Find Your Perfect Companion at Life's Journey -G-
Our goal is to help match each puppy with the right home. While we ultimately let each owner pick which puppy they want, we help them make an educated decision. Because of this, our reservation process is structured, transparent, and designed to ensure the best possible fit for both the puppy and your family.
A successful match!
Duke found his furever home in January and couldn't be happier with this sweet couple and his older brother Atlas!
Next steps in the Puppy Process
How the Reservation Process Works
Reserving a puppy begins by joining our reservation list. A reservation fee is required to hold your place for an upcoming litter. This allows us to plan ahead and sets the pick order when puppies become available. Puppies are not selected immediately after birth. Instead, we raise and observe each puppy through the early weeks, allowing their structure, temperament, and personality to begin to develop. This helps ensure that each family is able to make an educated decision to select a puppy that best fits their goals.
Puppy Selection
Puppy selection typically takes place around 6 to 7 weeks of age. Rather than choosing based solely on color or early impressions, we guide the process using what we have observed throughout the litter’s development and the Volhard Puppy Aptitude Test. We consider temperament, confidence, engagement, and overall disposition to help families choose their puppy appropriately.
Reservation Fee
A $500 reservation fee is required to secure your place on our list.
This fee:
- Holds your position for an upcoming litter
- Is applied toward the total purchase price of your puppy
- Helps us plan and prepare for each litter responsibly
- Can be used toward a future litter should you decide prior to puppies being 6 weeks of age that you would rather wait for a future litter.
What's included in setting you and your puppy up for success
ENS/ESI Training
Potty/ Crate Training
ENS/ESI Training
Our puppies receive ENS (Early Neurological Stimulation) training, developed for and used by service dog and military organizations, for the first 2 weeks of their lives. Puppies who receive this training have stronger immune systems and improves circulation, better stress tolerance, are more adaptable to new situations, and have stronger heart beats.
Our puppies also receive ESI (Early Scent Introduction) training. These exercises occur in the first 2 weeks of their lives. Scent is the way puppies experience the world. By helping puppies be introduced to natural scents early on it helps improve their scenting abilities for later in life, enhances their confidence and stability as adults, helps reduce behavioral issues in the long term.
If your puppy is going to be used for a service role or as a working gun dog, please let us know and we can start introducing “job specific” scents to help increase their association with that scent early on.
Potty/ Crate Training
Potty/ Crate Training
Our puppies learn the basics of potty training from around three weeks old. Each week we build on skills and work on teaching them to go potty outside, which is a great start to potty training!
The puppies are also exposed to crates early on and learn that the crate is a safe restful place.
Naming your Puppy and Sit
Once your puppy has been named, we will start referring to your puppy by his or her name. We will also start working on basic commands such as sit with your puppy.
Deworming
We deworm our puppies at 2, 4, and 6 weeks old to make sure we catch any parasites or worms they may have picked up. This way they are off to a good start and you know for sure your puppy is healthy when you take him home!
First Vet Visit
We take all of our puppies in for their first vet check at six weeks; our vet weighs each puppy, listens to their heart and lungs, takes their temperature, examines their eyes, ears, nose, feet, genitalia, skin, coat, teeth, mouth, palpates the abdomen and lymph nodes. Our vet will also administer their first set of shots. You will receive a signed copy of this assessment. The veterinary clinic we use is Reid Veterinary Clinic
Health Guarantee
Your puppy is guaranteed until one year of age against genetic or congenital defects which would cause death or need to be humanely euthanized. To read our full Health Guarantee, please contact us.
AKC Registration
Pictures/Lifetime of support
Each puppy comes with AKC limited registration papers. When you complete your portion and submit it to AKC with the proper fee, the AKC will process the application and you will receive an official AKC Registration Certificate for your Golden Retriever.
Pictures/Lifetime of support
Pictures/Lifetime of support
You will receive weekly pictures of your puppies! We will also send videos starting around 3 weeks old.
Once your puppy is 8 weeks old and you take him/her home please know that we are only an email and phone call/ text away. Supporting our puppy families is very important to us and we want to empower and encourage you along the way!
Puppy Food
Your puppy will go home with a small bag of our puppy food so you can slowly transition him to the food that you are going to feed him. We recommend and feed our puppies Diamond Brand Puppy Food
Socialization
Once your puppy goes home with you, they have already experienced being around lots of people, kids, our other (vaccinated) dogs, and cats, different toys, loud noises, being outside, being inside, riding in the car, getting a bath, playing in a kiddie pool, going up and down stairs, getting brushed, going to the vet, and as many other daily life things we can make them part of!
Baby Blanket
Volhard's Puppy Aptitude Test
We give each puppy their own cute and cozy blanket that they'll get to take home with them. The blankets smell like mom and their littermates, helping them sleep better those first few nights in their new home.
Volhard's Puppy Aptitude Test
Volhard's Puppy Aptitude Test
The PAT will be administered at 7 weeks in an unfamiliar environment to assess behavioral tendencies, temperament, and workability.
The goal is to provide a "snapshot" of the puppy's personality to help match them with the most suitable home or working role.
It is important to note that this is just a snapshot in time as adult behavior relies heavily on ongoing training, socialization, and the environment.
Some examples of what the test can help identify is:
The Ultimate Family Pet (Scores of 3 and 4):
Look for puppies that follow easily, wag their tails during social attraction, and settle quickly during restraint. These puppies adjust easily to busy households with children.
The Service/Therapy Prospect (Scores of 4, with low sensitivity): Pay close attention to Touch Sensitivity (Test 7) and Sound/Sight Sensitivity (Tests 8, 9, 10). A great service dog candidate should have a high threshold for touch (not melting or biting when pinched) and recover almost instantly from the metal pan noise and the opening umbrella.
The Field Trial / Hunting Companion (Scores of 2 and 3, high retrieve drive): Look for a puppy that eagerly pursues the crumpled paper in Retrieving (Test 6), grabs it, and wants to bring it back to you. They should also show high interest and low fear in the Sight Sensitivity (Test 9) towel test, indicating a strong, workable prey drive. To learn more about this test check out this website: https://www.volharddognutrition.com/choosing-your-puppy-pat/?srsltid=AfmBOooAaBZqlnluPduasa4BqnyQtFGhLu2ufspsVbv7k-HJ3BMnFbCO
A Note From the Breeder
Our investment
It's easy to see a litter of puppies and not realize the investment that is put into them. It is not only the eight weeks the pups are out of their mama's womb.
It also isn't the 63 days they are developing.
The work starts from day one with our mama dogs and never stops. The effort and love poured in to help create the right environment to allow all the amazing qualities of Goldies to flourish and be passed down.
Love and Care
It takes knowledge and a strong bond with your mama dog to know when she is ready and if she needs a break from having puppies.
None of these pictures just happened. They were all part of the little things done each day to ensure the quality of life for our mama dogs and to help produce some of the sweetest and smartest pups you will meet.
Joy
It is one of my greatest delights watching my girls raise their puppies. They are fiercely loyal, attentive, and the weaning process is the hardest because they enjoy being a mom so much. It might be tiring at times keeping everyone fed but it's also fun showing them the ropes of Goldie Life.