04/15/13 - 5:29 p.m.

Something odd happened today. My girlfriend told me her friend's dog had cancer, and also a limp. And that made me realize that that's what might have been wrong with our dog back in November. Not just the limp; that limp may have been a symptom of an even bigger underlying illness.

I know it sounds like I'm thinking too much about this, but it actually makes me feel a lot better. We'd given him a pill called Rimadyl, which I've been blaming for his death, based on some comments I'd seen on the internet. But if our dog had a serious illness, then he could've just died of natural causes. And just the possibility of that helps me to let go of my angst around the pill.

He died of natural causes, because it was his time. That's a better thing to meditate on...