My name is Michael, and I have been raising Golden Retrievers from this house since 2016. Before that I grew up with them. My parents kept Goldens the way people used to, which is to say badly organised and completely devoted, and there was never a point in my childhood when there was not one asleep somewhere inconvenient.
I did not set out to breed. What happened was that we had a bitch we loved, we were talked into one litter by people who had watched us with her for years, and the process of raising those eight puppies turned out to be the most absorbing thing I had ever done. I have been doing it, carefully and on a small scale, ever since.
What we have actually done
More than twenty litters since 2016. Two or three a year, never more, and only when a dam is genuinely ready for one rather than when the calendar says she is due. That pace is the single most important decision we have made, and it is the one most likely to lose us a sale to somebody who wants a puppy this month.
I would rather tell you to wait. Most of what is wrong with dog breeding as an industry follows from breeding to demand instead of to readiness, and I am not interested in being part of that.
Breeding is not how we make our living. That is the whole reason we can do it properly: small numbers, careful planning, and as much time with each litter as they need.Michael
Where the puppies actually live
Inside the house. Not a kennel, not a barn, not an outbuilding, and not a converted garage. This is the thing I would most like you to check on a video call, of us or of anybody else.
For the first weeks a litter lives in a dedicated room in our home, kept warm and stable, with their mother. That is not sentiment, it is physiology: newborn puppies cannot regulate their own body temperature, and a cold puppy in the first fortnight is a puppy in real trouble. So they get a quiet, warm, controlled room, and they get their mother, who stays with them.
Then, at around four weeks, they move into the middle of everything. The kitchen, the hallway, wherever the household actually is. They meet the vacuum cleaner, the doorbell, the washing machine, visitors, and the ordinary chaos of a house with people in it. That is the part that produces a dog you can take anywhere, and it cannot be done later. There is a window, it is roughly weeks three to twelve, and once it closes it does not reopen.
Older puppies get supervised time out in the fenced yard, where they run, dig things up, learn where to relieve themselves, and start on the very first pieces of training. Sitting for food. Coming when called, badly. Waiting a moment at a doorway. Nothing formal, just the foundations.
Our line
All six of our breeding dogs are our own, they all live in the house, and they all trace back to the dogs my parents kept. That continuity is worth something practical rather than romantic: I have watched three generations of this line grow up, and I know what they turn into. When I tell you a puppy is likely to be steady, it is because I have seen his grandmother be steady for eleven years.
What I will not do is dress that up as more than it is. We are a family home breeder. We do not run formal certification programmes and we do not claim their results. Our dogs are health-checked by our veterinarian and evaluated before any breeding, we have raised our litters with no known hereditary health problems, and everything beyond that would be a claim I cannot back.
There is no dog like a Golden. They are gentle in a way that is almost human. They read a room, they go to whoever needs them, and they never stop being kind about it.Michael
Who else is here
This is a household operation. I handle the breeding decisions, the health side, and the placement of every puppy, and I am the person who answers your email. My family is involved in the daily work: feeding, cleaning, and the constant gentle handling that turns a nervous puppy into a confident one. Our children help with the socialising, which mostly means sitting on the floor being climbed on, and which is genuinely useful work.
I do not publish photographs of my children or their names, and I would encourage you to be suspicious of any breeder who publishes yours.
How we place a puppy
By fit, not by order of arrival, and not by who offers most. When you write to me I am going to ask about your household: who is in it, whether there are other animals, roughly how many hours the house is empty, and whether you have lived with a large active dog before. None of that is a test you can fail. It is how I work out which puppy in a litter belongs with you, and sometimes it is how I work out that the answer is none of them this time.
I have talked people out of puppies. I would rather do that than place a dog into a life that will not suit it, and then hear about it eighteen months later.
Our puppies grow up underfoot, in the middle of family life, not in a run. That is the whole secret. Calm, confident dogs come from being part of things from day one.Michael
Afterwards
You can write to me in year one or in year nine. People do, and I am always glad of it. If your dog develops something at fourteen months, tell me, because I need to know what my line is producing and because I might be able to help.
And if you ever cannot keep the dog, for any reason at all, the dog comes back here. That is not a courtesy, it is a term of the contract, and it applies for the whole of the dog’s life. No Golden that leaves this house should ever end up in a shelter.