A couple of years ago we moved to the countryside and since then I've been surrounded by Goldens on all sides! I reckon there's 3 within 200 yards of the house.
So that's brought my childhood passion for them flooding up again! I keep fantasising about getting one in 2 or 3 years time.....
Tell me it's crazy though. I need some sense kicked into me.
We live in the countryside surrounded by sheep and cows, but our walls are very low and are traditional piled stone. In other words, not too easy to raise and what height would they even have to be anyway?
We don't have a gate at the moment (literally no need) and would have to get one - but the gatepost are only 4 foot high! (and the walls are even lower).
So that's a problem. One of the neighbours has installed a dog run to keep her Golden in but she still has much higher walls. I think it's more to contain the dog in the garden when they go out on errands. In other words the dog has the full use of the garden when they're at home. But surely our walls are too low for free range?
On the plus side one of us is at home all the time, but on the downside we have kids who are still fairly young. I don't even know what age we would have to wait until. 8/10?
Oh and whilst we have a big house, Goldens are really big. Where would it even sleep?? Our utility is too narrow and that just leaves the playroom really.
On the plus side we're both good walkers but we used to have a JRT that needed an hour twice a day and tbh it half killed us. I don't know if we'd have the energy for that going into our 50s tbh. At the moment we each would do about 5/6km a day but that's all. I honestly don't think we could do more. There's a Goldie owner up the road who seems to be forever walking the dog, every time you look out!
Are these dealbreakers? Give me a kick up the bum and tell me we'd be better off with a toy breed!