About Cocoa

Hello, My family has a 2 year old purebred Bloodhound named Cocoa. From puppyhood, she has had issues with resource guarding. We enrolled her in puppy and obedience classes, and followed recommendations from trainers to work on her resource guarding. When she hit about 6 months, she began to display control and dominance based aggression, mostly surrounding handling her feet and ears. We engaged a trainer to come into our home to help us, but she does have a bite history, having bitten both myself and my husband in incidents of resource guarding or handling her ears. She did not break the skin during any of these incidents. In response, we enrolled her in an intensive month-long live-in training program with a trainer experienced in handling aggressive dogs. She has been trained to cheerfully accept wearing a muzzle, but I have two children, and her dominance based aggression towards my kids has not improved. For this reason, we are looking to re-home her. Our trainer feels she could do well in an adult only home with experienced, assertive handlers. The current situation breaks my heart...I really love Cocoa and 85% of the time she's a great dog, but she's not a great fit with my kids. Any considering Cocoa would need to be an experience dog handler with no kids or small pets in the house. Potential adopters would need to also be able to continue her training.

Cook County
SCHAUMBURG, Illinois