Welcome to Laurelin Goldens!
Thank you for visiting the Laurelin Goldens website! We are an ethical, boutique Golden Retriever breeder in Chicago, IL. We are very passionate about Golden Retrievers and we hope to leave a positive mark on the breed’s history. Golden Retrievers are truly a gift and share a unique bond with their people. To have been loved by a Golden is to know true love.
Our dogs are first and foremost our beloved pets. We started competing with them through the desire for a deeper bond and we discovered that nothing, and I mean NOTHING develops a bond with a dog like training does. Training led to competing which led to developing our breeding program. We primarily breed for ourselves, and we take our responsibility to the puppies we produce – and the breed as a whole – very seriously.
Please have a look around our website! Keep scrolling to see more about our goals, values, and priorities. Our About page features information on Golden Retrievers and the humans behind this program. The Our Goldens page is where you can find out more about our Laurelin Goldens and Puppies is where you can find our litter plans. Our Process is where you can find information on how to get a puppy from us, what to expect from us as breeders, and what we expect from you as buyers.
Priorities at Laurelin Goldens
Bred with Purpose
Our purpose is to breed healthy, versatile, adaptable, and confident Golden Retrievers. Our dogs are athletes and compete in a variety of sports to prove their trainability, confidence, and intelligence. We believe that what is between the ears is extremely important. A dog that can go from one sport to the next without missing a beat is our goal. We primarily focus on conformation, obedience, rally, and dock diving, but plan to explore field work and agility in the future. The modern Golden Retriever should be a versatile dog that is able to do anything you want to do with her/him. We believe that a Golden should never be a lazy couch potato.
As stewards for the future of Goldens, stacking the deck in our puppies’ favor is of utmost importance. We do our very best to breed healthy Golden Retriever puppies that have the best chance of living a long, pain free life. We follow the Golden Retriever Club of America Code of Ethics for health testing on all of our breeding animals, including hips, elbows, heart, annual eye exams, and DNA. Longevity, allergies, skin and digestive system sensitivities, etc. also factor into our breeding decisions. We don’t want to deal with a constantly itchy dog and we don’t want you to have to deal with it either.
Bred for Health
Bred to Standard
In addition to proving our dogs’ temperaments in performance sports, we prove their structure and breed type in the conformation ring. We strive to match the breed standard as closely as possible. The breed standard defines what makes a Golden a Golden. Good structure and efficient movement are essential for any athlete and for long-term quality of life. The original breed purpose needed an athlete that could handle the weather, terrain, and plant life in the Scottish Highlands. We believe this means that Goldens should be neither light-boned speed demons nor heavy and clunky and that a moderate dog is most correct.
And besides, who says smart dogs can’t be pretty?
Our Goals
Versatility of Laurelin Goldens
Our goals are to produce happy, healthy, confident puppies that are versatile, adaptable, and intelligent. One of our more specific goals is to achieve Versatility Certificates (VC) from the Golden Retriever Club of America (GRCA) on all of our future dogs. This means that our dogs will need to be titled in Conformation, Performance/Companion Sports, and in the field. Titling in all three venues is an enormous amount of work. So far, we have titled dogs in conformation, obedience, and rally. Field work is next on our to-do list!
Selective Breeding
We hope to achieve our main goal of versatility by being very selective in our stud dog choices and the puppies we keep in our program. While versatility is a priority, we do not breed to titles either. When choosing stud dogs, we only seriously consider dogs that we have seen in person. As they say, “attitude is everything” and that can only really be seen in person. Breeding based on photos and/or proximity is not something that we do around here.
Additionally, we only breed litters that we think will produce puppies that we will want to keep. This does NOT mean that we keep a puppy from every litter. It means that we are very selective with our breedings and that we don’t breed very often. It also means that we raise each litter as if one of the puppies is staying here with us. We want our own dogs to be versatile, adaptable, and intelligent (like I said above), and this extends to the puppies that we do not keep as well.
Raising Laurelin Goldens Puppies
How puppies are raised is also important for our goals. A well-adjusted adult starts as a well-adjusted puppy. So, we do our best to expose our puppies to a variety of stimuli and novel experiences. This includes handling them every day starting from birth, letting them solve age appropriate problems, exposure to noise (we let them “watch” Jurassic Park at about 3.5 weeks of age), various surfaces (e.g. carpet, hardwood, brick, concrete, grass), stairs, and an “adventure box”. We also expose them to crates early so they learn that crates are just a part of life. Giving our puppies the best start in life that we can is extremely important to us.
