Do Pets Go to Heaven?
By Cynthia Glazier
I get a maudlin feeling these days as I watch my pets cavort in the kitchen after supper. My poor old lady dog sometimes gets lost between the kitchen and the living room – I can see her sitting with her head cocked wondering “was I coming or going?” And Mandy moves a bit slower these days when she chases after a ball. I am the owner of several geriatric pets, ranging in age from 11 to nearly 15. Although they are in excellent health, I know that one day all too soon, the inevitable will happen.
There has been much discussion about whether pets go to heaven or even whether or not animals have souls. To me, life in heaven would be unbearable without my beloved furry children. I was always told that heaven would have everything I needed to make me happy – and to me, happiness is my pets.
I’m not alone. If you follow census data, more than 40 million households in the
The death of a pet is traumatic. When I lost my beloved golden retriever last year, I grieved for months. In fact, even today, when I hear our “doggy dancing song” – an upbeat pop song that made him wag his tail and dance with me around the dining room – I get misty-eyed.
I received more than 30 sympathy cards when Kody died – as a Therapy Dog, he touched many lives in the community. If ever there was a saintly dog, he was it. In one of the cards I received a copy of a beautiful poem, “The Rainbow Bridge.” It describes a perfect place where our “fur babies” go to wait for us to go to heaven together. You can read the entire text at www.petloss.com, which is an excellent resource for those grieving the loss of a pet.
The big issue about animals and heaven has to begin with the question: Do animals have souls?
Do you have a soul? Do I? This is something we all take on faith.
What do the scriptures say about animals and heaven? So far, my favorite passage is from Romans: 8:19-21 “For the earnest expectation of the creature waiteth for the manifestation of the sons of God, because the creature itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God. (KJV).”
Being just a layperson, I’m not sure what the scholars might say about this bit of scripture. I’d like to believe that it means that all creatures have some sort of soul and go on to an afterlife.
As a child, my favorite book was Beautiful Joe, by Marshall Saunders. (You can actually read the entire book online at http://schulers.com/books/ma/b/BEAUTIFUL_JOE). The story of a dog who survives horrific abuse to become a loyal family pet includes a few lines of poetry. I have searched for years and have never found out if this was a poem Saunders wrote himself or if he found it somewhere.
In the poem, a child asks his father (You have to be a Robbie Burns aficionado to truly appreciate this poem). “Do doggies gang to heaven, dad? Will oor auld Donald gang?” The child then goes on to extol the virtues of the dog.
His father explains that their “oold Donald” is an extraordinary dog and replies: “If Donald's no let into heaven, I'll no gang there one foot."
Several poets and philosophers have weighed in on the subject, people as diverse as Mark Twain and Lord Byron. All have written odes to faithful friends who’ve gone on before them and all believe that there is a place in heaven for our pets. Perhaps Will Rogers said it best:
"If there are no dogs in Heaven,
then when I die I want to go
where they went."
Questions or comments? Email Cynthia at rotundcat@aol.com.
© Copyright 2005 by Cynthia Glazier