I am sitting here even wondering what to write. Gotta start somewhere. This morning our Friend Bill came over and brought a generator for us to use. The old one is in the shop. Pete hurried out of the house, it was early. I followed behind then realized I had to get Rainbow out. My timing in grabbing her and grabbing the leash was off. She scooted ahead of me when I opened to door and jumped two feet off the porch.

She landed okay, got back on her feet and then peed and pooped. It was the athlete in her that did it. And my thinking was that this was her way of saying that she was not ready to be euthanized. We have an appointment for this with Dr. Kaiser on

Rainbow on her couch

Saturday. I had thought she was ready and had accepted this fact. But her actions made me think differently.

So now we are in the throes of a dilemma. Do we have her euthanized or do we give her more time? If we give her more time than we have to put our Fairbanks plans on hold. No, we have to cancel these plans. Hard to do when Raudi is doing so well. But I would do it for this dog. Or we could have our friend Bill Schmidtkunz come and tend to her two-three times a day. This would be difficult.

I have no idea what to do. Neither does Pete. I don’t think that either one of us want to cast the deciding vote. What to do? What to do? I say I can’t because I am depressed, which is true. Been this way a while. Can’t seem to shake it. So I am living with what feels like a huge weight around my neck. Pete once remarked that depression is a character flaw – so I can accept the fact that I’m a flawed character.

But the dog, the dog, what to do? We deal differently with dying animals than we do with dying people. When my mother was ill and dying we just sat around and waited for her to go. There was no talk of pulling the plug because there was no plug. It was awful watching her slowly fade away. It is just as hard watching the dog.

For good or bad, we human beings get to decide when it’s time to have animals put down. This is something that other animals aren’t able to do. I think that we are unlucky and they are lucky because making this decision is so difficult.

Jenna made it easy on us. She had a seizure and an hour later she was dead. She was still alive when we took to her the veterinarian’s place. She died on the way there. I sort of knew it – it felt in the car like there was a sense of peace.

Rainbow just isn’t going to go unless she gets a gentle shove. But I am not going to be the one to give her that shove.

Next: 197. 7/20/17: What Gives?