When thinking about Golden Retriever dog training, Los Angeles parents like most people, conjure up images of the quintessential household pet. A family loving, beautiful, glowing, happy go lucky pet that gets along with all dogs, cats, and people.
Golden Retrievers can make wonderful pets, therapy dogs, emotional support animals, service dogs, or working dogs. However, all dogs are individuals and there are many health, maintenance, and typical Golden Retriever training and dog behavior tips and considerations before adopting or buying this dog breed.
Golden Retrievers were bred to retrieve with a soft mouth and not to puncture rip or destroy what they are retrieving. This explains why they make excellent helpers around the house collecting your socks and shoes. Golden Retrievers were originally used by hunters who kill other sentient beings but hopefully are not now for the sake of our planet and for compassion to all sentient beings.
Golden Retrievers love the water and are known to find that one puddle on a dog walk to lie in or to splash around. Most likely directly after you bathed them. You will have a hard time getting your Golden Retriever out of the pool, lake or ocean. However, that is not such a bad thing. They may even want to join you in the shower or bathtub. Their proclivity for water can be fun or annoying depending on your perspective.
Like most dogs, they are social and gregarious by nature. A properly bred and healthy Golden Retriever will be affable, easy, and eager to train with the right fear-free dog trainer. Never use compulsion or force to train a Golden Retriever or any dog as that destroys the bond you have with your pet, will make the dog confused, unpredictable, and make a problem behavior much worse. The emotional fallout of punishment-based training is severe and extremely damaging to a dog.
Many Golden Retrievers are very motivated, trainable, and eager to work, making them wonderful service dogs that suit their breeding to retrieve keys, medicine, items, open and close doors, turn on lights, and many other service dog tasks. Because Golden Retrievers love affection so much they can make wonderful Therapy dog teams and Emotional Support Animals (ESAs).
Golden retrievers are eager to learn, motivated, and intelligent puppies. They should be trained by a breeder as soon as they are born with proper husbandry, gentling and basic cues. All dogs during their sensitive period (roughly 3~13 weeks) should be socialized with special attention paid to different developmental periods, fear, play, socialization enrichment, and overall temperament.
Contrary to some outdated veterinarian advice, no dog should be quarantined as a puppy and kept away from other dogs or people until they receive their last vaccination shots. A behavioral vaccination is far more important and vital to set up a dog for lifelong success than the minute risk of distemper or parvovirus.
Use common sense and keep your new unvaccinated or not fully vaccinated puppy away from urine and feces on the ground, from dog parks, and highly trafficked dog areas. Even more so if you are in an environment where it doesn’t rain much. Also, only allow your puppy to interact with and play with other healthy and friendly dogs.
All dogs’ complete health should be cared for via their neonatal, transitional, socialization, sensitive, and integration periods, 1-21 weeks, and puppies in their juvenile period and older, ~21 weeks +. However, that is in an ideal world and most breeders do not provide this level of care or understanding. Hence your mileage will vary and your dog’s phenotype and genotype (nature-nurture) combination will dictate your dog’s temperament, personality, fear, confidence, and behavioral composition.
Most Golden Retrievers are fun-loving love bugs who want to be petted consistently and to be with the family at all times. However, a Golden Retriever puppy who is not trained well or who was neglected during these important cognitive, emotional and biological predetermined growth phases or genetically predisposed through show dog or poor breeding, may easily exhibit any of the following natural behaviors that cause problems for families.
If your Golden Retriever needs more training and behavior modification work than you have the time or expertise, consider sending your Gold Retriever for Boarding and Training Boot Bamp in Los Angles. Even though we are in Los Angeles, California, parents of Goldens with problem behaviors come to us from all around the country.
Golden Retrievers are a medium-large dog breed that needs to be trained well with gentle, positive reinforcement dog training to achieve the best (and most humane) dog training results. Regardless of the age of your Golden Retriever, whether they are a puppy, adolescent or senior Golden Retriever, all of the following will help a parent throughout the life of your Retriever.
Golden Retriever Puppy Specific (in addition to the above)
Yes. Because Golden Retrievers are so trainable and motivated, you will have a wonderful time building your connection and bond with your dog while training and working together.
Golden Retrievers require a lot of time and attention. They are not suited well to be left alone for most of the day. On the spectrum of independent, golden retrievers are much more dependent than other breeds and can develop Separation Anxiety Disorder.
