Dogs are exceedingly vengeful! (but only to non-family members) Commit an offence against a neighborhood dog, Shambles, and see if it soon forgets about it. :-) I have known dogs to wait years to get a chance to bite someone who made fun of them while they were chained up or trapped behind a fence and unable to defend their honor. This goes for other intelligent animals too. They can have surprisingly long memories. As for jealous...man, I have never seen anything more jealous than pet dogs and/or cats who are faced with competition of some kind for food/affection/attention/etc!

Now illness and disease...well, "disease" means "lack of ease" in the body. That's an elegant way to describe illness, I think, and very apt. If one wants to clothe it in spiritual metaphors, what's the problem with that? You can look at it in a materialistic way or you can look at it in an energetic way. Both are valid, and one is the reflection of the other. These things are linked with religion if you think they are...and they're not if you don't. Like everything else. :-) It's up to you. Why fret over the fact that other people find meaning in something which you don't find meaning in?