Cuernavaca, Mexico - Do animals have souls? This is just one of many spiritual questions that have caused much controversy for hundreds of years.

Animal lovers will swear their pets are intelligent, can communicate with them, and love them unconditionally - I'm one of those.

Others feel animals are just that - animals.

Recently, in Mexico, a pack of stray dogs did something that seems to show they do have some kind of knowing, intelligence, and heart.

When Margarita Suarez, a 71-year-old animal lover from Merida Yucatan, Mexico, passed away, her daughter Patricia Urrutia held her funeral in Cuernavaca Morelos, Mexico.

While living in Merida Yucatan, Suarez had cared for stray dogs her whole life.

As the family sat around the woman's casket in silence, a pack of stray dogs filed in and laid down around Suarez's body, and remained there the entire day.

The curious thing is, these weren't the dogs Suarez normally cared for. They were more than 800 miles away in her own hometown.

Urrutia told ABC News reporters that the dogs stayed near the casket all day and night. In the morning, all but one dog had left. However, an hour before Suarez was to be taken to the crematorium, the dogs returned "as if to say good bye."

Funeral home staff confirmed that the dogs do not normally hang around the funeral home and they had never seen anything like it.

Why would these dogs wander into a funeral home while family members were grieving for their loved one - an animal lover? I've always been of the mind that animals know which humans like them and which ones don't. I also think animals can distinguish between good people and people who are not so kind.

That being said, did these dogs sense Suarez's spirit and understand that she cared for canine's when she was alive?

Had they come to pay respects to a kindred spirit?

Sharon O'Brien, a pet psychic who appeared on Paradelphia on April 2, said one reason these dogs came to Suarez's funeral could be because of their sensitivity to our energy.

"It's such a validation of the bond that we form," O'Brien said. "She was kind to dogs and they could sense that."

She explained that animals connect to energy, so when Suarez passed, the dogs reacted on a totally different level than people do.

"There have been studies that show that animals can see different parts of the spectrum, so who's to say what they are seeing," O'Brien said. "And the energy connection is so much purer than our connection. Animals are pure energy and they want to have that bond. She acknowledged that bond and they related on that level."

Whatever it was that brought he canine caravan to the ceremony, Suarez's daughter said their presence helped to get her through the day.

Kelly Roncace is senior investigator with Jersey Unique Minds Paranormal Society, a professional paranormal investigation team based in Salem County. Contact Kelly at kroncace(at)southjerseymedia.com.