English Goldens....too smart for their own good at times!

 This is my boy Finn.  He's gorgeous, talented and super smart.   He's gorgeous both inside and out.  I have yet to find a sweeter golden.  He's talented because he can find a ball in 5 seconds flat.  You throw it, he'll retrieve it.  Yes, he is an English Golden Retriever so he should be good at retrieving.  And he's super smart because he can do things regular dogs can't.  That is except for my other goldens.  And the English goldens some of my friends have.  And of course, my Bernese Mountain Dog, Sadie, but that's another story.

Now I have been saying how I really need to get back in shape.  It's so hot outside in NC in the summer that it's hard to get motivated.  I could be wrong, but I think my goldens got tired of hearing me complain about my weight so this morning, they decided to help old mom out.

Some how my babies figured out how to open the gate to get out of the backyard.  That in itself is a feat.  You have to lift up a bar that locks the gate into place.  You have to open the lever.  AND you have to unhook a dog collar that I put in place that serves as a second lock for my gate just in case.   Somehow the little buggars figured out how to unlock all three and all of the sudden I hear my six year old running down the street saying, "Mommy!   Get the leashes!!" 

In a panic I immediately grab the leashes and head toward the door.  Thank goodness two of mine came right back home and were happy to drink water and be in the cool air.   But the other three were half way down the neighborhood with my six year old  in tow.   Bionic Mom took over.  Here comes Jamie Summers toting her leashes running as fast as she can to catch three English Goldens and a six year old.  

When they saw me running toward them shouting their names they came right to me with their sweet smiling faces.  And Emma just smiled as if to say, "We just wanted to help, Mom."  I guess that's what I get for complaining about needing to lose weight.   My English Goldens made sure I was the one who was going to start my weight loss program whether I wanted to or not.   Gotta love those smarty britches!!

Clean English Goldens....Really??

Look at my dog, Emma....she's the one in the back with the mud all over her face.  You're probably thinking she never gets a bath.  Truth be told...she gets them quite often because she is constantly a mess.  And the best part is, SHE is the one making the mess.  And she LOVES to make a mess.  Welcome to the wonderful world of English Goldens!
It's instinctive for English Goldens to want to dig.  If you have a flower bed or a retaining wall, that's all the more attractive to an English Golden.  Or if you have a nice piece of grass, that's a possible future hole for them to dig.  You see, the thing about this wonderful breed is that for all of their wonderful qualities, they are natural born diggers!  And if you have a place to dig anywhere near water, that's even better.   Because then they can make a super huge mess of themselves and the area they are digging in!

What can you do to avoid holes?  A couple of things.  You can fill the holes with concrete and add top soil to the very top layer.  That should slow them down.  You can section off a certain part of the yard where they can play.  Holes will be fair game there, but if they aren't near your garden, you can enjoy your plants.  You can try to spray apple bitter on your plants.  I have to say depending on the dog it doesn't always work.  But you can try.  Or you can just know that if you have a Golden, be prepared for holes, dirt and a lot of baths! 

Emma loves the water.  Sometimes I wonder if she does this on purpose so she can get into the bathtub and play.   They are very smart dogs!  It wouldn't surprise me.  Perhaps we should look at getting a pool sooner than later!

Hip Health Testing

One really can't stress enough the importance of health testing when breeding animals.  There are so many hereditary things that can be passed down from parents to offspring that it's crucial for a responsible breeder to do as much health testing as possible.   While nothing in life is perfect, a responsible breeder will test their dogs to try to avoid health issues in offspring.

This leads me to the topic of hip testing.  The norm in the breeding world in the US is to use a company called OFA or the Orthapedic Foundation for Animals.  They look at one view of an x-ray of a dogs hips and grade it.  You can get either an "Excellent," "Good," "Fair," "Borderline" or some degree of hip dysplasia.  The thing to note which is quite frustrating to me is that the OFA will grade anything you send to them.  If the hips are not positioned properly, the OFA will still grade the hips.  They don't send the x-rays back and tell you to redo them so the hips are positioned correctly.  To me, this is just plain laziness on the part of the OFA.   

When it happened to me, I decided to see what other options were out there and made the decision to use the BVA or British Veterinary Association.   I import my dogs from Europe so it made sense to me to use their hip scheme.   They look at the same view an OFA vet will look at, but the difference is they will give you a number score between 0-53 on each hip.  Their scores are like a golfer's game....the lower the score, the better.   The "standard" score that most breeders use is a total score of 20 or under, but some breeders require lower scores than that.  And some will use higher scores if they know the scores of the ancestors behind a dog.  The thing I appreciate about the BVA is if a hip is not positioned properly, they will send the x-ray back to you refusing to grade it.   The BVA only gives you a grade once in the lifetime of a dog and they want to make sure they are grading fairly.  You can send your x-rays to the OFA over and over again.    But the OFA refers back to anything you've submitted previously instead of grading the x-ray for how it looks that day.  They also don't tell you what degree of "Good" or "Fair" your dog may be.  Are they just barely fair or good?    As you can tell, it's just not a system I am a fan of.

