For more information about the parents of our current litters or with any other questions about pedigrees, health clearances, photos, etc, email us at . Also tell us a bit about yourself and what you expect from your golden.

photo of current litter

I'm sorry that the photos above are not top notch. We suffered a computer breakdown last  year and lost our photo files. Why not take new ones? Because right now at the end of spring and the beginning of summer everybody is shedding. All of them look like wolves in the wild, great hunks of hair coming off in handfuls . . . all that beautiful coat just blowing in the wind. I am looking at at least one weekend of intense grooming with brush and matting comb. And even that won't keep Swee'Pea and Daisy out of the water and mud. During their runs they always chase down to the pond and get filthy. But someday in the next 11 weeks we'll get 'em cleaned up and fit for a trip to town! It won't be hard they are as naked as jaybirds.

Don't let this scare you, goldens are mostly wash 'n wear, but we have 13 and they don't get baths all winter so this is a lot of catch-up I'm talking about. Our bloodlines carry a lot of coat, but all puppies have their puppy coats to shed once in their lives and we have a few here at Goodfriends that are supplying all of our birds with wonderful soft, fluffy nests.

The first four weeks the pups nurse and grow at a prodigious rate. They start out looking like Yodas with heads, some kind of marsupial, then in a few days they fill out and do astounding things like weight gains that just don't seem possible. They start dragging themselves around the whelping box, learn to get up on the pig rail, peep over the top, and generally become recognizable as puppies.

These four weeks are pure entertainment . . . no work. We have a sofa and chairs around the whelping box and pretty much don't watch any TV that month. Watching puppies is like staring at a fire.  Great therapy.

The next four weeks is different. Mom weans them, there is a week of picking up mega poopage while they eat solid food and learn to leave their indoor pen via the puppy door to do all that outdoors. They pick up on that pretty fast, which is a blessing. Of course, they are still just taking it outside and guess who gets to do the scooping? Believe it or not, that is fun too. Since there is more brown rounds produced than you can imagine, and all day long, I go out often and it gives me a chance to play with the boogers. It makes the whole summer. I plan for this one to be memorable.

Here at Goodfriends, we breed a litter of puppies only a few times a year. Because each of these "blessed events" pass so quickly, we tend to wring out every moment we can. We raise our puppies underfoot and give them all the love and attention they need to become well socialized, confident little goldens. Due to the way we are set up for a very young litter, they come to you with a pretty good idea of what is expected of them in terms of house training. 

From the beginning, we photograph the mamadog, the whelping, and the puppies as they grow up to be eight weeks old. Our first photograph is generally mama on her back, playfully and proudly pushing up a belly full of pups and the second photograph is of her delivering the firstborn. More photographs follow, and then once a week, more photographs chronicling the phenomenal growth stages of the little ones. Folks who have reserved a puppy from the litter receive these photographs as they are taken, either via snail mail, or instantly via e-mail. We hope that they are printed out for the puppy's scrapbook!

We take photographs of the puppies' first opening of the eyes, the first time they push up on their front legs to peer over the wall of the whelping box, and of their first steps on all four wobblies. We wouldn't miss the opportunity to photograph their first meal away from mom's milk bar at four weeks old, and at five weeks old, when they have outgrown their whelping box, we are there with the camera to record "moving day", when they go to their indoor/outdoor puppy pen.

After a couple days of exploring the roomier indoor puppy pen and learning to sleep on the comforter on one end and "go" on the newspapers on the other end, the most fun day of photographing happens. The day we open the doggie door to the outdoor puppy pen. What a lot to learn in one day! Space! Room to run! The idea of running and playing with all the space a puppy can find! This is a red letter day for us and the pups alike.

From this day on through their remaining three weeks with us, each hour a different pup comes indoors for individual attention and "house training" with us. Already preferring to use the doggie door to go outside to do their "dog duty", the pups learn all about the wonders of life indoors with mom and dad. They stalk the vacuum cleaner and the cat, chase around the kitchen under mom's feet, sit on dad's lap in front of the computer and chew his ears and swipe at the keyboard, and curl up against the warm clothes dryer for a nap. We clip their nails, scratch their ears, and cuddle them in our laps.

It's a good life for a puppy at Goodfriends!