‘Pawprints on my heart’: When bonding with a pet becomes a religious experience

James Taylor is a prominent Canadian theologian who has written 15 books on faith and grief, taught religion at several colleges and been the recipient of an honorary Doctor of Divinity degree. But one of his greatest spiritual teachers was a companion who liked to chase ducks and steal Taylor’s underwear — and whose most prestigious award was being honored by a local newspaper as its Pet of the Week. His friend was “Brick,” a high-spirited, purebred Irish Setter that Taylor rescued with his wife, Joan. During Brick’s first night in his new home, he managed to topple Taylor’s border lamp, scatter his glasses and sweep his alarm clock off a nightstand. When Taylor awakened the next morning he discovered Brick slumbering, with one hind leg sticking up through a lampshade. Over time, though, Brick proved to be a rock. He stood by Taylor’s side when he was ill and loved him no matter what. Taylor says the depth of feelings he gradually developed for Brick showed him that some of the most profound moments in life — falling hopelessly in love; feeling a newborn’s baby’s hand close around your finger; watching a daughter walk down a wedding aisle — could not be captured by sermons. “My father was a minister, so I grew up in a world of words,” Taylor says. “I thought wisdom came to me by the words that I read in the Bible or a book on theology. The thing that animals taught me is that God doesn’t speak to us just in words but in our experiences. God reaches us through our experiences, and animals are a part of that experience.” Many books and studies in recent years have explored why so many people are leaving organized religion. But few scholars have explored another trend: The growing number of people who’ve found that bonding with their pets becomes a spiritual experience. We are in the middle of the Great Pet Awakening — a surge of people who say that owning a pet is a religious experience. In a post-pandemic era when many people still live in isolation, more pet owners are saying their furry friends are not mere companions. They are “partners in a spiritual journey,” according to David Michie, an author and Buddhist commentator. This awakening is due in part to math. Pet ownership in the US has risen over the past 30 years. At least 66% of Americans say they own a pet, up from 56% in 1988. Virtually all people consider their pets members of the family. The other reason for this trend is more intangible. More people are publicly sharing how owning a pet led them to develop spiritual habits traditionally taught by religion. Pets, they say, teach them about forgiveness and the importance of fellowshipping with others. Pets also embody grace — they accept humans as they are. What happens to our pets when they die? Pets also prompt many of their owners to confront a heavy theological question: Does Fido have a soul? It’s common for pet owners to ask online forums what happens to their pets when they die. That curiosity has spawned a new literary genre: pet psychics who assure people that yes, “some angels choose furs over feathers.” Books such as “Yes, Pets Do Go to Heaven” and “The Amazing Afterlife of Animals” assure people that their departed now frolic in celestial meadows. Some psychics offer pet owners even more consolation: a chance to hear personalized messages from their pets in the Great Beyond. Matt Fraser, a psychic medium and author of “We Never Die: Secrets of the Afterlife,” says he offers a spiritual connection between people and pets. It turns out that pets have a lot to say. Fraser holds seances to help people connect with the spirits of their loved ones. He says it’s not unusual for pets to break through his sessions with humans to communicate with their former owners. Fraser, who starred in a reality show called “Meet the Frasers,” says he believes some pets in the afterlife find other ways to communicate with their former owners in the physical world. “So next time you hear a faint bark, see a toy where it doesn’t belong, or feel a warm, familiar presence by your side, take it as a sign—your spirit pet is saying hello,” Fraser wrote in one essay. Some people mourn more over the passing of their pets than their relatives, Fraser tells CNN. “Nobody really understands how these animals really grow on you, how much you love them until it’s too deep,” says Fraser, who owns three Bengal cats. “When we lose them, people grieve and say, ‘God, I never expected to grieve so hard.’ ” It opens up a whole different side of your heart, just like children do.” Links between pets and religion go back centuries If a pet psychic sounds like too much, consider this: Animals have been considered conduits to the spiritual world through much of human history. Ancient Egyptians treated cats as divine symbols and thought they provided companionship to their masters in the afterlife (many were buried with them in tombs). Many ancient religions believed animals functioned as “spirit guides,” appearing to human beings in dreams and daily life to offer wisdom and guidance. Have you ever heard a person say they saw a red cardinal after someone close to them died? The cardinal is popularly viewed as a spirit guide. The connection between pets and spirituality is not limited to one religion. A Pew Research Center poll released last month revealed that a majority of adults in Muslim, Christian, Hindu and Jewish countries believe that animals can have spirits or spiritual energies. No less of a spiritual authority than the late Pope Francis said there’s a place for pets in paradise. While comforting a boy whose dog died, Francis told him: “One day, we will see our animals again in the eternity of Christ. Paradise is open to all creatures.” Another revered spiritual leader, Mahatma Gandhi, also believed that animals are sacred. “To my mind, the life of a lamb is no less precious than that of a human being,” said the nonviolent activist who helped lead India to independence from England in 1947. “I hold that the more helpless a creature, the more entitled it is to protection from the cruelty of man.” Pets can help their owners to heal There are times, though, that pets owners feel helpless. That’s when many of them say having a pet deepens their spirituality. The faith of Taylor, the author and minister, was tested by a cruel succession of personal losses. His son, Stephen, died at 21 from cystic fibrosis. He watched Non-Hodgkin lymphoma destroy his mother’s body. He saw his then 93-year-old father — a minister with three honorary divinity degrees — struggle with pain in his final days. When Taylor asked his father which hymns and Scriptures he wanted read at his memorial service, his father said, “I don’t care. I won’t be there.” At one point, Taylor was no longer sure he believed in life after death. Yet Brick had a way of sensing his mood and comforting him, Taylor says. He recalls what happened once when he fell ill. “I went and sprawled on my couch, feeling sorry for myself,” Taylor tells CNN. “And for the first time, Brick jumped on the couch and curled up against me. He recognized that I was in pain and suffering. It wasn’t just enough to lick my face.” Companions like Brick provide what God also promises, Taylor wrote in “The Spirituality of Pets,” a book that explores the link between pets and faith. “Pets probably come as close to giving and receiving unconditional love as we can come in this flawed world,” he wrote. Pets also can provide healing, some owners say. This claim is backed up by science. Owning a pet can lower a person’s blood pressure and the release of cortisol, a stress-related hormone. Among people who suffer strokes, pet owners live longer than those without animal companions. Service dogs can sense oncoming seizures in their owners, while some say cats can recognize the presence of cancer. Pets can heal psychological scars as well. Some prisons allow inmates to adopt pets. The experience of caring for another living creature has been found to soften inmates’ anger, allowing some to experience warmth and affection for the first time in their lives. A growing number of churches now recognize the spiritual dimension to pet ownership. Many offer blessing ceremonies for pets and others have turned church grounds into dog parks to attract new members. Some Christians have created ministries such as Canines for Christ, which provides dogs to patients at children’s hospitals, nursing homes and hospice facilities. Unlike people, pets don’t judge. Taylor tells a story in his book about a service dog who was escorted into a hospital room, looked past the burn-scarred face of the patient and “with the wag of its tail,” conveyed to the man, ‘I love you.’” Pets teach us how to confront our mortality Pets also can help their owners confront the ultimate mystery of life that religion addresses: how to make peace with one’s mortality. Pets don’t tend to live as long as their owners. For some children, losing a pet is their first exposure to death. For some adults, watching a pet die illuminates their spiritual beliefs. That’s what happened to Scott Dill. He and his wife, Tara, are longtime dog lovers. One of their favorites was “Socks,” a