Most breeder websites will not publish a price at all. You are asked to enquire, and the number arrives later, after you have already fallen for a photograph. We publish every price on the puppy’s own page, because a price you have to ask for is a price that changes depending on who is asking.
What almost nobody publishes is the rest of it, which is much larger and much more likely to catch you out.
The purchase price, and why it varies
Ours sit between $700 and $700, with each puppy priced individually. The spread within one litter is not arbitrary: it reflects colour, which drives demand, and how much interest a particular puppy has had.
Across the market you will see anything from a few hundred to several thousand. The very lowest end is almost always one of three things: a puppy farm, an accidental litter with no health screening behind it, or a scam that will take a deposit for a dog that does not exist. The very highest end is usually paying for registry paperwork and formal health testing, which is a genuine cost and a genuine thing to want.
We are in the middle and we are explicit about why: we hold no registry papers and no formal health scoring, so we are not charging you for either.
What you spend before the dog arrives
Budget roughly $300 to $600 for the things you need on day one, and buy them before collection rather than in a panic afterwards.
- A crate large enough for an adult dog, with a divider. $80 to $150.
- A bed, and accept that the first one will be destroyed. $40 to $90.
- Bowls, a collar, a lead, a harness, an identity tag. $60 to $120.
- Food for the first month, of the type the puppy is already eating. $60 to $90.
- Toys, chews, a brush, puppy pads, cleaning products. $80 to $150.
- A baby gate or two, which will save more of your house than anything else on this list. $40 to $80.
The first year
The realistic figure for year one, on top of the purchase price, is somewhere between $1,500 and $3,000. It breaks down roughly like this.
Veterinary care, $300 to $700. The remaining vaccinations, the first year check, worming and parasite prevention. Neutering, if you choose it and when your vet advises it, adds $250 to $800 depending on where you are.
Food, $500 to $900. A growing Golden eats a surprising amount between four and twelve months.
Insurance, $300 to $700. More on this below, because it is the item people skip.
Training, $150 to $400. A good puppy class is the cheapest problem prevention you will ever buy.
Replacing things, $200 to $500. A skirting board, a pair of shoes, a rug, a phone charger. Every first time owner underestimates this and every experienced owner laughs at the estimate.
Every year after that
Between $1,200 and $2,500 a year for a healthy adult dog. Food, insurance, routine veterinary care, parasite prevention, replacing equipment, and boarding or a sitter if you travel.
Boarding is the one people forget. Two weeks of kennels or a house sitter is $400 to $900 in a lot of places, and it recurs every time you want a holiday for the next decade.
The number that ruins people
An unexpected veterinary emergency. Not a routine illness: a torn cruciate ligament, a swallowed object needing surgery, a serious infection.
Those events run from $2,000 to $8,000 and they arrive without warning, usually at the worst possible moment financially. This is the single most common reason a well loved dog is given up, and it is entirely preventable as a crisis.
Either insure the dog from the week it arrives, before anything can be classed as pre-existing, or keep a genuine reserve of several thousand that you do not touch. Doing neither is the gamble that most often ends badly, and it ends badly for the dog rather than for you.
The costs that are not money
Two hours a day for the first six months, between feeding, training, toilet trips and supervision. A dog that cannot reasonably be left more than four hours a day for the first year. No spontaneous weekends away. A brush twice a week for twelve years. Somewhere in the region of fourteen years of commitment, made on a day when you cannot see fourteen years ahead.
Add it up honestly. Twelve to fourteen years at the figures above is somewhere between $18,000 and $35,000, before the purchase price and before any emergency.
Where the money goes wrong
Three patterns account for most of the financial trouble people get into with a dog, and all three are avoidable from the week it arrives.
Buying at the bottom of the market and paying later. A puppy from a badly run litter costs less at the door and considerably more over its life, in veterinary bills, in behavioural help, and occasionally in a decision nobody wants to make. The saving is real and it is almost always borrowed against the future.
Skipping insurance for the first few months. Insurers exclude pre-existing conditions, and a condition counts as pre-existing from the day a symptom is noticed rather than from the day it is diagnosed. Insuring in month four, after a limp in month three, is how people discover that the one thing they wanted covered is the one thing that is not.
Treating training as optional until it is urgent. A puppy class is a couple of hundred. A behaviourist called in at fourteen months, when an adolescent dog has become genuinely difficult, is several times that and takes months. The low cost version happens first.
What we do not charge for
For the avoidance of doubt, and the deposit terms say the same: there is no delivery fee added on top of travel, no administration fee, no charge for the paperwork, no premium for choosing first, and no charge for the health guarantee. The number on the puppy’s page is the number in the agreement and the number on the day.
If that number gives you pause, that is the number doing its job. It is much better to work it out now, on a page, than in year three with a dog in the room.