Will You Be Reunited With Your Dog In Heaven?

The posthumous disposition of canine souls is one of my special interests, less tongue-in-cheek than I might like to believe. The religious people say animals don't have souls; the secular folk say there is no afterlife; so where am I to get support for my hope that I can be with J.J. in the world to come? Well, in today’s Times, for one. Here is Dana Jennings:

[T]hat journey down the highways of memory always dead-ends back with me standing in my crib: I’m laughing and being licked in the face by Midnight, our black Lab puppy, as Dad holds her up to me, offering me my first canine baptism by tongue.
What a wonderful place for consciousness to begin, with a giddy and wriggling puppy anointing me for the sometimes rocky voyage ahead. And, in a sense, it’s a perfect memory. There’s the joy of the moment — boy, puppy, father — but it’s tempered by the bittersweet knowledge that the puppy will soon be dead, hit by a car. This is my only memory of Midnight.

I can’t tell you how often I hear dog people say: “If there are no dogs in heaven, I want to go where they go.” What is it about our dogs that gets us thinking about heaven, about matters of ultimate concern? What is it about our dogs that pierces us to the depths of our souls?

If there is a heaven, some sort of afterlife, I like to think of it as a place where we get reunited with all the good dogs that we’ve ever known.

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