The Soul of a Dog

The emergence of biologically modern humans, as best we can determine from DNA studies and the fossil record, occurred some 300,000 years ago. Cultural artifacts, tools and art, developed perhaps 60,000 years ago. Yet for the majority of our time on this planet, Homo sapiens differed little from other complex primates, small in numbers, modestly shaping our local environment.

All that changed roughly 30,000 years ago, when our species formed an alliance, a symbiosis, with another well-adapted predator, the grey wolf. Thus was birthed the dog, and the miracle of domestication. Before we herded sheep, before we rode horses, before the agricultural revolution, human beings loved and raised and lived with dogs.

I used to like to think that domestication of the dog was the one unalloyed good that humanity had managed to accomplish. Yet more recent studies indicate that we didn’t tame them; they chose to interact with us. Certain wolves soon discovered that following bands of hunter-gatherers provided a reliable source of food. And we realized shortly thereafter that canine senses and celerity greatly enhanced our own survivability.

A dog is a wolf who has learned to live with people. Technically, they’re still a single species, as wolves and dogs can interbreed, producing viable offspring. Still, it’s hard to look at a St Bernard beside a Chihuahua and imagine them as one and the same beastie.

Dogs are our window into the natural world. They give us a glimpse of life, of consciousness, beyond our own limitations. For many of us, the loss of a dog was the first time that we mourned. Who could live with such faithful companions and then fail to affirm that they have emotions, personalities, awareness, and love? In short, who could deny that animals have souls?

That might sound heretical coming from a Christian cleric, but in fact it’s quite traditional. We often treat “soul” as synonymous with the spirit or the mind, which are not the same. But at root “soul” simply means “life”—life in a broad sense, a spiritual sense. Classical and medieval understanding speaks of three sorts of souls: the vegetative, the sensitive, and the rational.

The vegetative soul resides in anything that grows and lives: in trees, in grasses, in moss. The sensitive soul abides in animals that perceive, experience, and respond to the environment around them. And the rational soul pertains to creatures with a higher awareness—to persons, angelic and human—who understand abstraction, reason, transcendence, and morality.

Thus a dog has a soul, just not a rational one. This in no way diminishes nor demeans their personalities, their emotions, their experiences. Rather, it simply means that they don’t know right from wrong; they aren’t responsible. There is really no such thing as a bad dog. Dogs behave based on instinct and training. Only their masters are good or bad. If a someone trains a dog to kill, for example, the dog is not guilty of murder, only the man.

Nor does a dog sit around fretting about its purpose, or the great weight of the brokenness of our world. Given safety and affection, a dog is simply happy to be a dog. In this too they teach us.

One of the great folk saints of medieval France was Guinefort, patron of the health and protection of children, with a much beloved and frequented shrine near Lyon. Guinefort, mind you, was a greyhound. As the story goes, echoing ancient fables, a knight and his lady one day found their infant’s room torn apart, the child missing, and the family hound stained with blood. Horrified, in grief and in panic, they killed the dog, thinking that it had eaten their son.

Lo and behold, a quick search of the disheveled room uncovered not only the child resting soundly, hale and whole, but also the mangled remains of a viper, which the canine had killed in order to protect the child. Stricken with guilt, the knight and lady buried the dog in a well, which they then covered in stones. Trees were planted around the well, producing a sacred grove, to which peasants in centuries to come would bring their sick children, praying for the intercession of St Guinefort the Greyhound.

Ecclesiastical authorities attempted to suppress local devotion to the faithful canine saint, apparently imagining that a sacred dog made mockery of the Church’s institutions. This I consider to have been a grave error. Christianity has always taught the salvation of the world, not simply of humankind but of the entirety of Creation. The witness of Scripture, from the Prophets through the Psalms to Job, testifies to God’s love for man and beast alike.

We must recall this elder, fuller understanding of our place within Creation: separated from the natural world, from animals and plants, more by degree than by kind. In Christ, humans again become the King and High Priest of the cosmos, leading all things to salvation, uniting the universe to God in the person of Jesus Christ. Why shouldn’t a dog be a saint? Dare we think that our species alone possesses the promise of eternity in God? How dreary would be Heaven without a dog!

Remember that Wisdom is Oneness: oneness with one another; one in our interdependence, our mutual contingency; one in our reliance upon the Lord. And one way to recall this, in humility and delight, is to remember St Guinefort, commemorated 22 August, as a true and worthy holy dog, who loves and does not judge.

In Jesus. Amen.

By: Reverend Sir Knight Ryan Stout