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You are here: Home / Pet Blogging / Dog Blogging / All Dogs Go To Heaven

All Dogs Go To Heaven

by | 65 Comments

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lily

So sayeth the Pope:

Pope Francis confirmed during his weekly address in the Vatican’s St. Peter’s Square that canines, along with “all of God’s creatures,” can make it to heaven.

The leader of the Catholic Church made the remark in order to comfort a young boy who was mourning the death of his dog, according to the New York Times.

“One day, we will see our animals again in the eternity of Christ. Paradise is open to all of God’s creatures,” said the 77-year-old Pontiff, according to Italian news sources.

My only question is how Lily will know the difference. All she does now is sleep on clean sheets under a down comforter, wake up for walks and treats and meals, and occasionally belly rubs and petting.

Reader Interactions

65Comments

  6. 6.

    Anne Laurie

    Well, from what you’ve described about Lily’s life before she came to live with you, she’s already served her time in Purgatory like a good Catholic.

    (Sweet picture, and I so know how she feels.)

  7. 7.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Mnemosyne (iPad Mini): Hey, Beau accepted anything I said. Of course, all I ever said was that I loved him.

    Anyone who has a problem with Beau being in any positive afterlife that may exist has a problem with me that may eventually involve my arriving near your location and talking impolitely at you.

  8. 8.

    srv

    This Pope is really lowering the bar for entry. Perhaps he should take all those walls down at Fortress Vatican.

    Next up, dispensations for Republicans.

  9. 9.

    beth

    I guess this is a big deal because the last Pope said animals had no soul and couldn’t go to heaven. It’s always projection with those ratfuckerz. Anyway, he never met my sweet, soulful doggie.

  10. 10.

    lahke

    I’ve always worried that Lily is a fairly old dog, based on her relatively white nose. With that daily schedule, it sounds even more likely. You enjoy her while you have her, okay?

  12. 12.

    Amir Khalid

    Dogs are capable of love, loyalty, bravery, and (not least important) joie-de-vivre no less than any human. So why shouldn’t they go to heaven?

  13. 13.

    jl

    In Heaven, Lily will live forever with a purified Cole who will never grouch and gripe (edit: and certainly never swear or curse) in front of her innocent little all-hearing ears.

    Thanks for special cute pet pic.

  14. 14.

    ruemara

    @Mnemosyne (iPad Mini): I actually loved it. Can’t even recall the short tho.

    Is it too much to ask that I not have FedEx Girlfriend over for 6 nights out of the week? It seems it is. The end of this rental cannot happen soon enough. If she doesn’t sleep over, she shows up for lunch, goes away and then comes back for dinner. If I get two nights/2days sans roomie and girlfriend, it’s a miracle. I wish I had options.

  15. 15.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Amir Khalid: Any heaven that doesn’t include dogs is one I want no part of. For fuck’s sake one of the only reasons I have tried to be decent for the past 30 years is to meet up with my old Cocker Spaniel later on. He’ll vouch for me.

  16. 16.

    Amir Khalid

    If I get the free download of SimCity 2000, will I be able to play it on my Windows 7 laptop? And would it be worthwhile? My own PC gaming days, now long behind me, were all about 486-based fighter-pilot sims like X-Wing and Strike Eagle III.

  17. 17.

    maeve

    @Mnemosyne (iPad Mini):

    I thought virtuous pagans went to Limbo – did they change that?

    According to wikipedia its only the virtuous pagans who “had no opportunity to recognise Christ”. In the modern age – if they heard of him but didnt convert they are damned – His way or the highway.

  19. 19.

    Anne Laurie

    @lahke:

    I’ve always worried that Lily is a fairly old dog, based on her relatively white nose.

    It’s the red gene, those of us carrying it tend to go grey young. (I had greys at 18.) Ask those who breed Irish setters, chocolate Labs, marmalade Persians, or roan horses.

  20. 20.

    Anne Laurie

    @Amir Khalid: Well, they told me Mohammed had decreed that cats go to heaven…

    (Also Afghan hounds & Salukis, but not common dogs, only sighthounds. Of course, it was sighthound breeders who told me that part, so I took it with a large canister of salt.)

  22. 22.

