Playing tug-of-war with Buster and Gabby at Folsom Lake, 1995

From my journal, April 2, 1995:

“We got another dog last Tuesday night. She’s a pitbull but doesn’t look like Phoebe. Her coat is very soft and fawn-color. She has a pink nose and yellow eyes. She also has a white blaze on her chest and throat and white on her toes. Buster is so happy to have a dog to play with. He tries to get her to play keep-away, but he doesn’t much like playing tug-of-war because her jaws are too strong.

“[Our friend] Steve found her at work, down near Interstate 80 and El Camino Avenue. She was probably going to end up at the pound, so we decided to drive down and get her late that night. We took Buster along so he wouldn’t get surprised if we showed up with a strange dog. He was so excited to see her!

“She always seems happy, even if her face does look quite worried — unless she’s grinning. She and Buster seem to share things pretty well. She eats out of his dish or one I put next to it, and he does the same. They have the same water dish. she tries to get his toys from him but she knows they’re his. Things change a bit every day as she gets settled in. She’s only been here five days.”

In early April, not long after Gabby first came home with us — and before we’d even decided on a name for her — we took both pups out to Folsom Lake, parking along the road to Peninsula Campground on the South Fork of the American River. It was a beautiful spring day and there was no one around for miles, so we let the dogs off their leashes and let them run and play. This was the sort of trip Buster loved (especially if there was a little bit of fishing involved), and for Gabby it must have been heaven on earth. Not so long before she’d been surviving alone and hungry on street, and now she had fresh air and acres of green grass to play in.

All four of us had a wonderful day at the lake — and Gabby became a very special part of our family for the next 14 years.