A Corgi traveling with her owner helped comfort a total stranger at an Idaho airport earlier this month, and now the once-neglected dog’s good deed has gone viral on Facebook.
Cora the Corgi is a therapy dog in training, and she earned her stripes a couple of weeks ago when she wandered away from her owner and sat right in front of a man sitting by himself. He had just lost his own dog the day before.
Corgis are known to be a highly sensitive and intelligent breed and have a record of being great therapy dogs for seniors.
Cora was traveling from Idaho to Alaska with her owner, 23-year-old Madison Palm, who’s been having her trained as a therapy dog through the American Kennel Club’s Canine Good Citizen program.
“She is very empathetic and in tune with my needs, yet she is so incredibly independent,” Palm told TODAY.
When Cora wandered away from her and sat in front of the grieving man, Palm started recording on her cell phone.
“Cora quietly tiptoed away from me during our crazy long layover and plopped herself right next to a complete stranger,” Palm wrote on Facebook.
“Before I could even call her, she was already at his feet being loved on,” Palm told TODAY. “I asked him if she was bothering him, and with a somber face and watery eyes said, ‘No, no. I lost my dog last night.'”
She wrote on Facebook that “he gave her scratches, told her how cute she was, and proceeded to take a photo of her; he also shared with us that he lost his beloved dog the night before.”
She added, “I’ve never had a doubt that Cora can sense those who are hurting and those who need companionship and love. She is a natural born therapy dog in every way. I am so blessed to call her my dog.”
Palm told TODAY that she thinks her pooch has “a gift.”
“She knows who is hurting and she knows who needs her,” Palm said. “Once he told me that his dog passed away I looked at Cora and I thought to myself, ‘You are so amazing. How did I get so lucky?'”
A year ago, Cora was living on a farm, dirty, neglected and malnourished.
Last summer, the owners posted on Facebook that they were giving Cora away because she was killing the family’s chickens. Palm left work and headed straight for the farm after her co-worker at the county’s Department of Motor Vehicles shared the Facebook post with her.
Apparently, Cora had a pretty rough life on the farm. She had been kept outdoors for her entire seven and a half years and had many litters of pups.
“Cora had never been to a vet,” Palm said. “She didn’t have a cute collar or a shiny tag with her name on it. The little food that she received was her owners’ scraps, which were thrown into the yard for her.”
Unfortunately, Palm already had a dog, which was all her landlord would allow, so she knew she would have to find another place to live if she adopted Cora. But she decided she couldn’t leave the poor, neglected dog behind.
Cora the Corgi crawled into Palm’s lap on the way home “and she never looked back,” Palm said.
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