Goldendance is a small kennel near Saltash in Cornwall with five KC registered golden retrievers; Rowan, Amber, Kingston, Willow and Maple. We are proud to be accepted as KC assured breeders and our overriding concern is for the welfare of our dogs and puppies. We breed golden retrievers as a hobby and our main aims are to breed well balanced, good natured, healthy golden retrievers with a gentle temperament. Our dogs are treated as members of the family and our puppies are as precious as any new born baby. It is truly wonderful and also humbling to be present at the birth of the pups, and to help them and their mum through their first formative few weeks.

We want our puppies to be:

Family pets with excellent temperaments. This is achieved by treating the puppies as a member of the family. The raising of a puppy involves bringing the puppy into contact with as many "family" experiences as possible, including being handled by children, experiencing cats at a young age, and being used to normal family routines. (For example door bells, washing machines, periods of being left alone, television sounds, flushing toilets and so on). Luckily all our neighbours love coming to see the puppies, which helps considerably with this.

Easy to train. This is simple to achieve. Our dogs are descended from working stock. They are naturally intelligent and with just a few tries, a little "treat" and the correct way to help a puppy to sit (NOT by pressing down on the back) all our dogs were sitting to command by 12 weeks old. I think the "sit" command is probably the most important one to master, and we start the training even before the pups leave with their new owners. The other commands follow on from this (eg down, stay, come). The basics of these commands and associated hand signals will be demonstrated to you when you come to select your puppy. It really is quite easy, but the important watch word is consistency.

Golden in colour and a manageable size. This really is about personal preference. I like to see Golden retrievers that have some semblance of coat colour that relates to their breed name. I also want to breed Golden Retrievers that are easily manageable by all but the youngest members of a family. Our girls weigh approximately 22 - 25 kgs and as you can see from the photographs, are GOLDEN. Rowan is slightly heavier at 29 kgs, and a really fit dog. Unfortunately, if you are looking for big white show style golden retrievers then our puppies may not be for you. I like to think that our girls and their puppies represent what the British Golden Retrievers looked like 50 years ago before Retrievers were bred purely for showing in the ring, with little thought for their ancestry or original role as a dog.

Crate trained and with the beginnings of being house trained. Crate training, and having a crate for your dog can be a contentious subject. Some people believe that it is unkind to house a dog in a crate for any time, but I don't believe this is true. All our dogs have been crate trained, Pippin and Maple still have their own crates, and these are more like their own quiet havens than crates. It gives new owners piece of mind if they have to go out, knowing that the puppy is not chewing the kitchen or the carpet etc.Our dogs have NEVER chewed anything in the house (apart from their food!). We will crate train all our puppies, but then its up to you! I can definitely recommend using a crate though, as it gives you, the owner, knowledge that your puppy is safe, and probably more importantly, a safe, quiet place for your puppy to relax - his / her own place. House training is another hurdle to tackle. Most breeders frankly dont bother with this, but we like to start with the pups at 3 weeks old by providing a toilet area in the whelping pen. We were really lucky because the breeder of Holly and Willow had started the house training. I can honestly say there has only been 1 "accident" in the house in two and a half years, and that was my fault really! Rowan, Pippin and Maple were all "dry" from day 1 in our home. So, we will start the house training and hopefully the puppies will be just about trained by the time they're ready for collection. Unfortunately, puppies don't have full control of their toilet function until they are 4/ 5 months old, so you must expect an accident or two! Using a crate also greatly assists with the process of toilet training, and plenty of advice is given on the best way to achieve both in the shortest, most "painless" way.

Eating solid food at regular meal times. - An odd one to include, but quite important. Weaning the pups and the transfer onto fully solid food is really the last stage of development before the pups leave us at eight weeks. Very rarely, problems can occur in the pups intestines as the weaning process takes place, so we like to ensure that the pups are fully weaned by the time they are 6 weeks old, which gives us a further two weeks ensuring everything is fine. To start with the pups eat a very watered down, mushed up, good quality puppy kibble made by Arden Grange. We then gradually reduce the water content and "mushiness" until at seven and a half weeks its just dried kibble with a little water added at the time of feeding. We also introduce regular feed times so that we can monitor how much each pup is eating, rather than just leaving a bowl of food down. By the time a pup is collected therefore, it is used to having four regularly spaced meal times with puppy kibble and a little water. This regular feeding also helps with toilet training. Many breeders do not pay much attention to this aspect of the pups development, with some not even weaning the pups properly before they leave for their new homes....

Plenty of advice will be given to new puppy owners with their KC new puppy owner packs, and also some practical demonstrations on training to command.