Bringing Joy through Golden Retrievers
Bringing Joy through Golden Retrievers
Service & Therapy Dogs
Golden Retrievers have the potential to be excellent service dogs. According to the American Kennel Club, Golden Retrievers are affectionate, playful, and highly adaptable and trainable. Their intelligence, friendliness, and devotion endear them to young and old alike. With proper training, they have the ability to excel as service or therapy dogs in a variety of capacities.
Raising Future Service Dogs
At Summer’s Goldens, our intentional socialization prepares our puppies to be the best service dogs. We utilize the Volhard test to evaluate each puppy’s natural service dog potential. We strive to cultivate friendly, trainable personality traits in our Golden Retriever puppies.
High-quality socialization during the first two months of a puppy's life is one of the most critical components of its lifelong development. Socialization provides a strong foundation for emotionally healthy, well-adjusted adult dogs. This is easy to claim but hard to do. There simply is no replacement for quality time spent with puppies.
We follow the lead of Dr. Carmen L. Battaglia and start with early neurological stimulation (ENS) when the puppies are just three days old. We continue thorough socialization until the puppies leave us. This includes exposing our puppies to a variety of different surfaces to walk on, human touch all over their bodies, temperature changes, different sounds like fireworks, doorbells, cats meowing, and car engines. Additionally, they are introduced to children, baths, nail trims, and more. We want our puppies to be more than just physically healthy; we want them to be mentally and emotionally ready for their future families.
Our Goldens in Service
Golden Retrievers are adaptable for many types of service assignments, whether it's as a guide dog, mobility assistant, or therapy dog. Many of our Summer’s Goldens puppies have been adopted as service dogs, and we love hearing how they thrive at work. Golden Retrievers naturally have a great temperament for service dogs, but we start them off on the right foot by spending intentional time with them as they grow and develop.
We invite you to enjoy these inspiring stories of our very own Goldens serving others through their work. These stories highlight the dedication, intelligence, and loving nature of our dogs as they make a meaningful impact on the lives of those they assist.