We are still learning Cocoa's personality and making guesses about her story. We know that she's extremely smart. She uses her "smarts" for both good and bad. The bad generally involves food. She wants Cindy Lou's prescription cat food very badly and will go to great lengths to get it.
Hubby thinks she was tossed out by someone. She was a little thin, but not too much. She also may have run off - she can jump a fence with no problem. There are no Lost Dog signs or calls to the vet or posts in the newspaper.
In the photo above, she has a very serious look on her face. That's how she looks most of the time. She needs to be by the side of one of us. If I'm home, it's me. Most of the dogs prefer hubby. He's more fun. Cocoa and Buddy for some reason, are closest to me.
She is playful when we go for walks. She loves to swim and is often the first in the water. That's only because she's a tad faster than Sadie and Annabelle. In fact, she's faster than any of our dogs. She beats them all at any game of chase. The gazillions of squirrels who lived on our property seem to have realized that things have changed. Most of them have packed their bags and moved to the woods across the street.
She loves to play chase and fetch sticks and balls. The photo above is wild looking. She was really having a good time when I snapped that one.
Mostly, she is very serious about staying close to us. Cocoa may be worried about being left. She wants to be where she can see one of us at all times. She hit the jackpot when she came to our house. We'll spoil her and love on her the rest of her life... as long as she doesn't jump the fence and leave us. So far she's only done that once. She came back and has chosen to stay. The only worry is that she may jump the fence trying to follow us when we leave. We left her in the house when we both had to leave yesterday. That was a risk, but luckily she was good as gold while we were gone.
Cocoa, welcome to the family.