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And welcome back to Coast to Coast George Norri back with paulkud Dinars along with his book Faithful On to Death. Paul tell us about the rainbow Bridge. What is that?
Well, the rainbow Bridge is something that a lot of your listeners who have had pets probably have heard of a social as they've passed on. The rainbow Bridge is a fictional place where the animals wait for us, kind of in a pre paradise, and the animals pass on and they wait there, and then they wait for our spirit to come and join them. The animals have you know, they've died through illness or old age, but in this paradisical place they are they're renewed to new vigor and youth.
And then our spirit meets up with them, and then we cross over the rainbow bridge together into eternal paradise. So we're with them forever.
Now, how do people get a hold of this rainbow bridge? How do we tap into it?
Well, the rainbow bridge is kind of like I compare it to a theological plug in. One of the problems in Christianity is that there's been some bad, bad theology which has led a lot of people to believe that animals don't have souls, or they're not supposed to be, they're not supposed to be offered eternal life the human beings are. In fact, if you go back and you look at the very earliest Christian scholars and the very
earliest Christian writings, no one ever denied souls to animals. Ever, the question was just whether they had a soul that was of the same nature as a human being, But no one denied them a soul. When you think about this, the idea that an animal would be denied paradise eternally is bizarre because they were in paradise to begin with, right, they were in the Garden of Eden. And who got everyone kicked out of the Garden of Eden? The animals, no,
the humans did. If anyone deserves to be denied paradise, it should be us. It was our transgression. The animals made no transgression. They were in paradise to begin with.
They should be restored to paradise in the end. But over time people have decided that human beings against this kind of speciesism, that human beings have this superior soul, and that animals somehow don't have a soul at all, and this kind of bad theology has been passed down and as they said, leading a lot of people to believe that they won't meet up with their animals again.
And so the rainbow Bridge kind of came along as a theological plug in that you could kind of put into your belief system to allow you to regain your pets company and to regain the company of your petaternally.
Now you covered a lot of burial sites in your book, Faithful unto Death, tell us about that.
While I spent over a decade traveling around the world looking at pet cemeteries and burial practices, from the very very first urban pet cemeteries to temples in Asia, for instance, where perform funerals for animals, some very beautiful rituals which I was allowed to see, to these kind of specialty cemeteries for animals I've already discussed. Some of my favorite pet cemeteries wound up being, for instance, one in Helsinki.
It's beautiful, these hand painted blocks of wood with pictures of the animals and notes from the owners out in the forest. Looks like a pet Cemetery from the Lord of the Rings down into South America where I was finding glass dog houses for past on pets with little
mannikins of the dogs inside of them. Really any number of variations, but all dedicated to this one, this one main truth, which is that animals that have given us our love in the end, in the end, they deserve that love returned to them at the time of their greatest need when they're passing. And it's something that is different as we are no matter where we are, there may be a different way of expressing it, but people universally believe this.
Do Most people who bury a pet out of pet Harry go back and visit the yearly you have twice a year. How often.
That depends. It certainly depends on the person. I've met people who are coming every day. I've met people who are still coming once a week after twenty or thirty years. And I've met some people who just bury them and they might go back once a year, they might not go back at all. It really depends on the individual.
Obviously, what's it costs for a funeral, again.
It depends on the pet cemetery. It might cost five hundred dollars might cost more. Remember alike with a human being, it's going to depend on the accouterments, right, whether you want a very grand stone or whether you want a small stone covering it or a stone at all.
Well, that's a good point, and it's all optional, isn't it.
That's right. And remember, as I already said, there's a great variation on the kinds of pet cemeteries. I live out in the Mohave Desert. Now Here there are any number of pet cemeteries on public land where you can go and bury your pet for free. They're just off the grid pet cemeteries. People go bury their pet for free and they make their own handmade memorial. They're very touching places, and there's no cost at all.
Outside of the United States, how do they react with their own pets that have passed.
On, Well, again, it depends on the culture. Any number of variations. Pretty much anywhere you go, you're gonna find the standard pet cemetery model that looks like a miniature version of a human cemetery. But it's in the local variations that you get the real difference. You get the really interesting stuff. So I mentioned some ceremonies that they
had gone to for pets. In Asia, there is, for instance, a temple in Bangkok, and there every Buddhist temple kind of has a charitable program or charitable outreach, and this temple's charitable program is pet funerals. And so every morning you can go there and you'll see people lined up whose pets have passed on the night before, and they'll come in and the monks will come out and they'll take the pet and they'll lay it out in a coffin and they'll sit the owners down and they'll formst ceremony.
