Quote

It is possible to take something beautiful and lasting out of the heart-wrenching experience of seeing the animal you love move inexorably toward death.

Animals have a much better attitude to life and death than we do. They know when their time has come. We are the ones that suffer when they pass, but it's a healing kind of grief that enables us to deal with other griefs that are not so easy to grab hold of.

Every animal has his or her story, his or her thoughts, daydreams, and interests. All feel joy and love, pain and fear, as we now know beyond any shadow of a doubt. All deserve that the human animal afford them the respect of being cared for with great consideration for those interests or left in peace.

Birth, life, death is a cycle. And they're all beautiful, you celebrate all of them. Animals do grieve, but they move on. That's the lesson behind animals.

If you're going to love animals and have a life with them, the odds are you're going to lose them. It's helpful when you get a dog to accept the fact that this dog is not going to be with you your whole life.

I think of animals more as spirits that come and go. They enter our lives at a particular time and they leave at a particular time. The whole glorious history of animals with people is about joy and connection. It's about loving this creature and letting this creature love you.

Until one has loved an animal a part of one's soul remains unawakened.

The animal kingdom is destined by nature to serve, and that service is fulfilled in alleviating the temporal and physical needs of man; the animal spirit or soul is limited by time - it dies with the body.

Death is the great hope of all life; the desire to expend itself; to be used and consumed by its own longing for itself.

But if you love animals for all the right reasons- and that's just love and affection- then you're going to go after animals who need you.