Our goal is to produce long-lived, healthy golden retrievers with excellent temperaments and good structure to enable them to live a quality life.  We strive toward producing show-ring type, but feel we cannot prioritize it given the limitations presented by the current golden retriever gene pool and our desire to breed the healthiest dogs possible.  Unfortunately, golden retrievers as a breed face numerous significant health issues and have a poor average lifespan compared to other breeds.  We consider the four health clearances required by the Golden Retriever Club of America (heart, eyes, hips, elbows) to be a minimum standard and have much more rigorous requirements for our breeding goldens.  We do full genetic testing on all of the girls we breed and have significant expectations regarding their health and temperament.  We believe that full and purposeful lives play a role in the health, wellbeing, and temperament of our girls as well as their puppies.  Therefore, all of our girls are family house pets and companions who are actively in training and have been shown in or are showing in obedience, rally, and agility – which speaks to their intelligence, willingness, quality of life, and the quality of the epigenetic inheritance their offspring will receive.  No dog is perfect, but rather than have any stud dogs of our own, we research pedigrees in search of the healthiest and best quality dogs available to breed to so that we can match each of our girls with an individual who has strengths where she has weaknesses.   We prioritize selecting studs with health and longevity in their pedigree, and breed to older studs when possible so that we have the confidence of knowing we aren’t breeding in to early cancer or other health issues that don’t develop until well after maturity.

It means a lot to us when prospective puppy buyers come to us because they want a breeder who is breeding for health, and we are happy to answer your questions about our girls and discuss other tools available to you to research pedigrees, including K9data and the OFA database.  We feel the more educated puppy buyers are out there, the more pressure is placed on breeders to breed as healthy as possible, which is important to the overall health and longevity of the breed.

Unfortunately, health issues can arise in spite of our best efforts, and it’s important to understand this.  There are many issues that are in our breed and impossible to avoid; we can only try to limit the risk of those issues.  Meritorious Goldens does offer a health warranty with its puppies, and we are also happy to discuss with you known or suspected health issues and keep an open line of communication regarding your Meritorious Golden.