I don't know, either, but I like to think they do. Dogs having souls takes nothing from me. Having one does not attest to intelligence, rank or spirituality. It does not violate any known physical laws and it does not infer anything detrimental to belief in one's own soul. A dog having a soul does not compete with me having mine.

Maybe dogs' souls go to dog heaven; that bothers me not, and I do not understand why some people (who mostly have never had dogs) get frothing-at-the-mouth angry at the suggestion. Maybe they feel diminished by admitting animals have souls.

I think one big objection people have to accepting that animals could have souls is that, once accepted, then they could no longer, in good conscience, kill animals for food. No one will discuss that and bringing it up in conversation is guaranteed to end the peace of the moment. The reaction to asking, " would you kill a baby cow and eat it if you knew it had a soul that goes to animal heaven?" would be interesting. Not informative, but interesting.

My high school trigonometry teacher had a sign on the blackboard: "To each his own idea, however uninformed and incorrect it may be."

I always thought it clever because it included everyone.