Cocoa is a beautiful, dark brown, very tall Standard donkey, born in 1996. He has a lively, curious personality and he is very comfortable in human company.
Cocoa was raised in North Carolina and lived for many years on a small farm where he was given the best of care. Then one day, as can happen in our contemporary society, the family unit broke apart and the farm had to be sold. Cocoa was put into a boarding stable where he lived in the company of many horses. The woman who had raised Cocoa visited him often in this new situation and it was not long before she realized that the standard of care at the stable was unsatisfactory. As a donkey, Cocoa had been put at the bottom of the pecking order and he was always alone. She moved him to another setting but found that it too had an atmosphere of neglect. This pattern was to repeat itself several times more and throughout all of this, a week never passed without one or two visits by the woman to her donkey friend. Finally, when a stable was located where she considered that Cocoa was receiving appropriate care, it was at such a distance from her home that she had to pass several hours in the car on the days that she visited her donkey.
She continued to seek a better solution and then, quite unexpectedly, she became aware of the DONKEY SANCTUARY OF CANADA. When she telephoned us her questions were many but by the conversation’s end, she had decided to make the two-day drive to come up and see the Sanctuary Farm. Soon after her arrival, she asked if there might be space for Cocoa and, fortunately, there was. In early Fall, she accompanied the trailer that brought her donkey to his new, and permanent, home. The DSC exists for many, many reasons and in this case, we are grateful that we can be here for donkeys like Cocoa and their caretakers who care so much.