    Anne Laurie

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    For fuck’s sake one of the only reasons I have tried to be decent for the past 30 years is to meet up with my old Cocker Spaniel later on. He’ll vouch for me.

    I believe that when I depart this life, my soul will be weighed in the balance. My only hope of a fairly upscale reincarnation comes from the recommendations of the animals I’ve rescued as real-life companions, plus a little extra for the rehomings & donations I’ve done here by second hand…

  23. 23.

    John Weiss

    Oh, pshaw! People are dumber than anybody! OF COURSE the doggies go to heaven! Everybody does! Geeze.

    And, I hear, it’s nothing like church.

    May the Lord Ganesh enfold you in his trunk.

  25. 25.

    Suffern ACE

    @maeve: I think in the 60s two saints were thrown out because it turned out their miracles and life stories were found to be sections of the life of Buddha. They were deemed fictional, but for hundred of years, Buddha had made it into catholic heaven.

  26. 26.

    jl

    But if Cole is purified in heaven, and he never griped or grouched, or sworw or cursed, would that be heaven or hell for him?
    I didn’t think of that.

  30. 30.

    toschek

    I love me some Lily pics, she is just the sweetest & reminds me of my own baby, shown here – http://imgur.com/zw7qG8A – she’s the one on the left.

    I’m a little worried about her though, she’s lost two of her little teeth on the bottom lip in as many months and while the vet told me she could probably use a cleaning next checkup (6 months from now) and her teeth don’t seem too bad I hope there isn’t something wrong with her. She’s only 6 1/2 years old and I have heard that Chihuahuas can have bad teeth …

  31. 31.

    SWMBO

    @toschek: One of our dachshunds had terrible teeth. When he got really old, he had to have his teeth cleaned more often. He lived to be 16 years old though. Get the teeth cleaned as soon as possible. The problem is that if there is a gum infection causing the tooth loss, it needs to be dealt with sooner rather than later. We had a very old Yorkie that lost most of his teeth due to gum disease. It’s soft food and no chewies after that. My daughter’s geriatric dog (he made it to 18) used to get his teeth brushed as often as he would tolerate it. They make flavored toothpaste for dogs. There probably isn’t anything wrong with your dog overall but keep an eye on the teeth. My vet said it was too close to the brain to let an infection get a hold there.

  32. 32.

    Mnemosyne (iPad Mini)

    @maeve:

    From Wikipedia’s article on Limbo:

    The Church’s teaching expressed in the 1992 Catechism of the Catholic Church is that “Baptism is necessary for salvation for those to whom the Gospel has been proclaimed and who have had the possibility of asking for this sacrament.” It adds that “God has bound salvation to the sacrament of Baptism, but he himself is not bound by his sacraments”.

    IOW, the RCC tells people they need to be baptized in order to go to Heaven, but God gets to switch up the rules if he feels like it, because he made up the rules in the first place. So if God decides that Mahatma Gandhi is worthy of Heaven, he gets in despite not being baptized.

  33. 33.

    tsquared2001

    @Mnemosyne (iPad Mini): Was that some hippy type CCD because I was taught that there is one true (Catholic) heaven and everyone else burns in hell. Jews, Hindus, Muslims, etc – their future is a lake of fire. There is a special, extra hot section for the Protestants.

  34. 34.

    Gex

    Gays, however, are still considered evil
    sinners bound for hell according to Catholic belief. What a guy!

  35. 35.

    tsquared2001

    @Mnemosyne (iPad Mini): And I might just have to disagree with Wiki’s definition of limbo and your interpretation of the same too.

    Limbo is NOT gonna save Ghandi. That is so not how limbo worked.

  36. 36.

    tsquared2001

    @Gex: Not the way I was raised despite what today’s Bishops would have you believe. A state of grace depends on Baptism and your acts and confession of your sins. Who you fucked didn’t matter. However, I am a child of The Second Vatican Council.

  37. 37.

    Anne Laurie

    @toschek:

    I have heard that Chihuahuas can have bad teeth …

    All toy dogs tend to have bad teeth — it goes with the ‘neotonization’ that makes them little & cute. Some have more problems than others. But unless your dog is very very very lucky and/or you can brush her teeth every night, sooner or later she’ll need to have them cleaned by the vet. Probably every few years, in fact.

