My husband, Chad, grew up on a family farm and raised American Golden Retrievers for almost a decade. After marrying me, Valerie, in 1997, Chad brought his male sire, Ares, to live with us, soon followed by another male Golden Retriever puppy we named Zeus. As a true animal lover, I was “hooked on Goldens,” but after having 3 children in 4 years, we decided to focus on our own family instead of raising puppies. While we had to say goodbye in time to both Ares and Zeus, in the back of our minds we always dreamed about providing quality dogs to loving families.
In 2010, we started researching bloodlines of American Golden Retrievers and upon discovering the current rates of hip dysplasia, cancer, and seeing the overall conformity of most Golden Retrievers, we decided that English Cream Golden Retrievers were the only way to go. Click Here to see the differences between American Golden Retrievers and English Cream Golden Retrievers.
We fell in love with their big, blocky heads, strong conformity, beautiful cream coats, and most importantly, the calm and relaxed dispositions of these dogs. We believe that the temperament of dogs is two-fold: genetic and environmental. Puppies, much like babies, “imprint” between 5–8 weeks of age and become accustomed to stimuli that will affect their reactions to a whole host of things in the future. As a result, choosing breeders that take the time to work with each puppy is paramount to how a puppy will deal with new people and environmental factors in the future.
Our puppies will have been introduced to and handled by our children, will have ridden in a car, experienced plenty of outside and inside play time, as well as “outings” to the vet and new sites in order to experience unusual smells and sounds. Our adult Goldens are both calm in nature, as they were bred that way, but we also have “trained” them to enjoy new experiences and people.
Today, Chad works in the dairy industry, and I work out of my home for a genetics company. Ironically, we’ve both chosen careers in which genetics play an important role in our industries, much like our breeding program. Our family has grown up over the years and includes our now 19-year-old daughter, Camryn, and our boys, Gage (age 17) and Cor (age 15). They continue to be a key part in this journey and have fed, washed, walked, chased, cleaned and played with our adult dogs as well as the puppies. They are our best trainers when it comes to introducing our puppies to new stimuli and play time. They love our four-legged family and consider them some of their best friends.
