All Creatures

ALL CREATURES WAS LAUNCHED in the spring of 2016. Our hope was to attract new readers to the Guideposts family through a magazine featuring inspiring stories about the animals who share our lives and our love for them. We have been blessed to have you as our partners in All Creatures. Your letters, stories, emails and back cover colorings have been a joy to receive. Notes like “My granddaughter loves to look through the pages of each issue” and “I just had to send you a photo of my beloved dog” confirmed that so many of us connect with God’s creatures in ways that fill our hearts and souls. Sadly, the realities of magazine publishing make it unsustainable for us to continue to publish All Creatures. This will be our final issue.…

Ever since Brandi Winkleman’s Lab mix, Dodger, was a puppy, he’s had a fascination with the smaller pets in their home. “He loves playing with our rats when they roam freely,” says Brandi. Shy and nervous around people, Dodger is playful with other dogs and gets along well with the family cat and foster kittens. But he has a special fondness for the rats Brandi and her family have adopted. Particularly the late Ike (above), who had his own game he would play with Dodger. “Ike would run up to the toy Dodger was playing with and act like he was going to take it. Dodger would almost let him, then nudge him away.” Now, at six years old and with six new rats in the house, Dodger has not…

Timber Born with a neurological condition that affects her motor skills, Timber doesn’t let that get in the way of enjoying long walks and playing in sprinklers. Her owner, Christina Powell of Alberta, Canada, advocates for animals with special needs. “Timber can fall down 30 times a day, but she always gets back up,” she says. Bruce This kea parrot was brought to the Willowbank Wildlife Reserve in Christchurch, New Zealand, missing the upper half of his beak. But Bruce lives perfectly well without it. “He picks up stones and uses them to preen himself,” says researcher Patrick Wood. “It shows us the resilience and creativity animals have.” Uno Bonnie Schual of Ontario, California, was running errands when she found a sick kitten. Now, she and Uno are inseparable. “She gets around…

FROM COLLEGE CAMPUSES to hospitals, schools and nursing homes, miniature therapy horses Jasper and Oliver lift the mood in any room. The animals’ gentle approach invites people of all ages to connect with them. “You simply won’t find a better icebreaker,” says Andra Ebert, who founded Heartland Mini Hoofs, an Illinois-based nonprofit, in 2015. “Everyone is drawn to the horses.” Andra still recalls the gentleman in a Central Illinois nursing home who reached out to the horses as if he’d always known them. “Turns out, he served in the cavalry during World War II in North Africa and Italy, where he helped care for the horses that were used to move equipment and tanks,” she says. “I learned a history lesson that day.” In another elder care facility, a resident of four…

MY HUSBAND AND I adored Brooks, the abandoned golden retriever we adopted at age 11. We had him only a year and were devastated by his death. Still, loving an older dog put a mission in our hearts to rescue senior gold-ens who need forever homes. We adopted nine-year-old Ike, then nine-year-old Ernest. We named our doggy retirement home BrooksHaven, in Brooks’s honor. Recently, Cuddle Clones, a company that makes lifelike plush pets, heard about what we are doing. They have a heart for helping dogs too—a portion of their profits goes toward providing shelters with food, toys and funds for medical care. They graciously sent us a Cuddle Clone that looks just like Brooks, right down to his short furry ears and bushy tail. When I hug the plush pet,…

‘‘Ready for another animal, Anita?” my brother-in-law asked me, setting down a cardboard box inside my doorway. “This baby raccoon needs a mama.” I pulled back the flap and looked inside. A tiny masked face peered out. “She was wandering around the brickyard,” he said. “She didn’t even fight when I picked her up.” I lifted the raccoon out of the box and held her. “Poor little baby.” “I’ve been calling her Margaret,” my brother-in-law said. “Margaret…” I cooed to her. Since girlhood I’d taken in animals—cats, dogs, an orphaned lamb, even injured chickens. But this was my first wild animal. The timing was perfect. I had no one to take care of. My husband, Merle, worked all day, and I was on summer break from my job as a school secretary. My daughter…