    And I second SWMBO’s advice — it’s important. Even sub-clinical gum infections can lead to nasty whole-body problems over time, like heart disease & kidney infections. It gets to be more of a problem as dogs get older, because putting them under anesthesia is also risky… but I’ve seen really senior dogs (ten-year-old Afghan hound, fourteen-year-old cocker spaniel) go from creaky, cranky, hearing-impaired “poor old geezer” to “just like s/he was five years ago” after a tooth cleaning (& sometimes extraction). It actually reconciled me — I’m really dental-phobic — to getting my own teeth cleaned on a much-more regular basis, because the dental industry might be lying to me but those dogs weren’t.

    So… take your vet’s advice, when he says your little girl’s teeth need cleaning. And in the meantime, ask him for advice on brushing her teeth yourself, if you think you can both survive it. :)

  38. 38.

    raven

    @Anne Laurie: We (I) gave our knuckleheads marrow bones from Publix for years and we always complemented on how clean their teeth were. A couple of months ago bohdi broke two teeth on them and (after a fight with his insurance company over cleaning them while extracting which they eventually paid) I had to stop giving them to him.

  39. 39.

    tsquared2001

    That is the part that kills me about the 21st Century Church. When the fuck was a meeting called where “Christian Values” meant the One True Church started signing off heretics’ beliefs? I didn’t get that memo.

  42. 42.

    Barney

    No, Pope Francis did no such thing; /a> who comforted the boy with “don’t worry, your dog’s in heaven now”, and he died in 1978. For some unknown reason, western media has picked up an Italian article from over 2 weeks ago, mistranslated it, and gone all teary-eyed at the thought of Francis bonding with a sad little boy, like the last 2 minutes of an American sitcom.

    Francis has been doing a vague “heaven will be just like it is here” routine, and everyone’s reacting like he’s just announced the second coming. So many people want this pope to be different from earlier ones, that they’ll grasp at anything that happens and believe he’s ‘changing everything’. Because that’s what faith is – belief in the absence of facts.

    Bah humbug.

  44. 44.

    Elizabelle

    @raven:

    Well, I like the picture.

    Lily is just not due heaven for several years. Her work here is not yet done.

    How you be this morning?

  46. 46.

    satby

    @Gex: that’s incorrect. To be gay is not sinful, to have sex outside of marriage and without being “open to procreation” is. So single people whether gay or straight having sex are sinning, but it’s also not a mortal sin (one that automatically sends you to hell). At least that’s what I learned before I became a recovering Catholic.

    Evangelical churches tend to equate gay with hell, not Catholics.
    Edited to add: usually the same Evangelical churches that think the Pope is the Antichrist.

  48. 48.

    gogol's wife

    @RedDirtGirl:

    ME TOO

    I had to comfort a friend whose dog is very ill, because her well-meaning friends told her that dogs are not people and don’t go to heaven. Her only consolation has been that she will see her dog again. Sometimes I am embarrassed to be a Christian when I hear about cruelty like that of her “friends.” So I was so happy to be able to send her a link to Pope Francis.

  49. 49.

    Fred

    How will she know the difference? Simple. There are no burs in Heaven. Everybody knows that. Also no Vets* cause they aren’t
    needed.

    *Vets get an automatic admission into Heaven (’cause, well have you ever known a vet who wasn’t an angel?) but are on permanent vacation because they’ve earned it.

  50. 50.

    gelfling545

    @satby: This is also my understanding. There is a common misconception that the RC Church considers homosexuality more sinful or differently sinful that other sins. Actually in RC theology acts like giving charity can become sinful if done for improper motivations, sinfulness being human nature – as in “All have sinned & fallen short of the glory of God”. (In other words, you’re all sinners & probably can’t get it right so you’d better rely on us & come to Mass.) It is probably the recent shouting by certain bishops (& there’s some improper motivation right there) that has led to this conclusion.

  51. 51.

    gelfling545

    @gogol’s wife: I often puzzle over the arrogance of people who can believe in an omnipotent supreme being who must then be restricted in its actions by the preferences of some of its believers.

  52. 52.

    different-church-lady

    @Barney: This is the amazing thing about today’s “journalists” — not only are they stenographers, they take stenography from each other.

