Well, I don't know about any "after life" as far as bouncing among clouds or the like is concerned, nor would I hazard to make any assertions about 'em. I personally think a lot of the assertions made by various faiths concerning such are pure-dee pie-in-the-sky bunkum and snake oil, such as the woefully mis-translated promises of Muslim virgins and so on. I don't play the harp and have no desire to learn--I'd prefer hell for the company and heaven for the climate, but I don't think either of these environments are anything more than speculative metaphors.

But in more concrete terms the puzzle of knowing what a dog thinks is an interesting one. From our own experience in trying to communicate I think most any of us is familiar with the state of having a huge array of impressions, conclusions, speculations, insights and feelings that are woven around some moment or subject and about which the prospect of communicating it all seems overwhelming, or at least extraordinarily difficult, the subtleties of our internal landscape being so difficult to cram into ordinary language.

The possibility exists that dogs are in a similar quandary relating to humans, especially constrained by such different vocal equipment, such different sensory emphases, and such different instinctual inputs. Who knows what their internal horizons look like? It's a good bet they HAVE such horizons and visualizations--anyone who has seen a dog chasing a rabbit in his sleep would likely conclude dreaming is in progress. But what are the colors of the subtle smells? What are the shapes in a world where every blade of grass can have a different signature and there are no verbal safeguards to lump things together?

It is possible then that like ourselves at some moments a dog's behavioural array of gestures and sounds is the narrow end of a very long funnel(if that is the right word) which is fed by a huge array of "mental" scapes and energies, much too large to fit through the funnel in any coherent way.