First of all, I will compare it to Old Yeller which some people seem to think it is similar to. Yeah, it's similar in that the main character and the dog are best friends and do stuff together and that the ending is not a happy one. Yeah, yeah, big deal.<br /><br />Old Yeller was set in the pioneer days. The dog ended up having to be shot after contracting rabies because. Even when I was a kid, I had no problem with that because I knew that rabies just wasn't treatable in those days. In Little Heroes, the dog dies from eating poison bait. Was that really necessary? Why didn't they keep the dog inside when they couldn't keep an eye on him? (Did the family not know about the bait, or were the filmmakers just too dang lazy?) Talk about preying on anyone's worst fears! And it's in relatively modern times. Old Yeller died after protecting his family. Old Dan in "Where the Red Fern Grows" died in a hunting accident. Furthermore, those movies were based on BOOKS that weren't aimed directly at kids. There was absolutely no reason why this movie had to end this way. If you want to show your kids a movie concerning animal-friend and moving on, try Old Yeller or Red Fern Grows which both at least have a setting in which the tragic end was contextually inevitable and not totally pointless.<br /><br />Score: 1 because it's the lowest score I can give.