Gaylan's Golden Retrievers Expectations:

Yours and Ours

What You Can Expect From Us.

When you buy a Gaylan's puppy, your are buying a piece of our family. Not only are our puppies the focus of our lives and energy for the first two months of their lives, but they also represent our commitment to and knowledge of golden retrievers.  All of our puppies come from healthy, well-conformed parents with sound bodies and temperaments--their mother is our family companion, not a kennel dog.

The pups are raised in the living area of our home so they are accustomed to the hustle and bustle of family life. Gaylan's puppies are handled and socialized from birth, with daily individual attention.  This attention includes Bio-Sensor exercises that are done with the pups from three to sixteen days of age (See Dr. Carmen Battaglia's article in the AKC Gazette-May 1995).  They are also socialized with children, other dogs and, if possible, cats.  By the time they go home at nine to ten weeks, they have been introduced to live and dead birds, started their housebreaking and simple obedience training, and been in crates and on car rides. If the weather permits, the pups will also be introduced to water.

Our goal is to carefully place each pup with a well-suited family, ideally, in a hunting or competition home. In addition, a few of our pups each year become family companions in active pet homes. We make every effort to match each owner or family with the pup that best suits them. To do this, we gather information from prospective owners about their life style, experience in dogs, and expectation for their pup.  We also keep careful records of each puppy's reactions and personality to assist in placement.  During their seventh week, we have other breeders evaluate the puppies' temperaments, using Sheila Booth's "Positive Puppy Preview." In the eighth week, we have a breeder or judge evaluate their conformation.

Gaylan's puppies receive the best of care while they are with us. They are raised naturally, nursing as long as their mother will allow and transitioning to a raw diet as weaning begins. To protect their immature immune systems, the pups receive only a single distemper-parvovirus vaccine while they are with us. We do nomograph's on their mother's titers to determine exactly when the pups should be innoculated. We send them home with strong recommendations for follow up titers and vaccinations. The pups are also wormed regularly from four weeks of age on. Each pup also receives an individual examination by our veterinarian, a skilled practitioner. Most litters will also have their initial clearances before heading to their new homes: a heart check by a veterinary cardiologist, and their first eye exam by an veterinary opthamologist.

We will take any dogs of our breeding back at any time for any reason. We will place the animal into a new, loving home, refunding as much of the original purchase price as possible depending on the age, training, and condition of the dog.

What We Expect From You.

With regards to our puppies, our primary expectation is that your puppy will be a significant and beloved member of your family. He or she should live in your home (not in a kennel or back yard) and receive quality food, medical care, and training.  We prefer buyers with fully fenced yards but will make exceptions if you have the time and available facilities for adequate exercise and constant outside supervision. We prefer experienced owners for our pups, those who have had other dogs since they have become adults. At a minimum, we expect our buyers to commit to daily, intensive exercise and training throughout the life of the dog, as well as weekly formal training classes with the pup through adulthood, two to three years of age, preferably at a certified dog training facility.

Our puppies must be fed a super premium diet. We prefer owners who feed a raw diet but will accept one of the Whole Dog Journal's super-premium freeze-dried, dry or canned foods. We also expect their owners to become partners with their veterinarian in their dog's health care, rather than turning all decisions over to their vet. Our pups should not receive annual vaccines but instead should have titers run prior to receiving follow-on vaccines.

If you are buying one of our performance quality pups, we expect you will train and show this puppy in conformation, obedience, field, and/or agility, to a relatively high level (CH, UD, SH, AX, etc.).  We do not sell to brokers or anyone acting as an agent for another buyer. We prefer to sell our pups only to buyers in the U.S. and Canada.

Our commitment to producing healthy pups demands that we collect genetic information from all pups of our breeding. For this reason, we require that all of our pups be tested for genetic diseases at 24 months of age at the owner's expense. This testing provides important health information to owners and includes OFA hip and elbow x-rays, an eye exam by a certified veterinary ophthamologist, and a heart exam by a board certified cardiologist. Depending upon where you live, these tests will cost under $700. We encourage our puppy owners who have purchased breeding quality animals to submit PennHIP x-rays between 8-12 months of age. This will add to the cost of these tests.