Healing Hearts Therapy Goldens

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Our story....

We are firm believers in being given gifts and purpose in this life. Our journey with these beautiful, intelligent, devoted, and soulful English golden retrievers began back before we ever owned one. I began to think about using animals for therapy work around 15 years ago, when I wanted to find a way for my nephew, Cody, to use one of my horses for therapeutic riding. I thought that enabling him to walk, even if it wasn’t on his own legs, would be amazing for him, both physically and emotionally. Unfortunately, we lost Cody before I had a chance to train a horse for him.

Fast forward to our family growing and changing, and a move back to Iowa. In the back of my mind, I still searched for a way to honor Cody’s life by helping others. I looked into the education and various requirements for developing my own therapeutic riding program, but there were many barriers and expenses in the way. It just wasn’t going to be practical for the setup of our place. Then I saw a therapy dog. And fell in love. Hard. I felt like this was something I could do - I could train a dog for therapy work and make visits to hospitals and nursing homes with them. So, I began the search for the perfect dog for this type of thing. Over and over, golden retrievers kept popping up as ideal candidates for therapy and service work. Unfortunately, I also read many sad stories of goldens being taken too early from cancer, and that’s when I found the English or European type golden retriever that has been found to have less incidence of cancer. And the search was on! I looked for months for the perfect bloodlines, temperament, health clearances, longevity, and the “look” or “type” that I wanted. And I found Hope. Literally. I found a female puppy in Texas that was just what I was looking for. When she finally arrived, we named her Hope. She was the perfect addition to our family, and even better than I had ever dreamed to train. She loves to work, loves to learn, loves to please her humans, and she loves every person she meets. We quickly advanced through obedience classes, got her Canine Good Citizen title, and reached our goal of being certified for therapy work. Hope is the cornerstone of our program, and we wish that everyone could have a dog just like her!

Along the way, I also looked into service work. I searched for service dog trainers, and quickly realized that service dogs are 1) expensive! and 2) you may be waiting 2 years to get one that is fully trained! So, my next thought was, “What can I do to help with this situation? I know that there are SO many people that need service dogs.” Again, I went back to research to see about rescuing dogs from shelters versus breeding dogs specifically for service work. I found that only a relatively small number of rescue dogs meet all of the necessary requirements (health, training, temperament, etc.) and have a lower graduation rate than the purpose-bred dogs (see AKC’s article called “Why train purpose-bred service dogs instead of rescue dogs?” for more information). Additionally, there are a number of things that a breeder can do to increase the odds of puppies being able to tolerate the stresses and intensity of service dog training. Some of these techniques fascinated me! I felt that Hope was a truly great example of the breed, and with her intelligence, drive, and focus on people I knew that her offspring might make wonderful service dogs. And so it began. I studied, and studied, and studied for 2 years to find out what I needed to do as a breeder to produce puppies with the best chance of being able to truly help people that need them. I also found a wonderful breeder/mentor along the way to help me. In our program, we utilize the complete Superstar Dog Program, including Biosensor (early neurological development), noise habituation (noise CD’s), and early retrieval work. We also utilize ESI (early scent introduction) and training the basic commands; all of this starts as early as when the puppies are 3 days old. Our goal is to maximize intelligence, trainability, and adaptation to stress so that our dogs can lead long working lives if needed. The whole family is involved in the process, and we keep our operation small so that we can be totally hands-on with the puppies every day. We would love to help you out with one of our beautiful babies (and no, you don’t have to need a service dog to get one of our puppies)!