One of my all time favorites.

Let's be realistic.

Unshakable, witty and deeply felt, the film will be paying emotional dividends for a long, long time.

It is encouraging that the film ends so strongly.Otherwise, it wouldn't have been a particularly memorable film

I'm sorry-The shelter owner should be .... I can't say ... it's too terrible. The character of the father - how can he even entertain he idea of keeping the dog. It is just beyond me. Buddy is not the only dog on planet earth! Immediately return the dog and then take your daughter around to all the myriad shelters that have more dogs than you can imagine so she can adopt one . The. After putting poor Teri Polo's character through all their sh-, the little girl just decides the return Buddy. What ?!?!? This thing just doesn't work.

I have tagged this spoilers although I haven't given much away that wasn't either early in the movie, or pretty obvious.A beautiful sweet almost teen girl and a dog, how can you go wrong? And it was nice. I'm pretty sure I haven't seen a story setup like this.I was a little distracted by the ambiguity of what was the right thing to do in the early part of the movie. Many critics have gone overboard in their criticism. Yes Mark and Emma struggled. Who doesn't sometimes struggle with doing the right thing? Instead of my first knee-jerk reaction which was to be appalled, as the story developed I realized this was a very realistic struggle. The one valid criticism is how quickly the shelters passed the dog along to the point of adoption. That is irresponsible, but the explanation was that they were all over-crowded. A little lame maybe.But there were no bad guys in this movie. Sally was very gracious even in her struggle that they might not give Buddy back. Emma was an unselfish and kind young lady when she realized what she had to do. I say pretty good for her age. And Dad was patient, avoiding any rash irreversible decision. The acting was very good. I have seen Teri Polo only once before but I am starting to really respect her acting, especially in these heartwarming stories. She is especially good with little girls. She has a great nurturing spirit. Both she and Jordyn Ashley Olson had to deal with their characters' difficult emotions and the emotional struggle of potential loss heaped on top of a history of a lost loved one. Olson managed to show how attached she was, yet made her choice real. Olson was also great in the rest of the story. Martin Cummins was also great as his character dealt with the moral dilemma vs protecting his daughter. Ace, the dog actor, was superbly trained. He managed some complicated maneuvers.This is quite simply a wonderful and touching Christmas movie that doesn't have a ton of Christmas clichés piled up. It is compelling and real.

Most of these Hallmark stories are not for rocket scientists but are just pleasant holiday fare. And I always see mistakes. This movie was supposedly set in Massachusetts and its environs. The woman lived an hour from Boston. But when they were "in town" buying a Christmas tree you could see huge sheer cliffs and ocean in the background. Clearly NOT Massachusetts. I wish the producers would give viewers more credit for intelligence and pay more attention to details like this. My other objection is that the credits at the end are squished into about a #2 font so that you cannot read them. This is the fault of the network. I like to see location and music credits and even some of the other actors' names but it is impossible when they reduce the credits to practically nothing. Many of the channels do this and I find it frustrating.

This stunk. First, a soldier brings a dog back from deployment, later veteran soldier dies prematurely from a heart attack after returning stateside; his widow loses the dog in a storm, a guy picks up dog in his truck and carries it an hour away. Dog ends up in shelter, gal who runs shelter's brother gets dog and has it for a whole two weeks. Meanwhile, the widow is trying to track down her dog, finds shelter and gal who runs it gives her a rash of s..t but finally determines she's the dog's rightful owner. So when widow contacts guy who, again has had dog for a full 14 days as compared to five years for widow, thinks maybe . . . no. She travels there, hits the same garbage and that's where I turned this show off. I have no idea how it turned out but up to then, one of the worst Hallmark or Lifetime type deals I've ever watched. Sucked. Major. Sorry if I spoiled the plot line, but frankly I'm doing you guys a huge favor pre-warning you.