Poll supports pets in heaven

Los Angeles - An ABCNews/Beliefnet poll reveals that 43 percentof Americans believe pets are heaven-bound (40 percent do not, 17 percentwere unsure.)

This afterlife statistic supports evidence author Scott S. Smith collectedfor his book, "The Soul of Your Pet: Evidence for the Survival of AnimalsAfter Death."

"Both believers and skeptics seem unaware that human encounterswith ghosts of deceased animals are commonplace," Smith claims. "Itis far more than a matter of personal opinion because these experiencesoccur in circumstances that make them hard to dismiss as hallucinations,"he says.

Among the 125 reports in the book is that of a respected veterinarianwho treated an ill horse and then advised the owners to separate it fromthe apparently healthy white horse in the same corral. The owners told theDVM they could see no white horse, but that one of that precise descriptionat the corral had died a few months earlier.