I believe animals have souls, but have no proof for it.
I hope I get all of my pets back someday, that would be awesome.
Animals do reason things out, or they would not be able to hunt, hide, trust. And so they do have free-will to make choices.
Both man and animals have a living soul and the breath of life and a spirit.
I know us Corgi's have souls!
I agree with the above statements. In message #6, I wrote, '
Animals also have a spirit (Heb: ruach). Psalm 104 says about animals:
29 When you hide your face, they are terrified;
when you take away their
ruach, they die and return to the dust.
When you send your
ruach, they are created,
and you renew the face of the earth.
Notice that
God takes away ruach, and sends ruach. It doesn’t say he
destroys ruach; he
takes it.
It doesn’t say he creates ruach; he sends it. Animals have a spirit / ruach as we also see in the episode of the Flood that
ruach is used to refer to the spirit of
all life on earth, both man and animal:
Gen 6:17 I am going to bring floodwaters on the earth to destroy all life under the heavens, every creature that has the
ruach of life in it. Everything on earth will perish.
Now, what happens when a person dies? Is it any different? The answer is no. The ruach / spirit returns to God. We see this in:
Ecclesiastes 12:7
...and the
dust returns to the ground it came from, and the
ruach returns to God who gave it.
Job 34:14-15
If he should take back his
ruach to himself,
and gather to himself his breath,
all flesh would perish together,
and all mortals return to dust.
Edit: Other verses showing that animals have a spirit in them:
Gen 7:15 Pairs of all the animals that have the
ruach of life in them went to Noah in the ark.
Eccl 3:19 For the fate of the sons of men and the fate of beasts is the same; as one dies, so dies the other. They all have the same
ruach, and man has no advantage over the beasts; for all is vanity.