Does my dog have a soul?
Answer: You may be surprised that the answer is "yes". If the answer is "no", what leaves when the animal dies?
The Hebrew word for soul is "nephesh" which means "a breathing creature."
When you go to a funeral and view the corpse of a deceased person, it is apparent that the life is no longer in the body. Nowhere is it more obvious that the body is merely the dwelling place of the soul. The soul is the life.
The soul is made up of five sense faculties, just as the body has five senses. The access points to the soul are the affections, reason, conscience, memory, and imagination. These are present in the animal world as well as in mankind. That is because animals have souls.
In Matthew 6:22 Jesus says, "The light of the body is the eye..." And it has been rightly stated that "the eye is the window to the soul." When you look into a person's eyes (or your dogs for that matter) you see life. When a living creature dies, the light goes out. The soul has left the building, so to speak.
The difference in a human and an animal is that man has a spirit in addition to his soul. It is through the spirit that man has his God-consciousness. It is the spirit that is regenerated in the "born-again" experience (John 3:3-7). Which brings us to the next natural question...are there dogs in heaven?
There are no specific references to dogs, but I do know from scripture that there are animals in heaven (Revelation 19:11, 14, 21; Zechariah 1:8, 10; 6:1-5; 2 Kings 2:11; 6:17).