COOPER NEEDS HIS FOREVER HOME. He is currently in foster care.
Cooper is a very loving 2 year old, 70 lb, Black Lab mix. He loves being around people and has never met anyone he didn't like, except our cat. He gets along great with our 14 year old miniture poodle. Cooper loves to lay on your feet if ...they are available and loves to lay across your lap. He's very playful and smart. He's house trained and crate trained. He knows sit, stay, drop it, leave it and lay down. I think he knows "come" to a certain extent but we haven't worked on that enough for him to be consistent. He's very teachable for anyone willing to spend the time to work with him.
Unfortunately Cooper also loves socks and shoes. He has swallowed several footy-like socks and chewed up several shoes and flip-flops. If those items are kept out of sight, then he is fine and very well behaved. Oh, when someone comes to the front door, he does like to bark and then enthusiastically greet them when we open the door. But I'm sure he can easily be trained not to do this. We just haven't made the effort to be consistent with that training. But once he greets the person, he settles down within a matter of seconds and just enjoys being around anyone who will give him attention.
His favorite toy is a large black Kong. This is really the only toy we've found that he hasn't been able to chew to pieces within a matter of minutes. He'll play fetch with the Kong and even tug-of-war. If you have an old rag or some sort of cloth, he would play tug-of-war with you for quite a while. Just don't leave him alone with the cloth as he will rip it up and probably swallow half of it.
Cooper is up to date on all his shots and is in excellent health. In May of this year he swallowed a sock and it got stuck in his intestines and had to have surgery to have the sock removed. But he is completely healed now and back to normal. He just has a nice scar on his tummy. Apparently swallowing socks is quite common for labs.
We got Cooper from a friend when he was about 8 months old and have really enjoyed him most of the time. The main reason we have chosen not to keep him is that he doesn't get along with the cat and he eats socks. If you don't have a cat and can keep your socks picked up, Cooper would be a great addition to any family. I think if we had a fenced in back yard, that would help as well, but unfortunately that's just not in the budget any time soon.