They'll say it. They'll you know that monks will read an oration and they'll stand over the animal's death, rub the animal's body with flowers, and say an oration over the animal. And then they'll they'll take the pet's body to a crematory that's right there on the temple grounds. They'll cremate it there, and then the owner has a choice of taking the ashes back or going down to the river with one of the monks and releasing the
ashes to the rivers. Very beautiful and I think it's much more healthy than what we do in the United States, because it helps them. That kind of ceremony, helps provide a means of closure.
Do you have some strange stories you want to share with us about pet cemeteries.
I have as many strange stories as you have time. You want the strangest one, well you want, okay, you want one of the strangest ones of all with involving a very famous animal, rent in Tin, Yeah, why not? Okay? So you know who rent in ten is, right?
The famous movie, the German shepherd movie Dog.
Yeah, the actor, yeah, Rin Tintin. For those who aren't familiar, I'm sure most people are, but he is probably still the most famous dog in history, the most iconic dog in history. In fact, the story is that I don't know if you know this. George, he won the first oscar.
He actually got the most votes, but the Motion Picture Academy sent its accountants back and said, well, retabulate and figure out which human being got the most votes, because we don't want the oscars to not be taken seriously in the future if we give the first one to a dog. Anyway, he was that biggest star. He dies in the nineteen thirties. He was owned by a guy
named Lee Duncan. Lee Duncan had been a soldier and he had found Rentintin as a puppy in France because he had been he had been born in a German kennel in France. And so this American gi finds this dog, smuggles them back to the United States, trains them for the movies. He becomes the biggest star in Hollywood. Then he dies in the early nineteen thirties. He's buried in Duncan's backyard in Beverly Hills. Okay, pretty normal story. Now, well, his grave happens to be in Paris, which is okay.
Why is this dog's grave in Paris when he was buried in Duncan's backyard. The story has always been because Rentinton was born in France, Duncan must have sent him back to France at some point in time as an ode to French patrimony to be buried in Paris, even though he may have been born in France. But it was a German war dog. It sounds a little suspicious. Plus, remember I have a background in death studies. You can't, I know, you can't just send a body of a
dog in the mail to another country. There is no record of that body ever being mailed to France, no record of it ever being sent out of the United States, no record of it ever being received in Paris, and no record at the cemetery of any correspondence with Lee Duncan. So there's absolutely no record of how this dog's body got there. All anybody knows is Rentinton's there. And for me, this was you know, this is a story. It's got to be research, right if I'm writing about pet cemetery.
This is a pet cemetery in Paris. The world's most famous dog. What I found? You wanted a weird story. This is absolutely fascinating. Yeah, yea, So how does he get to Paris? I looked into this story for years and years, researched this thing. I finally found the answer to the story in a French movie magazine in the
early nineteen forties. In the early nineteen forties in France, there was an article in a movie magazine about the death of Rin Tin Tin and it had a picture of a dog which is a German shepherd, which is not the American Rin Tin Tin. It turned out that a French actor by the name of Teddy Michau, who was kind of b rate movie actor, had gotten himself a German shepherd started training him for the screen and named him Rin Tin Tin. They had actually gotten him
a couple couple of minor roles in movies. Obviously, this guy is trying to you know, blur the lines between you know, his dog and the already deceased rent In Tin. He claimed that his rent In Tin was the son of the original Tin rent In Tin made it with a Brazilian wolf. So this guy's a little bit of a con men to begin with. Right, What this story that I found in the French movie magazine explained was that this dog had just died and he was being
buried in exactly that pet cemetery. So I went back and I looked at all the old photos. The gravestone for rent Tin Tin in Paris. Is now this grand thing that says rent In Tin started the screen. Originally it was just a little plaque that said here lies the good rent Tin Tin. It was Teddy me Show's dog that was buried in Paris, not the American rent Intent. That's why there's no record of Rentinton having been sent to France. Never was. But all these tourist guides to
Paris talk about go visit rent Tin Tin. You know, it's like all these websites about sites to see in Paris will tell you can go to the Old Dog Cemetery and see the grave the most famous dog in the world. And all these dog lovers and these movie fans go to that cemetery and they leave flowers on this grave for the wrong dog, because all anybody knew is it's saying, you know, here lies rent In Tin, the good dog, and people are like, hey, did you
know Rentin Tin's buried in that cemetery. And so eventually rent and Tin lovers got together enough money to make a gravestone that looked convincingly like it belonged to the world's most famous dog. In fact, it's the completely wrong dog, and the real rent Tin Tin is still buried in someone's backyard in Beverly Hills. Who ever bought that house, They've got the most famous dog in the entire world buried in their yard and they probably don't even know it.
