Winnie Stayed Behind: Two Delightful Weeks Of Training
September 16, 2026
Winnie headed off to her new family today as a trained golden retriever puppy, and she is the last one out the door from a litter that emptied two weeks ago.
If you have been following Acadia and Brad’s litter since July, you already watched her brothers and sisters leave on September 2. Winnie stayed. Her family had signed her up for our two week training program, so while the rest of the litter was learning the sound of their own front doors, she was here with one of our trainers, putting in the work. She is ten weeks old now, and she heads off knowing a good deal more than she did the day the house went quiet.
You can see her at eight weeks in the last photos of Acadia and Brad’s puppies, taken the week everybody else went home. She is the second trained golden retriever puppy we have written about here, after Daisy Mae back in June, and we love getting to do this.
Week one is barely about commands at all. It is about trust and routine. She learns her name, she learns that good things come out of a pocket, and she settles into a crate and a potty schedule she can count on.
Sits happen, but with no word attached yet. The trainer lures her nose up and back until she folds into a sit, and then she gets the treat, and that is the whole exercise. Come is just her name, said once, and a treat the second she looks up. The crate starts as a few calm minutes with something good inside and builds toward half an hour of quiet with somebody nearby. She drags a light leash around the yard so it stops being a strange thing hanging off her neck, and nobody walks her anywhere on it. Every single day somebody handles her ears and her paws and her mouth, gently, so that a vet visit later on is boring instead of frightening. And she meets one calm new person.
Now the sit gets its word, and the word comes first, before the lure. Word first sits pay the best, and you can almost watch it click behind her eyes.
Down is lured to the floor and held for three seconds. Stay builds to about ten seconds, with the trainer taking one step back and coming straight back to her. Come moves outside onto a long line, and the rule there is that you call once, because a recall you have to shout four times is not a recall. The crate becomes a real quiet hour on her own. The loose leash walks start for real. And she takes a car ride, which matters more than it sounds, because a puppy who decides early that a car is fine is a puppy who travels well for the rest of her life.
Underneath all of it the rule never changes. Reward the good thing the instant it happens, even the smallest one. Never reward biting, jumping or barking, and correct the biting and the jumping. Her family got pictures and videos every Tuesday and Friday, which is far and away our favorite part of the whole arrangement.
A trained golden retriever puppy at ten weeks is not a finished dog, and we would never pretend otherwise. What a family gets is a puppy who already knows her name, who sleeps in her crate without making a production of it, who has the beginnings of a recall, and who has been picked up and handled every day by somebody who is not them. The first week at home stops being a scramble and starts being a continuation of something she already understands.
Those early weeks are the ones that stick, too. The American Kennel Club has a good piece on early puppy development and why this window matters so much, and it lines up with everything we see here year after year.
We take portraits of every puppy before they leave, and these are Winnie’s. Enjoy the photos!
Safe travels, Winnie. We are going to miss that orange collar going by. If you would like a trained golden retriever puppy of your own, our reserve a puppy page is the place to start, and everybody growing up behind her is on our current litters page.
