One of Kate's Stories - How Grady Led her to Me! By Jack McAfghan

This is Grady. She crossed the Rainbow Bridge on March 31, 2009 at the age of 16. She was my first dog as an adult; a Sheltie-Collie-Shepherd. After a time I didn't think I could live without her. 

When she was about 8 years old I sat down with her and asked her to be sure I was in a good relationship with a guy before she had to take leave of me. Nearly 8 years later I ultimately had to put her to sleep because of many chronic ailments and compromised quality of life.

Many months later I talked with a friend of mine, as I had always felt kind of guilty about putting her to sleep when I did. I thought I was letting her down by not waiting for the guy to come into my life before I put her down. 

"But you did have the guy," was my friend's reply. "You had Jack. She knew he was your guy." 

Oh such relief! Run free Grady! We did what we had to do when we had to do it and everything is All Right. I love you forever Grady Girl. 💗

heart emotico

Please Don't Be Afraid to Love Again

Me, Jack, when I was little with my big sister Grady. Kate knew Grady was winding down and if you read our books, you'll know that I was the "BackUp Plan". But oh. Oh so much more! 

It takes strength and healing to open your heart to love again. Some people run right out and fill that space we left behind. Many more people say "NEVER AGAIN" because they remember only the pain of the final moments, not the lifetime we shared in love. 

Take all the time you need, but life is too short - and too long - to be alone. Yes and some people are "alone" even when they have a partner and even in the biggest family! There is nothing like the love of a pet. Few humans are capable of such love. Please keep your heart and mind open. It will be a unique and different kind of love, but it will be wonderful too. Message today from Kate: Don't be afraid...Follow your heart. It's always been your best guide. 

Love, Jack 🐾

This photo is of our Immy who was in need of good home and Kate drove all the way from Arizona to Montana to get her. In the sixth month of her grief, it was an emotional and complex time. And Immy was/is a complex girl! Oh but Kate and Joey would never trade her for the world. And besides that - they still have me. 😘Only Gone from Their Sight. 🐾

Immy McAfghan

If you need support, do read our books, join my Facebook Page 

and visit our support group! 

From Jack: My Last Earthly Memory - Taking Those Darned Pills!

There seems to be a lot of guilt over the issues of pain pills and end-of-life treatments. People feel guilty if they didn't give them. People feel guilty if they did.  People just feel guilty, it seems to me, no matter what they do or did. 

Every four hours she waited to give me my pain pills. I fought with her every time. She would cry as she forced them into my mouth. In our whole life together she had never forced me to do anything I didn’t want to do.

 

I just didn’t want those pills! I was in pain, yes, but she didn’t know how awful those pills were for me! She kept trying to hide them in things – like cheese or bacon or yogurt or peanut butter. She thought I might not know they were in there. I didn’t even want to eat my favorite things at that point … and I sure didn’t want to eat those pills!

 

The last one she gave me was wrapped in a peanut butter cube. I remember how she watched the clock until 10 p.m. when she could give me the next dose. I took it. At 1 a.m. I sat up and looked right into her eyes. I was very weak and going back and forth in consciousness. It was the first time I had sat up in many hours. She was spellbound, looking back at me, looking deeply into my eyes. 

 

"What Jack. What is it?  Do you need something?" she asked me. I surprised her by spitting the entire peanut butter pill cube out on the floor between us. She knew then that I was serious about not wanting those pills! I lay my head back down and I crossed the Rainbow Bridge two hours later, clear thinking and unaffected by pills in my system.

 

I watched her after my spirit left my body. It was amazing to me how she cleaned up the place! She washed all the dishes, the blankets, the floor. She had a little bowl where she had mixed the pills into some yogurt. I watched her take the tip of her finger as she took a teeny tiny taste of the mixture. She recoiled. “Blech!” It was the most disgusting thing she had ever tasted. God knows...I had tried to tell her.

 

I will be letting this memory go as soon as I finish this message to you. Like all dogs, cats and other animals, we leave such memories far behind. We are not like humans who torment themselves by dwelling on things long after the moment is gone. How is it that people can feel guilty about so many things? They deprive themselves of the sweetness of memories by embittering themselves with the guilt over a few painful moments.

