Iam the proud owner of a 19 month old golden retreiver, who is well known for her extravert behaviour !! from about the age of ( well in fact for ever) she has been hyper active has suffered from seperation chews anything plastic and has on going problems with her nerves and on walks shows sighns of fear aggression! she is ony fed on holistic food and recieves prescribed flower remedies and has made very good progress we also work very hard with our dog obediance and are at an advanced level( we are now attempting our first grading ) But she is being such a difficult teenager! so stuborn and will completly ignore me at times especialy in company! she likes to give me a false sense of secruity and them wham shes stuborn again > I would really like reasusrance that these difficult times do pass and any advice will be greatly received?
I would also like to warn any wannabe fist time owners to be careful as i found out the hard way with my doggy! i unwittingly bought her from a puppy farm and the owner insisted to me that at 5 and a half weeks old she was ready i have learned a very hard lesson to the cost of not just myself but my retriver (shes from an un registered litter) alot of her behaviour problems stem from this(seperate to the teen issues) Thanx i feel better for getting some of this off my chest .... Nellie

Can anyone advise? :-)

Hi,
I too am the very proud owner of an 8 month old Golden puppy. I am sorry to hear that you are having problems. I have been very lucky as my pup has never been distructive or really done anything wrong, but we give her so much attention and rarely leave her alone. I think Goldens need human company and love to be fussed all the time. As I have not been in your position (touch wood) I do not feel that I can give you any advice other than to say that loads of attention and training classes have worked wonders for us. Also getting her from a good breeder where she had a very good start in life could have only helped her become the happy puppy she is.
As for Puppy Farms no one should ever go near them or the people who run them. Before I had Lacey I took in another puppy. The puppy already had a health problem which meant she couldn't be bred from, but when we took her to the vet for a check we were advised to return her because she possibly had serious elbow problems too, which would have caused her and us great heartache all her life. We were devistated, but did return her and that was difficult enough.
I hope you can get over your problem and from what people say they do get quieter etc with age. Hang on in there.
Good luck.