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dogs hiding in corners out of misery, dogs actually crying, dogs desperate for affection, dogs who seem to have simply withdrawn and given up on life.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.

 

It’s a dog’s life—or should be

 

The Burton Cavaliers

When I was young, green, and new to Fort Worth, I worked writing copy for Tandy Leather catalogs. I found myself working with several wives of students at the Baptist Seminary. One day one was telling a story about the family dog which was eating too much (whose fault is that?) and getting fat. The daughter, maybe twelve, had taken the dog’s face in her hands and said, “Pooch or whatever, you’ve got to stop eating so much or you’ll die, and you can’t go to Heaven.”

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

“But Judy,” the mother said, “it’s true. Dogs don’t have souls, so they can’t accept Jesus as their savior and therefore can’t go to Heaven.”

I’m not prepared here to get into a theological discussion of whether or not dogs have souls, but I am quite sure they have feelings. They love, they trust—and too many of them are betrayed. I heard lately of a man who needed to rehome a twelve-year-old dog because he was getting married and couldn’t take his dog (I’d rethink that marriage!). Or people who no longer want their dogs and just turn them out to wander and get lost. We all know stories of dogs kicked out of cars who chase the cars as they speed away—they are chasing the only person they know, even if that person is not a dog owner 

I heard recently that this time of year people turn their older dogs into shelters to make room for new puppies. Outrage! Would you turn in Grandma to make room for a new baby (being a grandma, I sincerely hope not!).

You see it in the eyes of shelter dogs. They are lost, abandoned, scared, waiting for the only people they’ve ever known to come back and save them. And too often those people don’t come back.

A dog is a lifetime commitment—not your lifetime but the dog’s. It is a living being with feelings of love, loyalty, hunger, fear, cold, joy—the whole range of emotions we feel. Treated right, they are loyal, trustworthy companions who will often go to any lengths to help or save their people.

Different dogs for different folks. Christian always wanted a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel because they are quiet dogs, bred to sit quietly on the king’s lap. But they come with congenital heart problems and may require expensive veterinarian care. My Sophie is half poodle, half border collie—one of the doodle dogs recently popular. But she s a cross of two of the smartest breeds known. We don’t get to put much over on Sophie. In a long life of dog ownership, I have had collies, farm collies, Irish wolfhounds, Cairn terriers, Australian shepherds, a Labrador with just a hair of Rhodesian ridgeback in him—each breed comes with their own characteristics, habits, personalities.

Another problem: the dog that needs a new home because the owner suddenly is unable to care for it and the family doesn’t want it. I can’t imagine that, but it happens. Have you made arrangements for the care of your pet in case you die or are unable to care for it? My family has long had an informal agreement about my dogs—Colin would have taken the Aussie if anything happened to me; now, if that happened, you couldn’t pry Sophie out of Jordan’s arms. I have a friend with no children, family members not liable to love her cats—so she has provided generously for them in her will.

A dog is a four-legged, furry member of the family and deserves to be treated as such. Spread the word. A pox on people who abandon dogs.

Jordan and Sophie
Soph thinks she's a lap dog