doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com OT-Golden Retriever breeder recommendations

About twenty years ago, our family adopted a young male golden out of generic puppy mill stock, from an acquaintance family that was leaving the area. It bounced around appearing happy, our kids even named it lucky. It had some odd behavior, even did a small growl, snip at me. It was bounding around the yard during a kids birthday party, then froze solid and its hackles went up a few feet from one of the kids. No one noticed, I called it over by me, it seemed to snap out of its little world and bided me and went into a kennel. My wife didn�t like the optics of me shooting it, so she took it to get euthanized the next day. I�m not at all saying that would happen out of good field stock, only that breeding for confirmation might leave out important traits?

My older brother had a chessie, she was fantastic to hunt with. My brother isn't a member of the forum but enjoyed reading your comments, he said that his chessie would have made a good junkyard dog, but that she was wonderful with his kids. He didn't talk about other people's kids though. He said that she was a lot of work to train. Here, I want to teach my kids to hunt, to have the pleasure of working with a good dog. And when we are done hunting, I want them to have a loving family dog.

Thanks Jon for that articulate explanation.

Fred

When I was a youngster, family friends had a brace of Chessies that we played with a lot. They were great and totally nonaggressive. But stubborn as a mountain.

Chessie have become a small niche breed. If interested in one get to know the breeder and dog line very well before you buy. I know three chessie dogs who became very difficult family members as they got older. They picked one child who was the only one they seemed to tolerate.

One of the three attacked his chosen one, an age seven boy one morning and it required a lot of plastic surgery to repair the damage to his face and ear. I got the job of holding the dog for several weeks until we were certain that there was no rabies involved and then had to put him down. I had warned Bernie several times that his dog was getting to be too touche for the lack of a better word around his kids.

As to stubborn. If chessies were mountains, they would never wear down. Not an inch. Granite is putty in comparison. Most chessies are self trained. They either decide to do it or they do not. There is little or no force training a chessie. As to their being a good family dog. Unless you get one with a temperament problem they are a loyal, with a great personality and determined as they can be. I hunted over one as a kid, who would break ice by biting it to get to a downed duck. And a wounded goose was not match for him. It was like a bowling ball hitting a grey marshmallow. Other than his habit of biting your boot, if you missed, he was the perfect hunting companion.