Ben was our first Golden Retriever and our journey with this breed began back in 1989.
As mentioned before there is a sad element to this story but here goes.
We got Ben in the spring of 1989 (the year our son was born) from a breeder in a village in Warwickshire called Bubenhall. He had been returned by his original owners to the breeder for reasons I can’t remember.
I can still remember how excited our daughter who, was 3 at the time was about it!
As we didn’t have mobile phones in those days there are very few photos of Ben.
Ben was about 9 months old when we got him. He was a truly handsome Golden Retriever – a large powerful dog. He was a gentle giant with our little children. There were times when our toddler son would climb in to the dog basket and fall asleep with Ben.
Golden Retrievers were breed to be a gun dog in the Scottish Highlands. 
It’s primary role was to pick shot wildfowl from lochs, swamps and wetlands. Ben I think due to his strength, stamina and how easy it was to train him to the whistle would, have made a superb gun dog.
To find out more about Golden Retrievers as a breed see our Breed History and Breed Characteristics pages.
Ben trained up so well to the whistle that you could call him to sit then walk away into the next fields and hide out of view behind hedgerows and he wouldn’t budge. When you called him in you could stop him instantly part way through his run in.
This being our first experience of having a Golden Retriever it came as as a bit of a shock that finding something super stinky (fox poo being a definite favourite) to roll in was on his daily agenda! All our dogs have enjoyed rolling – corkscrewing down hills – getting filthy and the like but, not all of them (thank goodness) have been quite so intent on getting stinky!
Like all our dogs they love the water. That was our daughter playing fetch with Ben in the waters of Loch Earn – shame the photo is a better quality one.
The Sad Part –
Ben was a dominant dog a definite alpha male and very protective of his pack. Sadly this would ultimately be his downfall!
Our two toddlers were playing on our front drive, the front door was open so my wife could keep an eye on things and Ben was lying in the front porch keeping his eye on things as well.
Our next door neighbours teenage daughter was walking past and came close to the drive. Ben reacted by leaving the porch and bounded down the drive barking at her.
It’s really not clear exactly what happen but we think she reacted by moving around and waving her arms – Ben bit her on the elbow before my wife could get control of things.
Fortunately it wasn’t a serious bite but as it wasn’t the first time Ben had displayed some aggression including on a couple of occasion to my wife – we had some serious thinking to do.
There were a lot of young families and children in the close vicinity including ours and we finally decided that it was not tenable to keep Ben nor pass him on to someone else so we made the heart breaking decision to have him put down!
Over the years I’ve often wonder if we could have done something different for Ben but I always come back to the thought that, had we kept Ben and he had subsequently gone on to injure someone perhaps a child we would never have been able to forgive ourselves.
Though it broke our hearts and we shed a lot of tears we have very fond memories of Ben. The pleasure and the joy he gave to us in the all to short time he was with us will never be forgotten.
Ben in his all to short time with us made a big impression and forged a love in us for the Golden Retriever breed.
Born late 1988, part of our family for 3 short years – never forgotten.
