Gabby at Folsom Lake, 1998
I’ve had dogs in my life for as long as I can remember; so it felt incredibly strange to live without a dog around the house for 15 years after our last dog, Buster, died in 2010. It wasn’t until December 2025 that I finally felt ready to bring a new companion into my life, and already I’m wondering how I could have possibly waited so long. I’m also convinced that, in some way, the Big Guy helped guide me to the right dog, an adorable pitbull/Chinese Sharpei mix, as I made a number of visits to the animal shelter, struggling to decide which of the many wonderful dogs there was meant for me. I can’t look at him without remembering Gabby, another lost pitbull who became a much-loved part of our family in 1995. When she passed away in September 2009, I was still a fairly new and rather random blogger, but I really wanted to share how special she was and how much I would miss her. Below is my blog post for Gabby, from October 2009:
I haven’t been here in a long, long time.
There’s plenty to write about — I was especially looking forward to sharing my experiences at this year’s Ride for a Reason in early August. I’ll get around to that eventually, but not today.
What’s been most on my mind lately is the loss of one of my three dogs. Gabby died three weeks ago today, very suddenly. She was an elderly dog, and she had been battling mast cell disease, a type of cancer, for the last three years — but she was doing very well, aside from some arthritis in her joints, and her love of life was as strong as ever.
It’s still a mystery to us exactly what happened. Apparently she ate some foreign material that lodged in her stomach and would not pass. She became more and more uncomfortable and finally completely lost her appetite. By the time we realized what was going on, there was no other option but to let her go. If she had been a younger dog, emergency surgery might have saved her. But because she was at least 13 years old, the risk was too great.
Saying goodbye to her was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do.
One small consolation is the fact that I have hundreds of photos and several videos of her in her healthier, happier days. It’s still hard for me to look at them for very long, but I’m so glad that I have them. And I want to share them here.
I’ve posted pictures of Gabby (and my other two dogs, equally well loved) a few times before. But now I’m going to be posting pictures and some video of Gabby on a regular basis for awhile, in the hope that it will help me through my loss — and for another reason, as well.
Gabby was what’s commonly called a pit bull — you know, those dogs that a lot of sadly misinformed people assume are a vicious, dangerous breed. I hope to show Gabby as a breed representative that was the complete opposite of vicious and dangerous. I could write all day about how wonderful she was (and at some point I probably will add a few words about her fun-loving antics), but I think that photos can sometimes say a lot more and a lot better than words. Especially my words.
So this is for Gabby, one of the best dogs I’ve ever known.
