How I realized pets DO have souls and deserve funerals similar to us

We sat round an old tree in the churchyard, scattered her ashes and said goodbye. It was a small gathering, just my three boys, my wife and me.

There were a few gentle tears, and we each told a little story about her extraordinary life. We sang All Things Bright And Beautiful, chosen by Jonah, five. His brother Felix, 21, read from the Bible: ‘There is a time for everything, a time to be born and a time to die.’ And this was ­Lumpie’s time.

We had just carried her ashes along the route of her favourite walk and ­dispersed them at the base of a tree. The rain will wash them down to the roots, to be sucked up as nutrients. We will forever know this as Lumpie’s tree.

Lumpie had an extraordinary life. Born in Afghanistan during the war, she was a street dog, living off rubbish tips and begging from houses

Farewell dear friend, companion to our family, playmate to the children, protector of our home. As a vicar, I have taken the funeral of many people but never that of a dog.

A few weeks before, we had taken Lumpie to the vet, where we discovered her cancer had become inoperable. All of a sudden, I was standing on the street with my boys, while my wife was inside holding Lumpie, who was given an injection. Moments later, she was without breath.

It all happened so quickly. We drove to the vets with Lumpie in the back of the car, and returned with her little red collar. Was that it?

Lumpie had an extraordinary life. Born in Afghanistan during the war, she was a street dog, living off rubbish tips and begging from houses.

An Afghan hound, quite literally, but probably a mix of German Shepherd and something more whippet-like: we never really knew. She had floppy ears and big soulful eyes. And looking into them it was impossible not to imagine all the things she had seen.

Dogs are often mistreated in Muslim countries, their saliva being considered ‘haram’, unclean. Kids would sometimes throw stones at them, adults kick them. Winter is freezing, food in short supply.

But fortunately for Lumpie, she was taken in. At first by a German diplomat, which is how she got her strange name – from the same root as Marx’s concept of the ‘Lumpenproletariat’, the beggars and thieves of the underclass. And after the German diplomat left Kabul, by an old friend of mine, the journalist Emma Graham-Harrison.

Somehow, Lumpie made the transition from street dog to family pet. And the boys adored her. Which is why my son Louie, seven, asked for a funeral when she died 

Emma adored Lumpie but also wanted to give her a more secure future. She called me. Her house back in London didn’t really have much of a garden. But our vicarage at ­Elephant and Castle, in South London, did. Would we consider taking Lumpie? We never regretted ­saying yes.

Getting Lumpie back to the UK was quite a thing. She needed a passport and injections. But it was still easier for a dog to get back to the UK than it was for many of the Afghan interpreters who had put their lives in danger supporting the British ­military. That always seemed a travesty.

At Istanbul airport, Lumpie escaped her crate and went for a little saunter around the runway. At one point it looked as if the airport police would have to shoot her, until she found her way into the military part of the airfield where they couldn’t fire. Thankfully, she was recaptured. And arrived here, safe and sound.

Her new life in London was no less adventurous. For years, our garden had become home to a den of foxes. These urban foxes thought they were the toughest things in the neighbourhood. They would swagger about, thinking they owned the place. That was until they met our lightning-quick, canine Mujahideen.

Lumpie was still a street dog at heart and I buried two foxes in that first week. The others never came back. On March 13, 2015, not long after Lumpie joined us, the late Queen attended a service of commemoration to mark the end of combat operations in Afghanistan at St Paul’s Cathedral. At the end of the service, the RAF flew several Chinook helicopters, Hercules and Tornado aircraft over St Paul’s to salute those who had served over there. The flightpath took them straight over our vicarage.

Lumpie was again lying out in the garden as the sky roared with their passing overhead. It was the only time we saw her ­visibly distressed.

In Kabul, she would often hear the thunder of Black Hawk helicopters from the military side of Kabul airport. In her neighbourhood, there were suicide bombings and RPG attacks. Her trauma was an unsettling reminder of the horrors of war – and not just for people.

Though Lumpie never quite made her peace with other four-legged creatures, she was wonderful with children. We were nervous at first – you can take the dog out of Kabul but not Kabul out of the dog.

But we were wrong. Two of our children were born in that vicarage and never once was she anything other than kind and protective, even when the boys would play with her ears or include her in their boisterous games.

Somehow, she made the transition from street dog to family pet. And the boys adored her. Which is why my son Louie, seven, asked for a funeral when she died.

I had never really thought about animal funerals before. I suppose I regarded them as a little odd, a bit like when people dress their animals in bow ties to make them look like mini-humans. Dogs are dogs and people are people.

And pretty much all of the funeral service that I typically use in church focuses on specifically human concerns: sin, our need for forgiveness, our existential fear of death. That’s why we don’t baptise our pets – and why it makes little sense to give them a Christian funeral.

Our family would often joke that Lumpie was the most religiously confused pet in the world. She grew up in a Muslim country responding to Farsi and Pashto commands. Then she arrived in a vicarage where, because my wife is Israeli, we also speak Hebrew.

I would often call Lumpie ­‘Kalbah’, the Hebrew (and Arabic) word for dog. But my son asked for a funeral, and it seemed right to honour that instinct. Sometimes children understand these things on a deeper level than adults.

Many years ago, when I went through the process of being chosen as a priest in the Church of England, I went to a selection conference where one of the tasks was to open an envelope, read aloud a sentence written on a piece of paper inside, then talk on the subject for two minutes. My paper read: ‘No resurrection for dogs. Discuss.’ My thoughts immediately turned to the writings of the philosopher Rene ­Descartes, who famously declared: ‘I think, therefore I am.’

Our family would often joke that Lumpie was the most religiously confused pet in the world. She grew up in a Muslim country responding to Farsi and Pashto commands

Descartes and his followers believed that reason was the essence of human life, and that we did not have any kind of moral obligation to creatures without it. For Descartes, we have as much moral obligation to an animal as we do to any mechanical object, like a clock. Animals, he argued, do not have souls.

I remember thinking this was rubbish then, and I think it’s rubbish now. In the Bible, God creates human life on the same day that he creates animal life. We are all a part of that overarching concept of creation, of life itself.

And one of the most important things that has come out of our increasing concern for the ­natural world is that we recognise we are creatures called to live alongside other very different creatures, in dependence upon each other.

That is what Lumpie’s tree is always going to remind me of. As it says in Psalm 36: ‘God shall save both man and beast alike.’

We estimate she was about 14 when she died. And what a life it was.