There are MANY breeders who have been breeding for years who won't look at a dog without an OFA rating.   And there are many more who will tell prospective puppy owners to ask about health testing.  While I agree that puppy families should know how healthy the parents of their puppies are, I also believe there are different hip schemes that as good or better than what the OFA offers.   For me and  my dogs it's the BVA. 

When does an English become European?

I was talking to a breeder friend of mine in Europe recently.  She's been breeding English Goldens for about 30 years now, and her dogs are phenominal.  And she asked me a question that has befuddled me.  At what point does an English Golden Retriever become a European Golden Retriever?  There are some breeders who believe that the only English Golden worth breeding is one from the UK.  There are many fine UK Goldens from the UK but there are also some amazing Goldens from other places in the world .  Ashbury Conan Doyle is a beautiful dog from France who won the World Show in Denmark in 2010.  He's from France...part of Europe.   The Specialty Show I went to the day after the World Show had a world renowned Swedish breeder as judge.  He chose a wonderful dog as best in show from Spain....again in Europe.   Crufts, the UK equivalent of our Westminister Dog Show, awarded best in breed in 2010 to a Norwegian dog....again from Europe. 

The funny thing is that ALL Goldens came from the UK to start with.   Our American Goldens ancestors came from Scotland.   European Goldens all come from UK ancestors.  The question "When does an English Golden become a European Golden?" is so valid!  When does it become European?  When it's born in Europe?  How can that be if both parents are from the UK?   What if you have one parent from the UK and one from Europe?  Does that make the dog a European dog?  What if the parents are both European but the grandparents are from the UK?  Does this mean they are European now?    When does the magic switch turn on that makes a dog European instead of English? 

There are Americans, African Americans, Chinese Americans, Mexican Americans, and the list goes on.  But what do these people all have in common?   They are Americans.  Why can't the same be applied to the English Golden Retriever?  They all came from the UK to begin with.  There are English Goldens, European Goldens, Canadian English Goldens and American English Goldens, but they are all English Goldens.  Instead of having to make a distinction between English and European, why can't they all just be English Golden Retrievers?   

At the end of the day, all English Golden Retrievers are from the UK.  Whether they came from the UK five generations ago or not, they are still English Goldens.    There are some kennels that are better known than others.   Some people prefer big bone, a wavy coat and color.  Others prefer a more straight coat that's blond in color.  But I just don't see where the magic switch is that suddenly makes an English Golden a European Golden.  Isn't the UK part of Europe anyway????

Puppies and the Christmas Tree

I sent out an email the other day to some friends with a photo of my sons by the Christmas tree with one of my dogs.  A friend of mine emailed me back to ask if the dogs had access to the Christmas tree.   I hadn't thought about it like that, but yes, of course they have access to the Christmas tree because they live with us.  The funny thing is the dogs reaction to it.  Emma, our oldest, noticed it right away and barked at it incessantly as if it were a person who might play with her.  It took her a few minutes to learn that the tree just stood there and didn't do anything so she got bored and doesn't even notice it anymore.

Bella hid behind me when she first saw the Christmas tree.  She wasn't sure what it was or if it was friendly or not so she was very cautious.  As with Emma, after about five minutes she went up to it and started to sniff around it.  She hit a couple of ornaments (the ones that don't break) with her tail and they clinged together which caused her to jump for a moment.  And then she noticed the bows on the presents.  My goodness, did she have some fun with the bows!  I have noticed that she gravitates to blue bows.  Fortunately I only had two of them under the tree so I let her tear them apart and I put new bows on the presents.  Now she isn't that interested in the tree or the bows, but she's also not afraid of it either. 

Max was hysterical.  Max is my explorer.  He went right up to the tree, walked on the presents, sniffed everything around it, knocked the ornaments with his tail and when he realized it wouldn't play fetch with him, talk to him or pet him, he passed right by it and hasn't looked at it again since. 

Finn had a similar reaction.  He went up to it, sniffed it for a moment and then came to me to try to sit in my lap.  He hasn't seemed to notice it since either.

We put up three Christmas trees in my home because we love the holiday.  Perhaps my dogs are just used to seeing Christmas trees as they've been up since before Thanksgiving.  Or perhaps they are so smart they understand who can actually play with them and what just stands there all day.  Whatever the situation, the dogs and the tree seem to be able to happily co-exist in the Martin family. 

