We have a three year old golden. Today, he bit my 8 year old daughter. She was standing about three feet from him as he ate his food. She has been the closest of the entire family to him. We have noticed for over a year that he shows aggression toward most strangers. His aggression increases significantly around small children. But this was the first time he had shown aggression toward my daughter. Do we have a problem dog?

I hope your daughter is ok.
If you search this site you will see there have been several instances of Golden Retrievers biting.
Dawn.

Get a referral to a reputable behaviourist via the vet. The dog must be assessed and it can be taken from there. It may have been food bowl aggression which can be trained out very often, but if he is also aggressive towards strangers then you do need to get help and expert advice.

It does seem that some Goldies are not as easy going as the breed used to be :(

Best wishes
Lindsay

Hi Guest :)
How awful for you :( and your daughter. Please register so you can come back on this thread.
I hope some of the more eperienced people on the board can offer you some advice.
It must be very worrying.
Ali :(

Hi there,
We have just had a problem with our Golden, Sonny. I won't go into details on that here - just to say that it does seem to getting increasingly common.
Hope your daughter is okay.

ruth

Would you like to give me a ring to talk about your problem I would like to have more info to be able to give you advice. It could be a number of things. Possibly as you say it has been devoloping over the year he is maturing and possibly becoming dominant and you need to understand how to deal with it. If that is the case it can be sorted quite easily. My no. is 01903 245705

Bobbi

if you need any help please feel free to email me as I help run the eastern counties golden retriever rescue so know about their behavior PLUS i have children of my own.
emma@amberscade.fsnet.co.uk

With any kind of agression that comes on suddenly like this, a reputable behaviourists won't consider a consultation without a vets referral for one very good reason - there may be a veterinary reason behind the change in behaviour (such as thyroid problem with Retreivers can be prone to, or maybe pain) which needs to be assesed first.