This story is a sad but hopeful one. My old dog died on June 24th, 2006 at 4:00AM and was buried in Las Vegas the following Tuesday. She had been a part of our family since we rescued her in December of 1994 from a neighbor who locked her up without food, then abandoned his home that was soon to be repossessed.
Yes, she kept us company on cold and rainy nights. She also chased the coyotes away from the henhouse and accompanied us on regular hikes. But her mannerisms and behaviors, even during the last few years when she couldn’t walk and was so terribly ill, give me an example for my own behavior. To understand them better, I had to consider why dogs exist.
So who created dogs? A few random atoms that fell together, Mr. Darwin? I might be convinced that OJ is innocent, but nothing as ridiculous as that. I believe that dogs were specifically made, by the same Creator who made us, for several specific purposes. Hunting with cavemen? Yes. Guarding the women and kids at the campfire? Sure. Chasing the rabbits out of the farmer’s vegetable garden? Of course. But all of these functional uses of dogs could have been handled by creatures designed with far less charm and intelligence (a razor-clawed armadillo comes to mind).
Why did the Creator give dogs attributes not directly connected to hunting and farming, such as:
- Friendliness — wanting to share companionship
- Courage — willing to give its life for humans
- Gentleness — not biting back no matter how hard the baby tugs on your ears
- Optimisim — believing in the best intentions of everyone, until proven otherwise repeatedly
- Faithfulness — sticking with your friends no matter how ugly they are
- Endurance — getting up to go to the bathroom outside even when in renal failure and your hips and knees have no cartiledge left and you have intense vertigo from an infected inner ear
- Kindness — wagging your tail when touched by a friend while in the hospital
The only reason I can discern for dogs to have been created with these attributes is to help humankind come through this bus-station-waiting-room existence on Earth, serving and encouraging people to survive and show these traits themselves. This list has echoes in the list of “Gifts of the Holy Spirit” from Isaiah 12 and the “Fruits of the Holy Spirit”. These gifts come only from Grace, imparted by the third Person of the Trinity. They are not random, nor are they purely physical. Science has no explanation or even description of them.
Rather than feel grief over the loss of my dog, I am grateful for the gifts she imparted to me; gifts given out of the love of my Creator for me and transmitted in a furry, four-legged package. Those gifts were not buried in the pet cemetary, but will continue to grow in me as I give them to others.
Do dogs live forever? The question came up in my RCIA class and is not a trivial one. People who have lost pets speculate that they’ll see their dogs in Paradise but my hope is to see my Creator in Paradise. What’s certain is the immortality of love. The love of their Creator, expressed through those dogs, survives forever and that’s enough for me. Rather than worry about the future existence of the soul of my dog, my focus is on continuing to give the gifts to other humans, who definitely have immortal souls.
But if she is waiting for me when I arrive in Paradise, with a rabbit in her mouth, that would be fine.