The Rainbow Bridge is the theme of several works of poetry written in the 1980s and 1990s that speak of an astral place where pets go upon death, eventually to be reunited with their owners. One is a prose poem whose original creator is uncertain. The other is a six-stanza poem of rhyming pentameter couplets, created by a couple to help ease the pain of friends who lost pets. Each has gained popularity around the world among animal lovers who have lost a pet or wild animals that are cared for.

      Either the Rainbow Bridge, or a very similar belief known as Lesser Heaven, can be used in metaphysics and theology as a response to the problem of animal suffering.

      The concept of a paradise where pets wait for their human owners appeared much earlier, in the little-known sequel to Beautiful Joe, Margaret Marshall Saunders' book Beautiful Joe's Paradise. In this green land, the animals do not simply await their owners, but also help each other learn and grow and recover from mistreatment they may have endured in life. But the animals come to this place, and continue to true heaven, not by a bridge but by a balloon.

     The belief has many antecedents, including similarities to the Bifröst bridge of Norse mythology. The Bifrost bridge was said to be a burning rainbow bridge that reaches between Earth and Asgard, the realm of the gods.

     Here is the oldest know version of the rainbow bridge poem.

     By the edge of a wood, at the foot of a hill, is a lush, green meadow where time stands still. Where the friends of man and woman do run, when their time on earth is over and done.

For here, between this world and the next, is a place where each beloved creature finds rest. On this golden land, they wait and they play, till the Rainbow Bridge they cross over one day.

No more do they suffer, in pain or in sadness, for here they are whole, their lives filled with gladness. Their limbs are restored, their health renewed, their bodies have healed, with strength imbued.

     They romp through the grass, without even a care, until one day they start, and sniff at the air. All ears prick forward, eyes dart front and back, then all of the sudden, one breaks from the pack.

     For just at that instant, their eyes have met; together again, both person and pet. So they run to each other, these friends from long past, the time of their parting is over at last.

The sadness they felt while they were apart, has turned into joy once more in each heart. They embrace with a love that will last forever, and then side-by-side, they cross over…together.