Reply to Male or female golden retriever?

Forum Index » Pets

Reply to "Male or female golden retriever?"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Here's my pro/con list for male and female golden retrievers:

Males--
Tend to be 10-15 lbs larger than the girls, are stronger and have larger heads (breeder should tell you parents adult weights, so that's a possible indicator of size differences).

Don't have to deal with heat cycles while waiting to neuter (current reccomendation is to wait until golden's are fully grown before fixing so as to prevent hip dysplasia and other skeletal issues).

Can have slightly shorter lifespan than the girls.

Females--
Smaller in general, longer lifespan

We had the most amazing goofball of a male golden retriever, and I honestly preferred that personality, but the female we have now is also very very sweet and fun, and it's also nice to have a somewhat smaller dog.[/quote]

+1 to all this.  On the lifespan thing, I do wonder if the gender difference will start to drop away with the newish recommendations for later fixing.  In the studies, they saw the most impact on male goldens -- the impact on female goldens was significantly less -- so it may be that the males were not living as long because we were just fixing them too early and messing up their body chemistry.

I disagree with PP about supposed personality differences based on gender.  It's not a Mars-Venus thing, especially with Goldens.  Goldens are not territorial or aggressive in general, so the concerns in some breeds (that the male dogs are going to be territorial or are likely to be more aggressive) just don't apply to Goldens.

One other thing about females dogs generally is that they are more prone to UTIs as they age (like us), which can be a bit of a pain with an elderly dog.  Most people who pick do so either based on looks -- that they like the slightly stocky male look -- or for random reasons (we have 2 daughters and a son, so the males in the family wanted another male to even the numbers).   Even the thing about looks doesn't always apply to Goldens -- not all the males have the blockier head, and some of the females do.  I see Goldens all the time that I think might be female, but are male and vice versa.  Also, our two males never "marked" -- they did like to pee where other dogs pee, but all dogs do that (male and female).

If your breeder will let you pick, then try to get a sense of the puppies.  Our last dog's litter had 7 boys and 3 girls -- the breeder kept one girl, and so there were only 2 girls available, one of whom was the most dominant of the litter, so I probably would not have picked her.  Breeders often pick the "best" girl for themselves to keep, so I guess that might limit your choices on the female side a bit, depending on how many pups there are and how many females in the litter. [/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics