Meet Mia

There are barely any words to describe her cuteness, so I'll just let you look at that photo for a bit.


Done?  No?  I'll wait.


Ready now?


Ok, let's get started.  This is Mia and she's the new little fur-friend wandering our house and yard.  Mia came into our foster group this past May and was fostered by another volunteer.  In September she found what she thought was her forever home. Unfortunately, the family wasn't the right fit--they had two small children and while the mother was home during the day, she had difficulty with training and couldn't figure out how to help Mia behave on her leash.  They lived in an apartment complex with a lot of other dogs and Mia couldn't quite figure out how to play with them since a lot of the smaller dogs were afraid of her.  So the family made the decision to put her back in foster care until her for real forever home is ready for her.

Dave picked up Mia from her temporary family on Wednesday and brought her to our home.  She was great in the car--in fact she loves car rides.  She came with Dave to train station to pick my up last night and I didn't even realize she was in the back seat until a cold wet nose met my arm and then she licked my hand.

A boxer/pit bull mix (just like our sweet Chiquita) and almost 2 years old, she is of course very smart and very loving.  She basically just wants to be near her people and is curious about everything going on around her.  When I got home, she just leaned up against me while I leaned over and pet her.  Much to my surprise I got my first kiss right on the mouth when she popped up and licked me. (Really--my first kiss!  We've always been pretty good about not letting the dogs lick our faces since we don't want to encourage those habits if their forever home doesn't want that.)  While she's highly food motivated which will make for great training, she was by my side while I prepared dinner.  Not in an annoying "please feed me what your making" way, but more like a "Whatchya doin'? Are you going to pet me and love me and pet me some more?" kind of way.

She's crate trained (although she was a little whiny when we shut out the lights and went to bed last night, she calmed down after a few minutes), house trained, and knows some basic commands.  She needs some impulse control training and to learn a little more for "stay" and "leave it" but she certainly knows what we mean when we tell her to get off the couch!  We'll also have to teach her not to pull on the leash, but all of this should be pretty easy because she listens really well and wants to please us.

Finding her forever home might be tough--we'll certainly be very particular about the family that want to adopt her.  We want her to go to her home and stay there this time around.  Until then, I think she'll just stay close to Dave when they're at home.  She has a bed in all the rooms she's allowed in, so she can be near him all day long.