<Li> Paul C. Dahm, a grief counselor in Oregon, US, said to have written the poem in 1981 and published it in a 1998 book of the same name (1981, ISBN 0 - 9663022 - 0 - 6). </Li> <Li> William N. Britton, author of Legend of Rainbow Bridge (1994, ISBN 0 - 9645018 - 0 - 5) </Li> <Li> Wallace Sife, head of the Association for Pet Loss and Bereavement, whose poem All Pets Go to Heaven appears on the association's website as well as in his book The Loss of a Pet . </Li> <P> The genesis of the rhyming poem is straightforward: spouses Diane and Steve Bodofsky operated a ferret rescue that specialized in gravely ill animals and had many friends whose loss of pets were acutely painful; they wrote the poem for them . But when a local veterinarian asked if they could make it the basis of sympathy cards he might send to his patients, the poem gained popularity . The internet widened the restorative power of the poem internationally . </P>

Where did crossing the rainbow bridge come from