Happy holidays to all and to all a good night!

Puppyhood with English Goldens

Puppies rock!  They are sweet, full of boundless energy, loving and such joy to be around.   I can play fetch with mine until my arm is about to fall off.  They never tire of fetching.  It's that gundog instinct in them.   But my puppies can be a challenge too.  Take for example the garden I used to have.  I had the most lovely backyard complete with blooming azaleas, hibiscus and hydrangea.  My Indian Hawthorn plants were thriving and my laurels were growing quicker than I ever imagined, some surpassing six feet in just three years!   That is until puppies landed at Goldensglen.  Now my yard looks like a barren wasteland.  All of the shrubs have been trampled or eaten.  Even some of the trees were not safe.   And I always thought about putting a pool in my backyard, but now I don't have to worry about excavation.  My dogs are professional diggers!

Teaching puppies can be a challenge too.  Thankfully for me, the Golden Retriever is a very intelligent animal.  They learn quickly and want to please their owners.  In fact they are in the top four of the smartest breeds there are.  The thing they don't tell you is that the owner needs proper training to be able to train their dogs.  I'll let you in on a little secret...dog training is less for the dog and MORE for the owner!    But it's necessary because you want your dog to be a part of the family where he/she can be enjoyed and not continually scolded for eating furniture, jumping up on people or using the bathroom on the floor.   Now if children could be so easily trained!!

One issue we are dealing with now is my five year old and our new puppy, Zoe.  Zoe is only nine weeks old and she's sweet as sugar.  But she is a puppy and puppies teethe.  Zoe likes to put anything and everything in her mouth.  In the past two weeks she's eaten through my computer power cord (unplugged of course) and the power cord to the dog bowl that filters their water.   Yes, I was thrilled about that!   But she is constantly looking for things to put into her mouth.  As my five year old would have it, he thinks it's funny to put his arm in her mouth....until she bites down too hard and he cries!   We are trying to teach him that she's a baby and she doesn't know any better and he would be better served to put toys in her mouth, but that hasn't stopped a few alligator tears for teethmarks in his arm.  Gosh it would be easier if children and puppies came with instructions manuals!! 

Perhaps the most interesting interaction we've experienced has come this past week between Emma, our oldest who is in her first season now, and Finn and Max.  For the first ten days of her cycle, they didn't act any differently around her.  They played, fought, chased and did all the normal puppy things they usually do.  But on day 10, EVERYTHING changed!  Max, our Camrose with a pedigree to die for, suddenly found his inner stud.   Now at 7 months old, he's not doing much, but he's trying really hard!  Finn, our lovely Majik boy from Finland with another amazing pedigree just stays by her side and sniffs her every time he sees her.   It's times like these that I wish I was a dog whisperer.  Oh, to be in the mind of these young dogs at this time in their lives! 

Puppy Socialization

Making sure that a puppy has proper socialization is key to having a friendly, loving adult dog.   This means taking your puppy with you out in public to places where there are many people.  Your puppy should get used to all sorts of sights and sounds and one of the best ways to do this is to bring her with you as you run errands to animal friendly places.   Your local home improvement store is a great place to socialize your puppy.  There are lots of people and sounds in a store like that.  Even the electric doors that open and shut can be a lot for a puppy to take in.  Some pups will walk right through doors like that while others will hang back and be somewhat afraid until you show them there's nothing to be concerned about.  And she's sure to get a lot of attention from people while you're there because who can resist a sweet puppy??

Your pup should also get used to having strangers come up to pet her.  My Bella is a loving, sweet natured girl, but in new surroundings she can be a bit timid.   I brought her with me to our neighborhood Halloween party yesterday.  I thought having her be around lots of children and adults would be a good way to further socialize her.  She was somewhat timid as we approached the noise, people and especially when she saw the bounce house.   That was a bit scary to her until she realized it wasn't going to get her.  But as soon as some of the neighborhood children saw her coming, she was in her element.  She couldn't wait to be petted and loved on by the neighborhood kids and their parents.  She just sat still or laid on her back for her favorite thing...a tummy rub!   On our walk home, she was quite proud of herself as she had been the "Belle" of the ball!  

One thing you should never do is leave a puppy with young children unsupervised.  Children (especially toddlers) don't have a good understanding yet that it's really not ok to pull a puppies tail or poke them in the eye and that can set the socialization of your puppy back.   Showing children at a young age how to treat an animal is good for both the child and the animal.   It helps both the child and the animal develop confidence with one another.

If you have any thoughts or ideas on how you socialize your puppy, we'd love to hear from you!