Dog breed identification – a small golden retriever?

At some point we will get a dog and there are several breeds in contention. My daughter isn’t so sure about dogs, apart from one we met in Aviemore. In fact she has talked about the dog quite a few times since and wondered if we can find out where it lives…

The dog in question was like a small golden retriever, but with shorter legs. A bit Corgi/Dachshund like but not as small. Could it just have been a smaller version of a golden retriever?

They’re a thing now and they’re exactly that – a daschund/retriever cross.

And no, I’m not entirely sure how that works either 😀

Cocker Spaniel.

Forget breeds, go to a rescue place.

[And FWIW, I knew someone who had a Jack Russell/Labrador cross. The Jack Russell was the father. I think we can all say, you know, fair play fella]

Forget breeds, go to a rescue place.

Swings and roundabouts if you’ve got kids that aren’t 100% with dogs. On the one hand you get to see what the dog is like grown up, if it’s a barely trained asshole with no recall or social skills then it’s likely to largely remain that way (without a lot of work and a lot of good luck), OTOH if she gets on with it now then problem solved, it’s not going to hit adolescence and become a nightmare.

They’re a thing now and they’re exactly that – a daschund/retriever cross.

Yep, they’re the latest fashionable mogrel.  The hip issues of a retriever, the back issues of a daschund and a dice roll of personality/instinct.

Alternatively may just have been a more typical English Labrador, traditionally they’re much smaller than the American “Marley and Me” labs, they can be bred to be about as small as springers.  Cross that with a Golden and you’d probably end up with something that looked like a miniaturized Golden.

Small retriever?

That’ll be a Nova Scotia Duck Toller. We have a couple round my way and they seem great!

if it’s a barely trained asshole with no recall or social skills then it’s likely to largely remain that way (without a lot of work and a lot of good luck)

If you’re getting a dog as a pup it needs a lot of work, or it too will be a barely trained asshole (well, the dog’s not the asshole, the owner is).

The three things that have the greatest influence on a dog’s behaviour and demeanour, in descending order of impact, are:

1) The amount of work (as in time, patience and understanding) you put in as an owner

2) Inherent traits within the dog itself

3) The breed

All Nos 2 and 3 do is affect how much you have to do in No1, but, regardless, No1 is 95% of it.

if you’ve got kids that aren’t 100% with dogs

And if you’ve got kids who aren’t 100% with dogs, don’t get a dog. Nervous owner = nervous dog.

Yeah, sounds like a duck-tolling retriever. My dog walker pal takes one out and is very positive on the breed.

Clippy is a retriever spaniel cross, like a small golden black retriever

 sounds like a duck-tolling retriever

For some reason, I always read the name as Duck Trolling Retriever…
“Call yerself a duck? You’re a rubbish duck. I can bark louder than you can quack, and I can swim better than you. Etc etc”

Have you considered getting her a rescue landcruiser instead?

Forget breeds, go to a rescue place.

When we got our first dog we looked at rescue places but, as @thisisnotaspoon says, not always a good idea with kids. In fact, when we looked, the vast majority (almost exclusively) said no young children (although some dogs were okay with 12 yr old+ children). They also expect you to have a large outdoor space that is 100% secure and guarantees about how long you would be at home during the day etc etc.

As for breed – I wouldn’t consider a dachshund (even a cross) around small kids – they are often yappy and nippy and can also be aggressive around other dogs.

And if you’ve got kids who aren’t 100% with dogs, don’t get a dog. Nervous owner = nervous dog.

I don’t entirely agree with that – one of our girls was initially nervous around dogs but she is fine now (we have two dogs). It was also the same for my brother-in-law’s family – one nervous child but, he too, is now fine around their two dogs.

We have a lot of Dachshunds round my way that I meet when I’m out with my designer mongrel (Goldendoodle). Aside from 1 (who is a rescue) they are all pricks.

We also looked at rescue places when we got our dog but having a 8 year kid meant it was basically no go.

Dogs are hard work, none come trained, and some are too clever for their owners to handle (looking at those working dogs), but all are extremely rewarding to own. I am very much Rescue first regardless, but no not all rescue dogs are suitable for all situations, but the shelter will be aware of which ones those are.

This is the closest I have found based on what I can remember. This one looks a bit Spaniel

It had a very calm temperament, wasn’t like a Spaniel or a Dachshund

One of these?