To humans it seems, it all is Black and White. You are guilty or you're not. But YOU'RE NOT! You're not guilty.

No Matter How Far: Love Never Dies and Communication Never Ends

When humans speak to one another they speak with their voices in words that they have defined.  Do you realize that the words people speak are just a small percentage of their communication? When you take away the voice, the speech, and the words, there is still a great deal of communication taking place. The words are shaped in the mind; in the brain. The inspiration for speaking the words comes from the heart. The heart is the true center of genuine communication and Love is the greatest inspiration in the universe.

You may not realize it but you are communicating with us all the time, even when you aren't speaking. We watch you. We hear you. We feel you.  We observe your body language. We look into your eyes. We watch your gestures and listen to your tone of voice.  These are more revealing than the words that you might speak.

"Like words that sound the same but are opposite, sometimes I couldn't tell if she was laughing or crying. They kind of seemed the same. I would have to look very carefully at her eyes and her mouth. I assessed the tilt of her head and her breathing pattern. I got good at deciphering her, but sometimes even when she was laughing, tears would come out of her eyes. Humans are strange that way. They live such a dichotomy." 

(Jack McAfghan: Reflections on Life with my Master, Chapter 29)

You can learn to understand us too.  We do not use words, but we communicate in very similar ways. We can't smile but we can wag our tail. We can't speak our joy in words but we can jump, squirm, and wiggle when you come home from work!  You can get hot under the collar because you are angry. We can get hot under the collar too and we might growl when we feel that way.  Most of all, we speak from the heart. Our heart to yours.

After we cross the Rainbow Bridge we are all magicians!  We can "speak" in amazing and unique ways by using the power of energy connected to tangible things. While some of you can pierce the "veil" between Heaven and Earth and see and hear and know things through the power of the psyche and intuition, we know that most of you can only sense things in the physical realm, if you are aware of us at all. So we find ways to reach you.  Clouds, rainbows, dreams.  Lots of times things that are associated with power and energy like lightbulbs, clocks, electronics, and appliances.  Electricity is the closest thing on earth to what we become when we cross the Rainbow Bridge. We are energy and electricity is energy so it's easiest for us to reach you through energy circuits.

You can learn to communicate with us by translating what you see into what we are sharing with you. You can learn to speak to us not only through your words, gestures, and body language but also through your heart. It is through the heart that we see, hear, and feel most clearly.  If you think you might have seen a sign from me, chances are you have -- or you wouldn't have even thought of signs from me. If you have goosebumps (the electricity of the skin) -- observe your thoughts and look around. It is probably me.  All of us in Heaven have a goosebump "signature" and you will learn to recognize mine.

Just keep an open mind, grow in your faith that I am not gone, just gone from your sight. "Wipe the tears from your eyes and watch for the signs that I send to remind you that Love Never Dies."

Stay tuned for our upcoming and long-awaited book: “PawPrints from Heaven: How to Communicate with Your Pets in the Afterlife” to be released in September!

I've Heard that Dogs and Other Pets Don't Have Souls and It Makes Me So Sad!

 Dear Jack, 

I have been reading your books.  I saw something today that said God only loans our babies to us for a short time to enjoy on Earth.  Also, then, that they won't be in Heaven and we won't see them, again.  Thoughts?  

A Devoted Reader

Dear One, 

Thank you for reading the books, for they are the key to healing from your loss. 

People come from all walks of faith and all walks of life and belief. This person sounds like they have been convinced that animals don't go to Heaven. 

Oh, I have many (many) thoughts on the topic. I've been to Heaven firsthand and Kate has been studying these things for 40+ years. We are currently writing an entire book on this very subject as we speak. 

It's mostly strict religious people who will tell you this kind of thing but there is much evidence to the contrary. Pets have souls just like you do. If they didn't they would all have the same personality, and we don't. 

Pets have the Spirit of God in them just like you do. That Spirit is what brings all of us back to God when it's time to leave this physical world. That Spirit is the love of God that joins each and every one of us together, and Him to us... Some are bonded more than others (known as "soulmates")... God brings all of us Home when our work and learning on earth is completed. Life is the school, love is the lesson and we all "graduate" into the Heaven that is our eternal home.  