I was going to say, they probably took the gravestone away and the markers and everything else if they were there.
Yeah, because Duncan lost the house through for foreclosure the same year Rentin ten died. I found a photo taken in his backyard before he lost the house. That shows and it's in the book. There's a little close up of a white cross in a white rose bush, which is exactly the way Renton Tin's grave is described. It was a white wooden cross. It was a white cross covered in a cross covered in white fabric and a white rose bush with one of Rin Tin Tin's own
puppies sitting with his paw on the cross. That was Rin Tin Tin's original grave. But it wasn't marked by a piece of stone. It was marked by a piece of wood.
Paul, what about Lassie great television dog?
Well, those dogs and there there was last and then there were several that came after. Those dogs were buried on the ranch of the guy who trained them, Rud Weatherwax, So they were buried on his ranch. But there is a Lassy story in my book. There was a famous war dog that had been buried in Los Angeles, and they sent one of Lassie's puppies down with this little metal that they embedded into the war dog's plaque, that something like a Lassy gold medal, because apparently Weatherwax didn't
want his own dogs buried in a pet cemetery. But he was okay with advertising in a pet cemetery and inserting this plaque into another famous dog's grave.
Fascinating and it surely is remarkable, isn't it.
Oh?
Yeah, is it humane to put down an animal?
Oh? I think so, George. I mean to be honest, I believe it's humane to to oh, you know, allow was to suicide. I think if a person is really suffering and doesn't want to live, I think I think that's okay for people too. So I don't I don't have a problem with euse in Asia with an animal, there is there is a periodic issue in this. Recently, I don't know if you this news story it was. It was recent with the famous French actor who had died and he wanted his dog to be euthanized and
buried with him. This happens about every five years. There's a big to do about. You know, someone in their will says, when I pass on, I want my dog killed and buried next to me. First of all, it's very hard to bury your dog next to you. Anyway, in the human cemetery they're not allowed, so it's probably not gonna happen, And it's extremely inhumane to take up, you know, an otherwise healthy animal and ask for them to be euthanized just because you have died, you know.
I guess it's this fantasy that it's like, no one can love that pet the way I did. That pet's going to be miserable without me. Well, I think that pet should have a chance to live on and make up its own mind whether it's miserable or not.
What about the paranormal aspects of pet cemeteries.
Oh, there are a lot of stories about that, George and I have experienced one myself which I can talk to you about. But the most famous canine ghost in the world in the Los Angeles Memorial Pet Cemetery. It is the ghost of Valentino's dog, Cabar. The story with Cabar, he had so Valentino probably he would go everywhere with his dog, and he loved loved this dog dearly. It was a gift of a Belgian diplomat. It was a shepherd, and Valentino went to New York. It was a short
trip and he went without the dog. In nineteen twenty six. Well, that's where Valentino, That's where Valentino died. He winds up getting sick on this trip to New York and he dies. Valentino's brother is at home. Word has not come that Valentino has died. The dog starts to cry at howl, this blood curdling howl that could be heard out on the street and almost made an actress who was driving by crash. And suddenly the call comes in that Valentino
has died. So the dog knew that Valentino had died before Valentino's brother had even gotten word anyway, so the dog winds up to survived. The dog is a shell of its elf after this time, you know, because it's lost its favorite human because they were very bonded. Yeah, and the dog winds up running away, apparently searching for Valentino. It eventually comes home, you know, very tired and very rough, winds up dying, and they buried in the Los Angeles
Memorial Pet Cemeterium. That dog has not stopped looking for Valentino. Many people who have performed seances at Valentino's oldest state Falconlare, has talked about seeing that dog jump through the window or walk through the room. And there are all kinds of stories at the pet Cemetery in Los Angeles about people who have said they've been they don't know anything
about the story of Valentino and his dog. They just happened to be standing somewhere near that grave, and they'll talk about you know, I thought I felt a dog rush against me. You know, I thought I had the sensation of being licked, or you know, I thought I heard a whipper and I turned around. There was nothing there. And it turns out they were standing next to Valentino's dog's grave.
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