I'm in the Northwest suburbs and have had a pink flowering dogwood in my yard for at least 15 years. However, I had a few failures before I finally got one to grow. There has been no disease at all with the tree. The ones that failed were purchased from catalogs. I got this one at a nursery and it was about 4 ft tall if I remember right. I'd suggest planting it in as protected a place as possible and give it acid fertilizer.

I also saw a white flowering dogwood in a far Northern suburb that seemed to be doing well.

I planted a white flowering dogwood last year in the city in full sun and it's doing fantastic, a $20 impulse buy at Home Depot, it outperformed most of my nursery trees, in fact!