Bonding with your golden retriever can be very simple as they tend to be natural lovers. This breed is known for being very affectionate, intelligent, and charismatic. There is one important thing to keep in mind, like any relationship, it takes time and patience to build this desired amount of trust and affection.
A quick way to bond with your golden retriever is spending quality time together. This breed can be very playful; providing them with enough playtime will not only help your dog associate you with positive feelings, but will also help you understand your retriever’s overall language.
Once you have created this bond between you and your retriever it is almost unbreakable. They can be extremely loyal and amazing house pets if properly trained and cared for. Continue reading below for a quick guide to help you understand the dos and don’ts during this bonding process.
What Is Your Golden Retriever’s Love Language?
Understanding your golden retriever’s love language is essential during the bonding process. This includes understanding how they show affection, what is it they enjoy, what they are good at, and how they react to that around them.
These are some of the paths you can take to try to better understand your retriever.
Bonding Through Food
Like many of us, golden retrievers love eating. This playful breed will eat everything and anything at any time, making it a great opportunity for owners to use this to their advantage.
Preparing nutrient dense and savory meals and treats for your retriever will help them quickly associate you as their caregiver and create that sense of trust. Tasty treats in moderation can be a great way to keep your retriever happy as well as reinforce positive behavior.
Be Present and Spend Time in the Same Space
There is no better way to understand that which your retriever’s loves and enjoys, as well as their overall facial expressions they make when happy, stressed, or sad other than spending time with them.
Understand that if you get a golden retriever and your works requires a lot of traveling, or if you get one to keep it outside the house, you will never see the same results as another owner that constantly walks, plays or spends time with his or her retriever.
There is research that shows the effects of being present in your dog’s life. It shows how simply being near their owner can be just as rewarding as food for many dogs.
Praise and Pet Your Retriever
Petting your retriever goes hand in hand with being present. It can overall improve your retriever’s health and prevent aggression. When stressed, golden retrievers can become aggressive and distant, which can sometimes come from a lack of affection or constant yelling.
This is why, besides the importance of being present, research also demonstrates showing affection and petting your dog is a great way to help them remain calm, reduce stress, feel safe, and overall trust you. This has been shown through oxytocin levels, which is a hormone related to stress, which remains low while or after being petted.
Harry Harlow, a psychologist from the University of Wisconsin, noticed how when presented with affection and overall physical contact, more than simply food, most monkey youngsters developed a stronger bond with their surrogate mothers, then when the surrogate was simply there to provide nourishment.
This proves how you cannot expect your golden retriever to develop a strong bond with you or become its favorite person simply because you are providing them with a plate of food and a roof.
Failing to play, take for a walk, hug, praise, and overall demonstrate physical affection to your retriever, could leave you with a stressed, aggressive and distant retriever.
How Can You Connect or Play with Your Golden Retriever?
Retrievers are a very active breed; they love being active and rarely get tired. This makes them great athletes and great competitors.
Many people get confused because of their size and tend to think they are not as playful as a puppy, but this is completely contrary to their nature. Golden retrievers remain young at heart for most of their lives, even though they grow fast in size, they tend to mature fairly slower than most dogs, keeping that puppy mentality for years.
Here are some activities you can plan for you and your retriever:
- You can take your retriever swimming
- You can play catch. As their name states, they love retrieving things, making them great at this game.
- They love going on walks and exploring new surroundings.
- You can also teach them new tricks and offer treats in return. You’ll notice how they learn fairly quickly as they are a very intelligent breed.
Overall, you would want to keep your retriever active and provide them with new challenges capable of putting their minds to work. They need that stimulus that comes from learning and playing, and will quickly adapt to most activities.
Reward Positive Behavior Instead of Yelling
First thing first, every dog you get, no matter the breed, the size or age, they will at one point or another cause a bit of chaos, this is no exemption with golden retrievers.
Most of the time when encountered with negative behavior from our dogs, our first instincts can sometimes be to yell at them or react abruptly, but this will by no means bring a solution to the problem or stop your retriever from doing it again in the future.
Yelling and Anger Will Cause Stress
Yelling at your retriever could cause irreversible damage to the bond you’ve worked hard to create. This kind of action will only make them feel scared and threaten, which will cause them to stop at the moment since their instinct is to hide or attack, but will not cause them to understand to not do it again in the future.
Retrievers will by no means associate yelling with not do it again, you will just end up with an aggressive response, and delaying the training process.
Ignore Negative Behavior and Simply Reward the Positive
The best approach to break any bad habit is by reinforcing that which is good. Your retriever loves you, and he wants all of your attention and praise; many times resulting in his misbehavior actually being a call for attention.
Always try to remain calm, this will help your dog calm down as well reducing any kind of energy outburst. If you notice your retriever is trying to cause you to react, the best thing is to try to ignore it, which will eventually cause them to process the action as useless.
Instead, when you see them stop, try to reward this behavior with a cuddle or praise. Overall try to focus more on rewarding than reproaching as your retriever is much more likely to remember and understand when something makes you happy and gets him treat then remember not to touch something because you yelled at him or her.
Never rely on violence to train your retriever, this will only cause him to fear you, and will by no means create a real sense of respect or trust. Do not expect to receive respect when none is given.
In Conclusion
Golden retrievers can be very loving and attached to their owner. This bond comes fairly naturally as they want their owners to be happy. it highly depends on the owner’s behaviors and actions.
Once you have created this bond, it will be very hard to break!