Where a Dog Is the Soul's Best Vehicle

I have always known that dogs are marvelous soul friends and can play a psychopomp role for those traveling beyond death. In my contunuing reserach into conceptions of soul among indigenous people, I came upon a note by a Catholic missionary suggesting that among the Inuit a dog could be not only a soul companion but a soul vehicle for the deceased.

Father Roger Buliard reported from his time among the Copper Inuit (called Eskimos in his day) that they took great care to propitiate the anernek - translated as "breath", soul or spirit - of the animals they hunted so that the caribou, for example, would remain friendly. They were no less solicitous in dealing with the anernek of dead Inuit.

"When a relative dies," Father Buliard reported, the Inuit "give his name quickly to a dog, so that the spirit will have a place to rest until a child is born to inherit it. The anernek is a fleeting thing, easily lost, and every artifice must be brought to bear to prevent its prowling and causing trouble.”

Other interesting revelations in this note (1) the breath soul is closely associated with the name; (2) the clear belief in metempsychosis, that at least one of the multiple souls of a human can occupy successive bodies.

Source: Roger Buliard, Inuk. New York: Farrar, Straus and Young, 1951. pp.264-65.

Illustration: "Esquimaux Dogs" by John James Audubon in The Quadrupeds of North America (1845-1848). Public domain.