French language Q&A Forum

This may be a strange question, but if you have/see a female dog and you want to describe her, would you use il or elle since "dog" is a masculine noun but the dog itself is a female. Like would I say Il est très gentil or elle est très gentille? I am asking because where I live I always hear female dogs referred to as "il" even when everyone knows the dog is a girl. I don't know if that's just because they don't care about the gender of the dog, or because the proper way to refer to it is as "il" since dog is masculine. 

Thanks

For the above question, I am marked wrong for putting "le 1 mai", with the correct answer being "le 1er mai".

The lesson text implies to me that either are correct. It states that French dates require cardinal not ordinal numbers and includes "un (1)" in the list of examples of cardinal numbers. The "le premier (1er)" is then listed as an exception that "we do use". It is not clear from this whether "1er" must or may be used.

Could this please be clarified? 

Pas de question, mais J'adore cette histoire!  C'est tres douce!