Tico died. Some may find it soon, but the grief would be worse if she had no dog to take care of at all. I thank and praise God for the marvelous spectrum of life and look forward to the precious years he will give us with our new fluffy bundle of joy! "I know of no reason why I should not look for the animals to rise again, in the same sense in which I hope myself to rise again—which is, to reappear, clothed with another and better form of life than before. If the Father will raise his children, why should he not also raise those whom he has taught his little ones to love? Love is the one bond of the universe, the heart of God, the life of his children: if animals can be loved, they are loveable; if they can love, they are yet more plainly loveable: love is eternal; how then should its object perish? Must the very immortality of love divide the bond of love? Must the love live on for ever without its object? or worse still, must the love die with its object, and be eternal no more than it? What a mis-invented correlation in which the one side was eternal, the other, where not yet annihilated, constantly perishing! Is not our love to the animals a precious variety of love? And if God gave the creatures to us, that a new phase of love might be born in us toward another kind of life from the same fountain, why should the new life be more perishing than the new love? Can you imagine that, if, here-after, one of God's little ones were to ask him to give again one of the earth's old loves—kitten, or pony, or squirrel, or dog, which he had taken from him, the Father would say no? If the thing was so good that God made it for and gave it to the child at first who never asked for it, why should he not give it again to the child who prays for it because the Father had made him love it? What a child may ask for, the Father will keep ready."     - George MacDonald God bless! --Eystein Evensen