We tell you all about how this happens in Book 3 ("Return from Rainbow Bridge") in my story that I write from Heaven where I find I have some important decisions to make... We're working on developing this information further in our upcoming book/s!  

PawPrints from Heaven: How to Communicate with Pets in the Afterlife will be ready by the end of this Summer! We can't wait to share it with you! 

Love,  Jack 🐾

Keep reading. We are working to answer all these questions and remove all doubt from your mind. Believe! You will meet again one day. You'll see! 💗

Find all of our books here: In the US: https://amzn.to/4b63R77

In the UK: https://amzn.to/3UPgNZe

In Canada: https://www.amazon.ca/stores/Kate-McGahan/author/B00VJ2OM3Y

and all other Amazon Locations Worldwide!!! 

Our Story is Your Story Too: How Jack's Books Came About

Message to you from Kate: 

I rescued Jack at the age of 12 weeks and had the privilege of training him and shaping him into the dog he was destined to be. We started with Obedience, moved into Agility, pressed forward as an uncertified therapy dog. We worked for hospice and Jack spread joy everywhere he went. They say a therapy dog brings much healing and love, but we were one dog and one master and we were the ones who were loved; we had the love of thousands. Jack and I worked the world together side by side until one fateful day when the vet discovered a rectal mass that needed removal. Jack did not recover despite my doing everything and anything to keep him alive. Four days later, Jack died on our kitchen floor. 

Then the pet loss adventure began. I was grieving so much that I couldn't hear him. I couldn't see him, blinded by the grief over the loss of my four-legged best friend. He continually sent me messages from where he was. A lightning bolt came out of a clear blue sky. Birds and butterflies would land on me or dive bomb me. He sent all kinds of messages and signs when I was grieving; when I was crying. There were no pauses in between my tears and his messages fell on deaf eyes and ears. I could not listen. I could not be quiet. All I could do was grieve and grieve and grieve. 

One day a friend helped me to realize that I was still clinging to Jack. In all my grief work with hospice and teaching people to let go, I was still hanging on to it. Exactly six months from the day he crossed the Rainbow Bridge, I was able to scatter his ashes into the air on our favorite wilderness trail. I set him free and set myself free at the same time. I came to realize that I had identified so much as being "Jack's Mom" that when I lost him I began to identify as "Death's Victim". Victim no more, it was time for me to recreate my life without Jack, without being a victim of anything. 

One night - just a few days after I'd spread his ashes, I dusted off my journal and Jack's words came out of my pen. They were in the first "person" and they spoke to me about truth and spoke it in a way that commanded me to listen. They commanded me to write. He was always the more outgoing of the two of us. He would always pull me forward to meet new people and to interact in new ways with the community. He pulled me forward this particular night because he started something that would not stop. He helped me to write a book called "Jack McAfghan: REFLECTIONS" and he comforted me through the process of writing it. He wanted me to write it, not only to work through my own grief, but to comfort, inspire and support others working through theirs. This would come to be the first book of many in the Jack McAfghan Pet Loss Series. 

All the books in the Jack McAfghan Pet Loss Series are available on Amazon Worldwide

or through your favorite bookseller.

In honor of Jack I wish to share our story with others who need to believe that love never ends and that life goes on long beyond one's earthly death. Our story is your story too. 

Jack will tell you: "I am not dead. I am awake.... You want me to wake up but in my death I did wake up and I saw you were still sleeping."  Love never dies.

You Are Not Guilty - of Anything

I'm unhappy to see your Stoic grief.

After all, 

You can only heal what you can feel.

When you don't express, it stays trapped inside

With no way out. 

It turns into anger; it turns into guilt.

Do you love me? 

For if you do, if you really do, 

YOU ARE NOT GUILTY of ANYTHING.

Love and guilt simply cannot coexist. 

Let your love rule and overcome the guilt that you think you have.

Don’t be afraid to feel,

 For only what you feel can you heal.

Don’t be afraid to cry for not all tears are evil.

I wait for your smile but I want you to cry;

Setting grief free brings you closer to me.

Don't you see? Don't you see?

Set it free. Set me free. 

Set us free.

     Love, Jack 🐾

(Rainbow Bridge representative)

Jack