While we're on the topic of religion...

Excellent question Anne, and although I believe I will one day see them again, I had to do a search and I found this:
 
Isa 65:25 5 The wolf and the lamb will feed together, and the lion will eat straw like the ox, but dust will be the serpent's food. They will neither harm nor destroy on all my holy mountain," says the LORD. NIV
 
...but for those who don't believe in any form of religion, does that mean you don't believe in anything like the Rainbow Bridge?

 i dont know what i believe. i would love to think my dog will be waiting for me in some magical place when i die, or that he will be greeted  by other dogs when his time comes,...but i'm too skeptical for that.
 
alot of the time i wish i could just accept snd have faith that there is some sort of higher power or being at work here, but i can't, so i honestly just can't say.

I buy into the cosmic enegry idea.  Matter can neither be created or destroyed, it changes form.  I think all of the religions have it a little bit right and a little bit wrong.  After all if you believe in a supreme being, then the chances of us being able to figure it out as humans is pretty slim.

I am not religious. I am not 100% convinced there is NO afterlife of any kind but I definitely don't believe in a "heaven" per se for humans or animals. It kind of bothers me to say that, though, because I do think the concept of the Rainbow Bridge (not to mention Heaven) can be enormously helpful for people in the grieving process.

When my animals die...they are cremated and I keep their ashes...for my own remembrance. If I buried them their bodies would live a sort of afterlife...nourishing plants and feeding smaller critters, living again as it were...life is a circle. In cremating them I circumvent that, but it is for my own human-ness that I do.
 
Memories, ashes, photos, videos, positive changes in the people they knew because of them just "being"...those are really the things I consider "life after death", not just for my pets either.
 
Rainbow Bridge, doggy Heaven, etc...is a lovely concept/belief, and worthy of respect. Just because I don't believe in it doesn't mean it has any less value or importance to those who do.
 
As to the original question....having no religion I claim as "mine", I cannot answer but to say I find it interesting to see what everyone posts.

"My" religion is, like everything else I subscribe to in life, a mixture of things I have found rang true to my heart. I believe animals and plants are recycled back into the spiritual systems they were a part of when they lived. Kind of like reincarnation, I guess, but different because I don't believe they carry anything of their previous lives with them when they return in a new physical form.

I don't believe people reincarnate. I haven't really thought about dogs. Part of me says they are absorbed back into the spiritual system like other plants and animals, but then I think, is that what they would want? I think maybe they go to some equivalent of dog heaven where they can just be dogs all the time without people trying to make them be people.

I've never really thought about it. But I think that heaven will be diferent for every person and filled with the things we love, so for me I think my pets will be there with me. And there is that verse in Isaiah, so I think some animals must be there.

So where do my dogs go when they die? 

That's a tough one.  I don't believe in a "heaven" per se, but I do believe that spiritual energy never dies.  Life is life, whether it is attached to a body or not.  In my optimistic human belief I would like to think that there is a "better" place where all souls go and feel no pain, no sorrow, no anger.  I really want to believe that I'll be reunited with the animals that I loved, the dogs that ran in my "pack" and the other animal lives that have touched mine.  Perhaps that is how stars and galaxies are formed in the heavens.  The life force that is us and our animal companions energies gather into the most purest form of energy, light.  And this light travels through the universe together with other beams of light, touching the many worlds we come into contact with.  And those peoples that see us in the sky, in the form of constellations, those peoples make up tales about us.  So we live forever in legend.

Perhaps that would be the best epitaph of all.

i dont believe in a heaven or hell, or a supreme being necessarily. but i do think there is some form of afterlife. otherwise, how else could i explain why i think ghosts are real?

My father used to be into astrology, when I was born. In fact, I was planned to be an Aries but got in a hurry. Later, I was baptised a Mormon and ordained as an Aaronic Priest (junior priesthood). My mother became born-again and she would have us studying the Bible, especially during the summer, for upto 10 hours a day. As of consequence, I know the Bible better than some people who have never missed a day of church in their lives. I've studied Zen Buddhism and Quantum Mechanics, which are not that far apart from each other. I am a science geek and I have been visited by dead people. From the impressions they gave me, the afterlife is very much like what you see in the movie "What Things May Come".

My favorite quote comes from a chukchi proverb. The chukchi had the chuckchi dog, aka the Siberian Husky.

How you treat your dogs determines if you get into heaven. If you have treated your dogs well, they await to pull your sled into heaven.

Every being continues through their actions (karma) even after they die. Me, my dogs, a snail, George  W. Bush []. But other than that, no life after death. Or rather, no life, no death (as we mysterious Buddhists say).
 
We do have a very famous riddle though: Does a dog have Buddha nature? The answer is "mu" which is basically Japanese for "negatory" but that doen't mean the answer to the question is "no", and that's what makes it a riddle. It makes my brain hurt which is why I practice a form of Zen in which those riddles aren't so important.

ORIGINAL: houndlove

Every being continues through their actions (karma) even after they die. Me, my dogs, a snail, George  W. Bush []. But other than that, no life after death. Or rather, no life, no death (as we mysterious Buddhists say).

Or perhaps, our dogs will have found enlightenment (or already have found) and will become bodhisattva!

That's what Stanley said when I asked him []

After my dogs die they continue to follow me around, body or no body. I've seen this with other people's dogs, too. So I do know there is an afterlife (my father used to visit me, too) and I have no question of that.

I think the transformation of death is a mystery, and think along the lines of what mrv says. There is a conservation of energy, and spiritual/soul energy is the same as matter, we just haven't quantified it (yet). I think REALITY is too big for our little brains to grok. I don't believe we are capable of understanding it. We'll all find out some day...

...and I do think I'll have some very happy doggy souls waiting to greet me. Wherever it is we go.

I subscribe to the belief that heaven and he** are just states of mind and thus are what you make them. The spirit creates its own reality in essence until reincarnation or whatever else happens. Therefore I know that my dogs will be present with me in whatever afterlife there is.