Is heaven a place or state of eternal bliss and happiness? Yes? If so then dogs must go to heaven. Otherwise it could not be a state or a place of eternal bliss for dog lovers.

Just yesterday, in the midst of a move, I found a photo of my beloved Jack Russell Terrier (Tristan) and said out loud: "Gosh, I hope dogs have souls because I would love to see this pup again." As a dog lover I would have to speculate that if heaven doesn't have dogs, then it really isn't heaven. So why do we humans always think that we are the center of the universe?

Certainly Hebrew Scripture sees the fulfillment of time as being the Peaceable Kingdom, eh? If wolves lie down with lambs certainly dogs might with cats.

Great treatment of this in the Twilight Zone Canon in an episode with Buddy Epson and his hunting hound. I won'y spoil the story... just track it down.

I believe animals do go to heaven, but I want to got on record as saying I am not comfortable with them being elected Bishop.

Yes. Heaven is a state of perfect love, and animals love us unconditionally. Without love, heaven is a null concept.

Oh, and that Twilight Zone episode that Michael mentioned in his comment above is one of my very favorites.

"Your righteousness is like the mighty mountains, your judgements are like the great deep; you save humans and animals alike, O Lord." -Psalm 36:6, New Revised Standard Version

Respectfully,

James Pirrung

"Your righteousness is like the mighty mountains, your judgements are like the great deep; you save humans and animals alike, O Lord." -Psalm 36:6, New Revised Standard Version

Respectfully,

James Pirrung

I want to go where my dogs went. That is all. [If Jesus is there also: Definite Plus! ;-)]

JC Fisher

I do believe that animals have souls and that I will be reunited with my cat in heaven. I assume, however, that I will not be required to scoop her litter box...

-Cullin R. Schooley

"If there are no dogs in heaven, I want to go where they go."--Will Rogers

That said, I don't worry so much about whether my dogs are there as "my dogs" any more than I worry about whether the people I know will be "my people." What I believe is that my dogs are a special link to my interacting fully in the joy of God's creation, and whatever that mystery "is," I will recognize "it," in its transformed state. That's enough for me.

My sheltie was able, very clearly, to tell when someone had cancer, even before diagnosis, as he went out of his way to befriend those in this situation. I trust that a loving God has made appropriate arrangements for this gentle, loving, intelligent, and sometimes jealous sentient being now that he is gone.

Eric Bonetti

We all love our pets and many of us have a hard time imagining how heaven could be heaven without them. Indeed, scripture has a great deal to say about how God loves and cares for animals and (as has been pointed out) includes them in the new creation. But, if our pets are included, so are cows, and chickens, and pigs, and all the other animals we treat merely as products. When I think of the animals in factory farms and laboratories and puppy mills and a thousand other hellish settings, methinks we will have some 'splainin' to do.
Lois Wye

I absolutely and happily believe that cats and dogs go to Heaven; I'm afraid that pigs, chickens, goats, and cows might, too.

I'm afraid I'll have to be noncommittal, since the reality is that for all of our theological conjecture we simply don't know. We don't know anymore than we know where unbaptized infants go. The key is to have hope that God's mercy is unbounded and that his wisdom is perfect. If animals serve a purpose in Heaven then they will be there, nevertheless I do not think that the theological arguments that everything with an animus, every animated soul, ends up intact in paradise. To share a redeemed corporeal existence with every gnat that every lived seems almost incomprehensible and silly. It actually seems more likely that animal souls are recycled – that is, reincarnated in some way –than that they are preserved everlastingly. Then again, there is that line from that song, the name of which I always forget, that says, "Where mosquitoes never die, but they only eat black fly, and the black fly eats the deer fly and the gnat; and nothing would be sweeter, than if gnats all bit mosquito, I know heavens gonna be a place like that".