black-and-white Shih Tzu rescue. They clicked with Socks right from the beginning. He had a placid temperament and immediately allowed their two daughters, Hyland and Lydia, to walk him by leash. He wasn’t aggressive with other dogs. He liked people. “He was super chill,” says Dill, director of spiritual growth at Crossroads Community Church in Cincinnati, Ohio. “A squirrel could have walked over his head, and he wouldn’t have paid attention.” After about a decade, Dill noticed a change in Socks. He lost weight, suffered panic attacks and would abruptly stop and stare into corners. Dill took him to the vet. The diagnosis was a brain tumor. Dill and his family reluctantly decided to euthanize Socks to prevent more suffering. The entire experience — Socks quietly sitting in Tara’s lap as they rode to the vet; watching the vet administer a sedative to a calm Socks; touching Socks as he quietly took his last breath — became a religious epiphany for Dill. Christians preach that God loved humanity so much that he sacrificed his son to display that love. Dill knows the Scriptures that commemorate that sacrifice. But the emotional weight of giving up Socks made him feel those scriptures in a new way. Dill shared this experience in an essay entitled, “We Put Our Dog Down and Saw God.” He wrote that his loss showed him how much God must have hurt when He gave up His Son. “Through the pain of this loss, God has lovingly reminded me of the incalculable weight of his rescue,” Dill wrote. “I got a clearer picture of that cost. The cost of love.” After Socks died, Dill says his family carried the dog’s body home and buried him in their backyard. They said a short prayer over his grave, thanking God for Socks’ life. They erected a gravestone that stands today as a reminder of their loss. “Even though it was the right decision to put him down,” Dill tells CNN, “there’s just something surreal about being able to choose whether a creature should live or die.” Meeting our departed pets on the ‘Rainbow Bridge’ Taylor had to face the same choice with Brick. When Brick was about eight, he started to decline. He struggled to get to his feet while getting out of bed. He stumbled going downstairs. When Taylor took him for walks, Brick’s trot turned into a plod. “I recognized all these symptoms because I have them myself,” Taylor wrote in his book about pets. Taylor took Brick to the vet. Surgery followed, but the operation revealed a litany of maladies that had damaged the dog’s internal organs. His decline accelerated. Despite the pain Brick experienced as he hobbled around the house, he never forgot he was housebroken, never whimpered in self-pity or snapped in anger, Taylor says. Brick’s condition eventually became irreversible. When he turned 11, old for a dog, his legs stopped working properly. Taylor and his wife decided to take Brick to a vet so he wouldn’t suffer anymore. That same day, Taylor says, something remarkable happened. “Here’s this dog who can barely get onto his feet — but he raided our laundry basket,” Taylor tells CNN. “He did what he loved to do, which was to pull my underwear from the basket and go hide it in the house. He wanted to play, to challenge us and wanted us to laugh in those hours and not go around weeping.” Does Taylor believe he will see Brick again in the afterlife? Taylor is no pet psychic, but he says he’s starting to believe animals have souls. He recalls standing next to a friend’s poodle who was being euthanized and “feeling as something was leaving” the moment the dog died. Where that pet may have gone is a place that Taylor calls the “Rainbow Bridge.” It’s a widely circulated poem for pet owners from an anonymous author that depicts animals romping in a lush celestial meadow where they will eventually reunite with their owners. In one variation of the poem, a writer declares her dog’s pawprints will “be on my heart forever.” “It’s very moving because it acknowledges that heaven — whatever heaven is — is not just limited to people,” Taylor says. “Anyone we love, including a turtle that has lived 90 years, has value that cannot be limited by its physical presence.” In death, Brick left Taylor one final lesson. “I’m learning from him (Brick) that everything, in the end, boils down to relationships,” Taylor says. “Brick had no possessions. He was never elected leader of the pack. But he had wonderful relationships. He died knowing he was deeply loved. “I couldn’t ask any more for myself.” John Blake is a CNN senior writer and author of  the award-winning memoir, “More Than I Imagined: What a Black Man Discovered About the White Mother He Never Knew.”