Excerpted
from "What Do Dogs Know?":
Are
there dogs in Heaven? For those who love dogs, it would
be the worst form of a lie to call any place where dogs
were banned "Paradise." Certainly no loving
God would separate people from their canine friends for
eternity.
Robert Louis Stevenson, author
of novels such as Treasure Island, declared, "You
think dogs will not be in heaven? I tell you, they will
be there before any of us." George Eliot, the English
writer of Middlemarch and Adam Bebe, asked:"Shall
we, because we walk on our hind feet, assume to ourselves
only the privilege of imperishability? Shall we, who are
even as they, though we wag our tongues and not our tails,
demand a special Providence and a selfish salvation!"
Then there was Saint Patrick,
the patron saint of Ireland. Tradition says that he promised
Oissain, the son of the great hero Finn MacCumhail, that
for helping him Christianize the land he could have his
hounds in Heaven.
Martin Luther; Founder of the
Protestant church, was once asked by a child whether her
dog would be allowed in Heaven. He gently patted the dog's
head and said, "Be comforted, little dog, thou too
in the Resurrection shalt have a tail of gold."
I had a dream shortly after my
old cairn terrier; Flint, died. In it Flint was lying
beside the gates of Heaven, and an angel came out to ask
him why he didn't come in. In the telepathic speech common
to celestial beings, my dog answered,"Can't I just
stay out here awhile? I'll be good and I won't even
bark. You see, Im waiting for someone that I miss
very much. If I went in alone, it wouldn't be Heaven for
me." I woke from that dream to to find tears on my
face.
Copyright
© 1999 Stanley Coren.
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