We have a cockapoo and he’s awesome. Next door has a cockapoo too and she’s equally ace but has also recently got a maltipoo which is basically a smaller, bouncier, fluffier cockapoo and she’s absolutely glorious – like a tiny teddy bear. For kids unsure about dogs, you should definitely look at maltipoos.

That is one weird looking mutt!

1) The amount of work (as in time, patience and understanding) you put in as an owner

Yes, but if that work wasn’t put in doing the proper socialization in the first 6 months then it’s unlikely the dog will ever be really OK with kids/dogs/car/cats/motorbikes/sirens/fireworks/music/postman/high-vi or whatever they have issues with.  At 6 months they switch from thinking everything being equally new / interesting and just getting on with it, to everything new just being scary.  Ditto training in general, past 2 years it get’s exponentially harder because not only have you got to teach it, you’ve got to figure out what it’s already learnt by accident and how to redirect that.

For example teaching a puppy to be calm when the postman arrives is relatively straightforward. Teaching a 2 year old dog not to bark at the postman is infinitely harder.

It’s why most rescue centers have long lists of things like no kids, dogs, men, small animals, quiet areas, uniforms, etc.  If you can tick those boxes for a particular dog then great, but if not then a puppy may well be the better option for both you and the dog.  When we filmed The Dog House, the magic of TV made it look like families came in and we went through a long list of suitable dogs to find the perfect one for them.  The reality was we were sometimes importing dogs from other shelters/charities specifically for the people cast to be on the show.  And “have you considered a lurcher” became an inside joke whenever someone in production was indecisive over anything!

Been there and done it twice, once with a Spaniel that had zero trainability.  His only instinct off-lead was to run in a straight line until he found a fence, then look for a hole in it. He had to be walked on lead and supervised at all times until the arthritis slowed him down. Thankfully he was fairly typical working spaniel in that he had zero interest in people or most other dogs.   And once with an Akita x Rottweiler that turned out to be even more reactive than first thought because he could settle into a shelter or home with people he knew, but absolutely could not be introduced to any new people or walked in public.  He’s now (not a euphemism I’ve seen the photos of him standing over the stable door) gone to live his best life on a farm.

Re-homing a rescue is a great thing to do, but I’d not guilt someone into it if it’s not going to be the right dog for them.

well, the dog’s not the asshole, the owner is

If we’re going to anthropomorphize dogs, they take after their owners 😉

Could it just have been a smaller version of a golden retriever?

Probably a Faraway retriever

We have a lot of Dachshunds round my way that I meet when I’m out with my designer mongrel (Goldendoodle). Aside from 1 (who is a rescue) they are all pricks.

Every single one of them have a Napoleon complex.

Could it have been a working golden retriever.  They’re smaller than “show pedigree” golden retrievers. Ours is 28kg whereas a show golden is likely to be 35kg.

Daschunds are absolute shits, all of them. One was kicking off in the cafe I was in this morning. Cockerpoo and cocker spaniel thought it was a **** as well from their expressions.

A friend has one of those duck trolling retrievers, lovely dog.

And no, I’m not entirely sure how that works either

Lots of breeding nowadays is done via artificial insemination, so size really doesn’t matter!

We’ve got a miniture red Groodle (golden retriver/poodle cross) she lovely but mental!

I met a dog that was a cross between a French bulldog and a Labrador. I was told the that frenchie had disappeared into some bushes for a bit and came back pregnant.
It had a frenchie body with a lab’s head , kind of looked liked scrappy doo but couldn’t talk like scrappy could

Sounds more like shaggy.

It’s definitely a catch 22 situation. Almost all dogs (I know not all) in rescues are there because their owners did it wrong so they aren’t suitable to be around people/children/dogs/the world. The rescues also insist you have a suitable living arrangement to mitigate the stupidity of people. A secure fence to stop all those ‘dog found loose down the road’ facebook posts and and are home/will exercise them a suitable amount to stop the trainers getting endless queries such as ‘my dog is being an idiot’, ‘my dog destroyed this’.

The flip side of this is getting a puppy which is born not knowing anything and relies on you to teach it everything you want, it will not be born knowing your child is nervous of dogs. My husband has plenty of t-shirts with holes in it from my now well behaved dog from when he was a puppy and at one point his arms were full of tiny red marks, I’ve been a puppy raiser before and knew what not to do (he doesn’t listen).

At the end of the day somebody isn’t going to put in 2 years worth of chuffing hard graft and then go ‘okay off to the rescue you go’ and those very few where the circumstance means they have no choice will get snapped up faster than you can say ‘h’.

