Man goes through divorce, keeps dog; road trips and has his wallet stolen, keeps dog; man drives into an empty field to Live Deliberately (more or less), keeps dog. 
 It's clumsily sweet and a little heavy-handed, but this opinion may be because I'm not a dog person? Jordan Crane's The Last Lonely Saturday is a much better example of this type of thing, though that one didn't have a dog and maybe isn't all that similar, but I sure liked it better than this. 
 [To be filed under Reviews comma Useless]