When Cocoa made his entrance at our weekend adoption event, people couldn’t help but notice! Not only is this big guy gorgeous and exotic looking because of the chocolate colored cast on his coat, but he is a little hard to miss at 151 pounds! Everyone kept asking, “What is it?”, wondering if he was a wolf-hybrid or possibly some sort of new breed. One child asked us if he was half bear and half dog because of his grizzly bear size. Word about Cocoa spread through the crowd quickly, and soon he was surrounded by people marveling at his size, color and good nature.
In truth, Cocoa is a very overweight purebred shepherd with the unusual liver (chocolate) coloration. All of the areas on his coat and skin that would be black on other shepherds are brown on him, including his eyelids, his nose, his gums, etc. This coloration does not appear often as it is a result of recessive genes pairing up. Cocoa is a large dog with a huge frame, but he would be much more comfortable if he could lose 40 pounds. We have s