Cora

By 12:30 on a sunny Saturday all the dogs had been on volunteer walks, so I just went looking for whoever seemed especially cute. Cora won by a landslide. She is a retriever / pit bull mix, about two years old and has a non stop tail. As I opened her back door to put on the collar, I noticed her sweet quiet temperament. Though her back door was open, she just stood still waiting for me to get her collar secured while her tail slowly flopped back and forth.

Once we were outside we went immediately to the open desert area since the exercise yard was occupied. Cora is all muscle and, thankfully, also wonderful on the leash; no pulling at all. In fact she is so compliant she seems to wait to see where you want to go, then happily trots along. I typically like to do obedience at the beginning of the walk in the exercise yard but on Saturday I had to check her out on the trail. Cora is so eager to please she did just fine, easily sitting and going down on command while on our walk.

We had an extra long walk, by midway we had made it out to near Route 27 where the main path goes around one of many rock outcroppings then gets confusing. Many of you know where I'm going with this, I can get lost ANYWHERE. I figured we would walk down to 27 and see if the sidewalk continued this far north. It did not. I was not about to take Cora near a busy road with no sidewalk so we turned around and I assumed with her sense of smell, she could get us to the main path we used earlier. Cora, being the sweet and compliant dog I now knew she was, waited for me to indicate where I wanted to go. Not a good idea. I had my phone, I could always call someone at the shelter to come out but as a last ditch idea, I gave Cora the equivalent of a "giddiup", actually an enthusiastic "let's go". She took the lead and got us directly back onto the right path. On the way back to the shelter one of the roads has a waist high gate across it; Cora walked up to it, stopped then turned around and looked at me. She is such a tuned in, considerate dog, I think she was waiting to see if I wanted to go under it or have both of us walk around it.

Once we were near the shelter, the exercise yard was free so we ended our outing with fetch. She is very good at it. Cora seems to be endowed with great people skills, however according to her profile she also likes other dogs and cats. She is going to make someone a wonderful companion.