Have you perhaps considered for the next couple of years trying to get her better with dogs before taking one on? Why not look into something like borrow my doggy to see if anybody with a very child savy dog needs some help? Generally speaking you get a certain sort of dog owner on the website because all those with very badly behaved or challenging dogs wouldn’t dream of exposing complete strangers to those dogs! I think you’ll generally get ‘easier’ breeds of dogs on there too because the owners know that their dog is resilient like that. Like I think my dog is ace and get comments about how well behaved he is and his temperament but I wouldn’t in a million years let somebody take him out because he’s a working breed who gets 6 miles a day and will outsmart and outexercise you faster than those dogs who got snapped up!

Daschunds are seriously aggressive little shit bags with severe inbreeding depression leading to numerous heath problems.

Get a whippet bedlington lurcher, small, robust, fun family dog with a very gentle nature….as long as you are not a rabbit or a a squirrel.

@dmorts

If you’re not sure about the commitment to having a dog, have you considered applying to be a boarder for guide dogs?

Boarders look after pups when the raisers are on holiday etc and in our local area we are really short of people in this role. It would give you (and your family) a taste of what is involved in dog ownership ……

There’s a flat haired cockapoo near us who looks like a little golden retriever. He’s really high energy, despite being incredibly overfed.

As for all the other things said above if it’s to go with kids, maybe look at borrowing a well trained dog to see how it goes with your kid before getting a puppy only to find out she doesn’t get on well with it.

I agree that dachshunds are little shits. Mine is a complete bellend, but I still love him more than life itself. They’re not all aggressive though, mine is very placid around other dogs and never barks at other dogs when out walking (which admittedly most other ones do). But yea they’re nobs.

Karelian Bear Dog – years of 10+ mile walks, knows dozens of silent hand signal commands, responds to English/German/Arabic (words are just noises to a dog – he doesn’t know the context). Probably knows at least 150+ commands, constantly amazes me with his intelligence “Bert, take the next turning on the left” or “Bert, ‘point at a rock’ on, stand, wait”

Do not underestimate the amount a dog needs to be mentally trained/worked to stop them getting bored.

Already mentioned above but we have two Novia scotia duck tolling retrievers (Tollers). They get mistaken for small golden retrievers sometimes.

Class dogs. Would run/ski tour and bike with me when they were younger. They are 12 & 10 now.

12 year old has back issues (IVDD) which is apparently common. Didn’t really present any issues till he was 9-10. He’s fine, just is limited to how much exercise he can do now but he’s very good at regulating that himself in his old age.

10 year old hasn’t had any issues that he hasn’t created himself. Has gut issues, from having had two operations to remove pine cones from his guts. In short he suffers from being daft.

My wife says they’re chatty but loud is more accurate. In their opinion barking is the answer to most every situation. They scream with excitement sometimes which can pierce your soul.

love them both to bits.

The nicest, friendliest dog I have ever met was a Toller. She came from a friend of mine that used to work and breed them. Honestly the most adorable dog I have ever met and that includes my two spaniels.

Not sure if Philip is still working them, but I can try and find out.

For kids unsure about dogs, you should definitely look at maltipoos.

I seem to spend far too much time looking at my kids’ own maltipoos.

Anyway… *Googles maltipoo*

OMG so cuuutte! *melts*

It’s  not a dog though, is it. It’s a toy.

If you’re not sure about the commitment to having a dog, have you considered applying to be a boarder for guide dogs?

Boarders look after pups when the raisers are on holiday etc and in our local area we are really short of people in this role. It would give you (and your family) a taste of what is involved in dog ownership ……

We’re fostering a guide dog in training. We have her evenings and weekends and she goes to school during the day. It’s been incredibly rewarding, I’m just dreading the day she leaves us.

We’re fostering a guide dog in training. We have her evenings and weekends and she goes to school during the day. It’s been incredibly rewarding, I’m just dreading the day she leaves us.

So did our friends but unfortunately despite him being really, really clever, he failed his tests so they were offered the chance to keep him (which they did). He’s just a very typical retriever – far, far, far too laid back…

I got this wrong up there ^^^  Clippy is a retriever spaniel cross –  she’s a retriever border collie cross…  Awesome at fetching balls 🙂

a daschund/retriever cross.

Pretty sure that’s called a weiner retriever… 😀