I know many on here prefer rescues (we always had rescues when I grew up) but we have gone for a puppy for a very specific reason. My eldest son (11) is severely autistic and we want to train the dog to be a therapy (rather than service) dog. Also he can be suddenly very loud and I felt it wasn't fair to expose an older dog to that suddenly. We did look at rescue pups but they seem pretty hard to find and I wanted to choose a dog that would find retrieving instinctual (will make the therapy training easier). We also have 2 younger sons (8 and 5). We've gone for a golden retriever.
He was born this week - have seen some photos and he is gorgeous.
The breeder is excellent - she plays a CD of noises to the litter to desensitise them to fireworks etc and she has offered to play a load of ds1's noises to the litter as well. If there's anything else anyone can think of that she might be able to do to help the puppy's transition please let me know. She does start to crate train the dogs which I think will be useful for us as it will give the puppy a safe quiet space to be away from the children- who will be taught to respect that space.
Training wise I'll start with puppy classes obviously (any advice on finding a good class welcomed) and will take socialisation seriously. Also recall is extremely important to us (can't have the dog going in one direction and ds1 in another) so the basics are obviously the first step. Next spring we're going on a dogs for the disabled course but I was wondering whether anyone had any other suggestions.
I guess I might need to find a 1:1 trainer to help me train the puppy in retrieval (around which a therapy can be built - good fun for the puppy/dog and all the kids as well). But how do I find a decent trainer?
Anyway very excited. We've seen some photos of the litter and they're gorgeous.