Cream, golden, red: what a Golden Retriever's colour actually tells you
The five shades, how much a puppy coat changes before it settles, and why almost everything you have read about rare colours is a pricing strategy.
Resources
What we would read before choosing anybody
We would rather you arrived knowing too much than too little. Our own writing first, then the institutions we would check ourselves. Nothing on this page is for sale and no link on it earns us anything.
Written by Nora
Our own guides
Written here, about the questions people actually send us.
How to choose a puppy from a litter without choosing badly
The puppy that runs to you first is not the one you should take. What to watch for in a litter, what to ask the breeder, and what matters least.
The puppy vaccination chart, explained without the jargon
A plain puppy vaccination chart: what your puppy has had before it reaches you, what you are responsible for, and why the course is a series of doses.
Why eight weeks, and what goes wrong when a puppy leaves sooner
What a puppy learns in weeks six, seven and eight that it can never learn anywhere else, and why an offer to let one go early is a warning sign.
Labrador Retriever vs Golden Retriever: the honest comparison
Labrador vs Golden Retriever, from someone who breeds one of them. Where the two genuinely differ, where they do not, and what should decide it.
What a Golden Retriever actually costs, in year one and every year after
The purchase price is the small number. Here is the whole picture, including the costs breeders leave out and the one that ruins people.
Socialising a puppy in the sixteen weeks that count
Socialisation is not meeting as many dogs as possible. It is a specific job with a deadline, and most people spend the window doing the wrong thing.
Feeding a Golden Retriever puppy without losing your mind
How much, how often, how to change food without a week of mess, and the one thing that matters more for a large breed puppy than the brand on the bag.
Further reading
Health and veterinary care
Worth reading while you are still deciding, because almost everything that goes wrong in a puppy's first year is settled here, before anybody collects anything.
VeterinaryPartner
Written by veterinarians for owners and searchable by condition. The first place to look when something worries you at eleven at night.
Source: Veterinary Information Network
The dog owner's manual
A reference textbook written for owners rather than for clinicians. Dense, free, and it does not sell anything.
Source: Merck Veterinary Manual
What actually affects dogs
Plain explanations of the conditions that turn up in real practice, from a veterinary school rather than from a forum.
Source: Cornell Riney Canine Health Center
Vaccination guidelines
The international guideline set most veterinary schedules are built on. Useful if you want to understand why the course is a series rather than one injection.
Source: WSAVA
Healthy pets and healthy people
What a new puppy means for the people in the house, particularly with a baby or anybody immunocompromised.
Source: CDC
Further reading
Feeding
The most argued-about subject in dog ownership and the one where the loudest sources are the least qualified. These four are not selling food.
How to read a dog food label
Veterinary nutritionists on what the front of a bag means and what it does not. Read this before you change what your puppy eats.
Source: Tufts Petfoodology
Global nutrition guidelines
The questions worth asking a manufacturer, including whether they employ a qualified nutritionist and whether they run feeding trials.
Source: WSAVA
People foods to avoid
Worth reading before the first family dinner with a puppy under the table. Several of these are genuinely dangerous rather than merely unwise.
Source: ASPCA
Animal Poison Control
Keep this number somewhere you can find it at midnight, before you need it.
Source: ASPCA
Further reading
Behaviour and training
The first sixteen weeks decide more about the adult dog than anything you will do later. None of these charge for the important part.
Position statement on puppy socialisation
Why the socialisation window matters more than finishing the vaccination course before going anywhere, and how to do both at once.
Source: AVSAB
Handling without frightening the dog
Vet visits, nail clipping, grooming. The practical version of everything we do here in the eight weeks before a puppy leaves.
Source: Fear Free Happy Homes
Dog care and behaviour
Broad, practical and free, and it is not trying to sell you equipment on the way through.
Source: ASPCA
Finding a trainer worth booking
Useful for working out whether the class near you is run by somebody who knows what they are doing.
Source: Association of Professional Dog Trainers
What a dog needs from the house it lives in
A veterinary school on the environment side of behaviour, which is the half most training advice skips.
Source: Ohio State Indoor Pet Initiative
Further reading
Travel
If your puppy is flying rather than being collected, these are the rules everybody involved is actually working to.
Bringing a dog into the United States
The official requirements, which change more often than people expect. Check them close to the date rather than months out.
Source: CDC
Live animal regulations
What an airline is working to when a dog flies, including the crate rules that catch people out at the desk.
Source: IATA
Why these particular links
Every one is an institution rather than a blog, because the whole point of the list is that you can check what we say against somebody who is not selling you a puppy. Nothing here is an affiliate link. Each one goes to the original source rather than to a copy of it, and all sixteen were opened and returned a working page when this was last checked. If you find a dead one, tell us.
You will notice there is no registry on the list. That is deliberate. This site makes no registry claim about its own dogs, so linking to one as an authority would blur a line we have been careful about everywhere else. If formal screening matters to you, and for some buyers it should, go and read what the formal route involves and then find a breeder who runs it. We do not, and we say so.