This resonates especially with me because my elderly English pointer Sam has been really clingy the last few days. He’s already lived well beyond his expected lifespan, and while he doesn’t have any acute health issues, he has several chronic ones including chronic pain, and I’m worried his time might be near.

The hole his departure will leave will be dark and painful and difficult to deal with.

I was upset to read the sort of zero-sum arguments people made in defense of Francis’s position. A respected Jesuit magazine even editorialized that "If we treat dogs like people, soon we will be treating people like dogs."

I thought Jesuits were smarter than that. Love is not subtractive. It’s not even additive. It’s exponential.

Increasing the sum total of love in the world makes life better for all of us, including the animals we love.