Reviews

We adopted our dog, Ayla (Priscilla was the name given at the rescue), in October of 2017. She was estimated to be 5-6 months old at the time of adoption. We specifically asked if she had any behavioral issues, and we were told that she had none but that she tends to get excited when other dogs are outside with her. Excited was a severe understatement. Ayla was brought on her first walk the day after we adopted her and she had a severe case of leash aggression - barking, trying to shake the collar off, jumping, snapping, and foaming at the mouth. We also found that she had food aggression, anxiety in the kennel, and was extremely terrified of and aggressive toward strangers. Within the first couple of weeks, all four of my family members had been bitten. I was in contact with Coco's Heart many times. I asked Coco's Heart if they would take her back to train her, but they said that they don't do that. If we surrendered Ayla, we would need to pay for it, and they would most likely just put her down. They did give us trouble shooting tips to try, they gave us the name of a dog behaviorist from Wisconsin (that we had come work with Ayla - he ended up being scared of her and she could sense that), we took her to private training with Katie K9, and consistently worked with her. We have now had Ayla for six years. She is much better with our family, but we have had to seriously alter our lifestyle in order to keep Ayla. We have to keep her separated from new friends or strangers that come to the house, we can't go camping, Ayla can only go on walks on our private land because she cannot be trusted with off-leash dogs or kids running out, and we have to go on vacations by car where Ayla can go with us as she isn't allowed in doggy daycare. We have only adopted dogs, and this is the first and only time we have had an issue with the dog The experience was horrible. I won't work with Coco's Heart again.

Hi ****, thank you for your review, though we are sorry to read it. I apologize for my delayed response, I had taken time away on maternity leave and am returned now. I pulled up ****'s file and do see that she was adopted as a 4 month old puppy. I do see that a surrender inquiry was submitted when she was 2.5 years old. I do see other communications over the years as well as our team tried to provide support to you. I would like to confirm that she was in a ****** home with other dogs and her ****** family has a long history of providing all known information about any puppy or adult she cares for. However, animals can have different experiences and behaviors in different environments. We provide all known information that we have on any dog and ask our ****** homes to do the same. I have included ****** mom's response to your original email here: "I'm sorry to hear this. I first want to say I never saw any aggressive behavior from her. We have had family dinners and she never once showed any aggression towards them. We had two other smaller puppies that everyone wanted to hold and she never got upset. She came to me and asked me nicely to hold her. I brought her to work several times with no problems. Unfortunately we don't have kids, but my friend bought her 5 and 8 yr old over and she was very friendly with them. Had I saw any signs of aggression I would have suggested maybe she might not be fit for a family with kids. I was up front with my concerns with her, which were her being crazy outside and work on leash walking. I felt that those things would be corrected with puppy training." We do take aggression very seriously and cannot place an animal for adoption with a serious history of aggression and/or bite history. We fully invest in behavioral support for behavioral challenges that we can work through, but with a multiple bite history and aggression we would not be able to place that animal again. We can understand the level of commitment your family has made to **** over the years and appreciate that she found a family committed to her management. We are sorry that you are unhappy with ****'s Heart but we continue to truly wish you and Ayla our best. Thank you for valuing rescue and adoption.