    Remember the minor ho-haw a few years ago about how the Four Corners Monument in the Western US was in the “wrong” place? The media was filled with little McNewsettes about how “Your family snapshots don’t count anymore, because you weren’t really standing in four states at once!” Well, it turned out (a) it was a load of whooey (sp?) because (a) legally the boundary is wherever they put the markers, not where they intended to put them and (b) it wasn’t nearly as far off (about 1800 feet, rather than miles) from the intended placement as the media was saying.

    I’m a little bit of a geography geek, so I did a little digging around and it turns out the whole thing was due to a SINGLE reporter for some obscure paper who didn’t understand the references used in 19th century surveying getting too clever with internet map sites. The national press then took this mistake, added their own mistaken conclusions about what it meant, and RAN with it.

    As I was digging around I checked the history comparisons on the Wikipedia page, and noticed that there was one other person out there who understood why the news reports were wrong and went through about three cycles of “uncorrecting” the Four Corners Monument wiki article every time some new fool blundered in and “miscorrected” it. I wound up communicating with him and the two of us tried to craft some words for the article that got across the idea, “Despite what you’ve heard, the monuments in the right place, please don’t ‘correct’ this article.” And even after that it got miscorrected again, and we realized we were going to have to be more blunt about it.

    It was a striking object lesson in how utterly lazy and pack-like today’s media is — “it’s accurate news because other news people reported it! Now I’ve filled my time and I get to go home.” The primary and lasting thought I took away from it all was, “If I can’t trust them with this simple, stupid little item, then how the hell am I supposed to trust them with the big, complicated, important stuff?”

    The xkcd cartoon needs updating: someone isn’t wrong on the internet, everyone is wrong on the internet.

  53. 53.

    Mnemosyne (iPad Mini)

    @tsquared2001:

    Super-hippy post-Vatican II parish — we used to sing “Let It Be” during Mass. And, yes, we were told that God could waive the rules if a non-Christian was really, really good in life and He thought they deserved to go to Heaven. Protestants were a different matter.
    ;-)

  55. 55.

    patrick II

    My aunt says that if she is re-incarnated when she dies she hopes to come back as one of my mom’s dogs, all of whom have lived lives similar to Lily’s life with Cole.

  56. 56.

    Ruckus

    @gelfling545:
    If there were to be a supreme being it wouldn’t be worried about beliefs, it would know. The beliefs are of the people who want to follow something. They have the right to believe anything they want. And of course they do.

  57. 57.

    The Very Revered Crimson Fire of Compassion

    Jesus Christ never asked anyone what they believed before accepting them as a disciple. The only qualifier was “leave everything behind you to follow me.” What dog isn’t perpetually ready to do just that?

  58. 58.

    SWMBO

    My mom said if there is ever reincarnation, she wants to come back as one of my dogs. “Just once, I’d like to have it made.” lol All dogs go to heaven. Some get a head start here on earth.

  59. 59.

    satby

    @eldorado: I tried to send that to Cole the first time it came out as a meme, YEARS ago when he was probably still a Republican. Even so, I could tell he was a good guy because my encrypted email kept corrupting the link (I was at my old job) and he’d politely write back and ask me to resend. Thanks for posting that!

  60. 60.

    NCSteve

    The answer to John’s question is the sheets will be silk, the treats will be bacon and the food will smell worse than any living human cold imagine serving their beloved pet.

  63. 63.

    wenchacha

    Well, shizzle. My idea of Heaven would include plenty of comfy couch time. But our girlie didn’t prefer sharing hers. There better be a few extra sofas, is all I’ll say on this.

  65. 65.

    Barney

    @different-church-lady:
    The Onion’s Clickhole seems to have covered this well yesterday, though from an amateur point of view: You Can Either Verify Whether This Inspirational Story Is True Or Share It Now And Reap The Precious Social Capital

    Yes, you could slog through news sites looking for another source to corroborate this amazing story. But by then, one of your friends will probably have already posted this to Facebook, and he will be the one swimming in likes and comments instead of you. You can be the person who is always the first to share amazing stories like this one with your friends, or you can be the person who bumbles around the internet, looking to see if things are true or not.

    Your call.

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