Yes, Golden Retrievers make wonderful family dogs because when bred healthily they have very few behavior problems, love all people, are very tolerant of children, and unfamiliar people. They are also very docile and friendly towards other dogs and cats.
Golden Retrievers make great city dogs or country dogs as long as their needs are met. Most dogs are time intensive and not space-intensive. If your schedule permits or you have resources to hire a dog walker, pet sitter, or dog boarding facility, please do. Golden Retrievers love to be out and about and walk and exercise.
Do not get a golden retriever if you are looking for a guard dog or a dog that has a presence to intimidate or keep people away from your home or while out on the street. Your dog will likely look to lick a burglar’s face and get pets from them than scare them away.
Golden Retrievers are kind, gentle, and loving and look to connect with people. Golden Retrievers love to engage, work, exercise, and do things with parents. If you are giving your Golden Retriever attention they are happy.
Training is a way to build a strong ineffable bond with your best friend and also to have a well-behaved dog. The more time you spend dog training, the more fulfilling your relationship will become. Take advantage of Golden Retrievers’ patience, intelligence, and desire for attention, to please and to work. Your Retriever will love positive reinforcement dog training.
A lot. So be prepared to get your long-coated Golden Retriever groomed regularly and make sure to use desensitization and counterconditioning with any natural fears or anxiety a dog will most likely have to a novel and potentially scary and unfamiliar environments such as a groomer, bathtub or new person.
On the bright side, a Golden is likely to love people, the bathtub, and getting wet, making that part of the grooming process easier.
All dogs need attention to their nutritional profile, however large breed puppy dogs need special attention to their calcium, energy, vitamin, mineral, and nutrient intake during their growth phase. As with all dogs health checkups, vaccinations and veterinarian care will be mandatory as well.
Nothing is a hotter topic than what to feed a dog. That’s OK because we are simply providing you with the facts, not conventional wisdom, belief, tradition, or hearsay or even my personal experiences. Just non-biased, evidence-based published research and review papers. I show you the most current and up-to-date canine nutritional evidence and you make your own decision regarding your dog’s health and what or who to feed them.
Should you feed a dog a raw diet, (also read here, here, and here) extruded dry kibble, organic, semi-raw, freeze-dried, or a homemade vegan diet? While dogs are classified in the Order Carnivora, dogs are not obligate carnivores like our other feline household pets. In fact, dogs are not carnivores and can thrive on plant-based diets.
All diets require being properly formulated, balanced, and complete regardless of what (or who) we are feeding our pets. Luckily for us (and dogs) dogs have adapted to scavenge and forage over tens of thousands of years and can digest carbohydrates.
However, since plant-based diets have by far the least impact on the environment and is sustainable, and is the most a person can do to lower the planet’s greenhouse gases we recommend plant-based diets. Plant-based diets are the best diet for the planet, all sentient beings, and are the most compassionate way to feed a dog. The only truly sustainable way to feed a dog is via an organic plant-based diet that is complete and balanced.
What to feed a Golden Retriever Puppy has different implications and is very different than what to feed an adult or senior dog. Current research shows that large breed puppies need a certain formulation of dietary protein, fat, calcium, phosphorus, vitamin D and calories (energy) to prevent the onset of skeletal diseases from rapid bone, cartilage, tissue, and joint growth. Rapid growth causes skeletal diseases such as elbow and hip dysplasia.
Feed your Golden Retriever Puppy reduced calories (energy) and reduced calcium. Focus on a large breed growth puppy food that meets these requirements and parameters (300-340 kcals/cup and between 0.8-1.0% dietary calcium.) Not all do! Keep your Golden Retriever Puppy and Dog lean not plump and always look for an AAFCO Nutritional Adequacy Statement that indicates the food is complete and balanced for a dog’s particular life stage.
We are Golden Retriever dog training and behavior experts. Our Golden Retriever Certified Dog Behaviorists and trainers have been successfully helping parents with Golden Retriever training for decades! Let an expert Certified Dog Behaviorist, Trainer and Nutritionist to help you with your Golden Retriever training and behavior problems today.
1 Hour – $295
(In addition to the one-hour session, you receive a detailed dog training and behavior analysis plan with abundant supporting resources)