Where does the Rainbow Bridge lead?

 

You've seen enough of Sophie.
This is son Colin's dog, Gracie, who has now crossed the Rainbow Bridge.
A real sweetie, she used to lie on my feet while I worked. 
Look at those expressive eyes. 

Years ago, when I first moved to Fort Worth, I worked for Tandy Leathercrafts writing catalog copy. It was not an inspiring job for many reasons—catalog copy is really boring, we worked in an old warehouse on Foch Street, and the other women in the office, including the supervisor, were wives of students at Southwestern Theological Seminary (read old-school Baptist).

One day the supervisor was telling us about her dog. Her daughter, maybe ten or eleven, took the dog’s face in her hands and said, “Now, [Fido?], you have to stop eating so much. You’ll get so fat you’ll die, and you can’t go to Heaven.”

Instinctively I blurted out, “What an awful thing for a child to say to a dog.”

The mother replied, “It’s true. Dogs don’t have a soul, so they can’t accept Jesus Christ as their Savior, and therefore they can’t go to Heaven.”

I would like to think that I knew I was outnumbered and kept quiet, but I think I probably said something like, “They can go to my heaven.”

I’m not ready for a theological debate about where any of us go—dogs, cats, people, and so on. But I will stand firm that dogs have souls. They are living, breathing creatures who love, fear, feel pain and anger and loneliness. They like fun, and they know joy. They are often bewildered by the humans they generally adore, and they are crushed when those humans don’t treat them well.

Walk through an animal shelter—you’ll see dogs hiding in corners out of misery, dogs actually crying, dogs desperate for affection, dogs who seem to have simply withdrawn and given up on life.

Most of us love our dogs, and most of us treat them well. I have what some tell me is the most spoiled dog they’ve seen—could be. She thinks she ranks right up there with my two-legged kids and grandkids. Not all dogs are that fortunate, and I am struck more and more by man’s cruelty to a lot of animals, though here I am speaking specifically of dogs.

Worst case scenario, of course, is the dogfight ring, where innocent dogs are used as bait to rouse a fighting dog’s bloodthirst to the point of killing. Rescued bait dogs have cuts and scratches and rips all over their bodies. One of my great fears is having my dog stolen by a dogfight ring, though I am told there isn’t much organized dogfighting in my county. Next on my list of abuses is abandonment—people who move and leave their dogs behind or just drop them off at a shelter, saying, “I don’t have time” or “I just don’t want him (or her).” To me, that’s like dropping a child off and zeroing them out of your life. Some horrific people get a new puppy and leave their old dog at a shelter—the old dog who has known no other home but theirs for as long as fifteen years. I have read of dogs desperately chasing the car form which they’ve just been thrown, because it contains the only “family” they know. Finally, there are the perverted people who torture animals—burn, beat with baseball bats, starve, drown, all the horrors you don’t want to imagine. I even heard of a man who tried to hang a dog.

The underlying attitude seems to be, “It’s just a dog.” And that’s where I think that important distinction comes in. It’s not about whether or not the dog accepts Jesus, it’s about the truth that any dog has a soul.

So dog rescue has become one of the causes I’m passionate about. I cannot take in another dog—though I am tempted daily—but I have a voice, mostly a written voice. Almost every time someone posts about finding a lost dog or wanting to re-home a dog, I launch into my spiel about how to safely re-home an animal.

Never give away a free dog. Plain and simple—not a puppy not a grown dog, not the neighbor’s dog who barks all the time. Always go through a registered rescue agency or your local animal control agency. Most will ask you to foster, if at all possible, but they will work with you if you cannot. They will vet anyone who applies for the dog, and they know how to watch signs, check backgrounds, etc.

If you must deal with a lost dog yourself, watch or signs from the person claiming the dog. Is the dog overjoyed to see them? Hesitancy is a red flag. Do they have photographic proof of their relationship to the dog? Can they point to an unusual identifying physical characteristic? What’s your gut feeling about the person. Would you trust them with your child? If not, be wary of trusting them with a dog.

It's not just a dog! It’s a living, breathing creature with a soul.