For the first time ever, I guess, I bailed on agility all week. I didn’t stop at the field to practice. I did no weave poles or contacts in the driveway. We’re on a hiatus from Dirt Nite for a few weeks. I’m not going to practice on the way out to work today. I just want to spend that extra little bit of time around the house with Timmy. He seems to be perkier in the morning so maybe it helps him if me and the other dogs are around for just a few minutes longer before we drive out to work. Not sure. But that’s just how we’re playing it this week. It sort of creeps me out, like what is my next phase in all this? Like then I have to start canceling work and not leaving the house and dragging Timmy around in a baby stroller and never get out of my bathrobe and stacking newspapers in towers all around my house? Whispering to strangers the life story of Timmy, Best Dog, with a sort of glazed over look in my eyes?

I think I might be playing mental voodoo roulette about him. Like if I leave 25 minutes later for work, when I get home tonight he will be 67% better! If I skip agility practice, he will notice and be so thankful that he will be able to walk and see the stairs he is about to fall down. If he spends an additional 15 minutes around the other dogs, he will be revived to a more youthful status, say that of 3 weeks ago. This is probably not a healthy way of thinking. Is probably sort of grasping at straws. Apparently I am at the graspy stage of dealing with the future of not having Timmy, a future that just seems so very sad. Is sort of like when you are driving, and you think for a moment, death is the best thing for him. His quality of life is very low, he doesn’t do anything he used to enjoy. It is time. I am OK with this. And then, in a blazing second later, as soon as you think I am OK with this, then you think, I am Not OK with this. I am not going to end the life of him if he wants to have some more life even if it is a peeing on the floor and dancing around in the puddle kind of life then running top speed across the kitchen floor and crashing into a wall. Then unable to walk 5 minutes later faster than a drunken shuffle like an old guy sitting in front of the Vets Hall with a cold one in a brown bag. Who drops the beer and starts to yell to no one in particular about something incomprehensible but possibly involving South American rodents. Little dribblets of saliva all over his chin.

Like yeah. He is crazy. He is a mess. But really. He used to be someone else, and he’s still here, and maybe we need to just let him hang on a little bit longer. Because no one is talking about euthanizing the drunk guy in front of the Vets Hall. All the old folks we visit in the old folks home, they aren’t who they used to be. But we let them go on and live out their lives, even if they are sort of weird and crappy lives that really suck compared to who they used to be. This is not Logan’s Run. Remember? Farrah Fawcett is in that. And at the very end, instead of everyone dying before they get old, they find out they actually get to live to become old homeless guys sitting in front of the Vets Hall with a beer. I think the sun comes up on their Logan’s Run future city like it’s a new day. It’s just a new day that someday is going to really, really suck.