I'm unsure of what would be helpful to you at this point, as opposed to sure of what won't be helpful. Have you figured out what kind of contact he's willing to do (e.g. posting on your pup's facebook page, which I imagine you could get real creative with) or what you can expect back from him?

It seems to me that a big piece of this is about the loss of the relationship as it has existed and dealing with the grief related to that. It sounds like you're using strategies to cope with that and I'm curious whether others' ideas about that would be useful to you.