Three months after it happened, Oprah Winfrey says she is still anguished over the freakish death of one of her dogs — but believes it happened for a reason.

And the media mogul believes that the reason was to caution her to slow down, not work so hard and enjoy life.

 “I don't believe in accidents. I know for sure that everything in life happens to help us live,” Winfrey writes in the August issue of O, The Oprah Magazine.

Winfrey, who was voted World's Best Celebrity Dog Owner in 2006, said Gracie, one of her three Golden Retrievers, choked to death while playing with a small “light-up” ball that belonged to one of her smaller dogs.

Winfrey had five dogs and, reportedly, employs several nannies to oversee them. Gracie, who had appeared twice on the cover of Oprah’s magazine, was on a walk with a caretaker when the accident took place. Attempts by a member of her security force to resuscitate the dog were unsuccessful.

"Weeks have passed," she writes. “And the pain has not subsided. Every time I think about it, my heart starts racing and I feel like I just got stabbed in the chest."

Despite the pain, Gracie's death was intended to send her a message, Winfrey wrote: "Slow down, you're moving too fast."

 “Her life was a gift to me," Winfrey writes. "Her death, a greater one.”

I don't entirely follow her logic -- how she gets from point A to point B. The death of her dog is a message to take better care of herself? It seems to me it would be a message to take better care of your dogs, or don't let large dogs play with small balls, or don't let your staff let your large dogs play with small balls.

Maybe it will make more sense to you. You can read Oprah's full account here.