{"id":150,"date":"2007-03-19T12:45:00","date_gmt":"2007-03-19T12:45:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/beyondblue\/2007\/03\/holy-dog.html"},"modified":"2007-03-19T12:45:00","modified_gmt":"2007-03-19T12:45:00","slug":"holy-dog","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/2007\/03\/holy-dog.html","title":{"rendered":"Holy Dog?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Back when Mike Leach and I were compiling &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/exec\/obidos\/ASIN\/0385508069\/beliefnet\">I Like Being Catholic<\/a>,&#8221; I remember reading a prospective essay by a man who claimed his dog had led him to God. I immediately placed it in the &#8220;reject&#8221; pile because I thought it was, um, weird. <\/p>\n<p>But now, seeing all the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/index\/index_614.html\">different inspirational stories, features, polls, and prayer circles about pets on Beliefnet.com<\/a>, and guessing that &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/exec\/obidos\/ASIN\/0091819466\/beliefnet\">Chicken Soup of the Pet Lover&#8217;s Soul<\/a>&#8221; probably sold twenty times more copies than our Catholic book, I realize this dog-loving man was on to something.<\/p>\n<p>What do you think&#8230;. Does your dog or cat improve your mood? Lead you to God?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Back when Mike Leach and I were compiling &#8220;I Like Being Catholic,&#8221; I remember reading a prospective essay by a man who claimed his dog had led him to God. I immediately placed it in the &#8220;reject&#8221; pile because I thought it was, um, weird. But now, seeing all the different inspirational stories, features, polls,&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-150","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mental-health"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Holy Dog? - Beyond Blue<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/2007\/03\/holy-dog.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Holy Dog? - Beyond Blue\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Back when Mike Leach and I were compiling &#8220;I Like Being Catholic,&#8221; I remember reading a prospective essay by a man who claimed his dog had led him to God. I immediately placed it in the &#8220;reject&#8221; pile because I thought it was, um, weird. But now, seeing all the different inspirational stories, features, polls,&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/2007\/03\/holy-dog.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Beyond Blue\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2007-03-19T12:45:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Beyond Blue\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Holy Dog? - Beyond Blue","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/2007\/03\/holy-dog.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Holy Dog? - Beyond Blue","og_description":"Back when Mike Leach and I were compiling &#8220;I Like Being Catholic,&#8221; I remember reading a prospective essay by a man who claimed his dog had led him to God. I immediately placed it in the &#8220;reject&#8221; pile because I thought it was, um, weird. But now, seeing all the different inspirational stories, features, polls,&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/2007\/03\/holy-dog.html","og_site_name":"Beyond Blue","article_published_time":"2007-03-19T12:45:00+00:00","author":"Beyond Blue","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/2007\/03\/holy-dog.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/2007\/03\/holy-dog.html","name":"Holy Dog? - Beyond Blue","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/#website"},"datePublished":"2007-03-19T12:45:00+00:00","dateModified":"2007-03-19T12:45:00+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/#\/schema\/person\/9a07cb215ebbbdc185d2b2a55131e7a2"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/2007\/03\/holy-dog.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/2007\/03\/holy-dog.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/2007\/03\/holy-dog.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Holy Dog?"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/","name":"Beyond Blue","description":"Beliefnet Voices - Therese J. Borchard","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/#\/schema\/person\/9a07cb215ebbbdc185d2b2a55131e7a2","name":"Beyond Blue","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/402\/402821b1a7d57eb8e3888da97f18b37fx96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/402\/402821b1a7d57eb8e3888da97f18b37fx96.jpg","caption":"Beyond Blue"},"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/author\/beyondblue"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=150"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=150"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=150"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=150"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}