Will there be pets in heaven?

I am winding down toward the end of Scot McKnight's book 'The Heaven Promise.' Chapter 24 is "Will There Be Pets in Heaven? What God Creates God Perfects."

This was another short chapter, but a little surprising in many respects. I'd never given much thought to pets in heaven, and this makes sense to me.

Scot shares the words of Rich Mouw, who gave the following response to his son, after hearing it first from his own mother when he was young: "Well, dogs don't have souls, you see. But anything is possible with God. He will do what is best for us."

Mouw asks a great question:

"Why do we assume only things with 'souls' will participate in the New Age [Heaven]?"

Mouw also suggested reading Isaiah 11:6-8 - the Bible's first glimpse of God's promise of a utopian, final Heaven. Let this sink in:

The wolf will live with the lamb,

the leopard will lie down with the goat,

the calf and the lion and the yearling together;

and a little child will lead them.

The cow will feed with the bear,

their young will lie down together,

and the lion will eat straw like the ox.

The infant will play near the cobra's den,

the young child will put its hand into the viper's nest.

This is McKnight's conclusion:
"Here is one of the big ideas about Heaven: what God makes God perfects, and what God has made in this world will be perfected in the kingdom of God."

Alrighty then.