Experience pure joy playing with dogs at this Golden Retriever Farm
Sometimes all you need in life is the companionship of a dog, dog cuddles and maybe a few rounds of playing fetch. If that sounds like a great time to you, the Golden Retriever Experience just might be your ticket to bliss.
Guests can visit the 275-acre Golden Dog Farm in Jeffersonville, Vermont, to surround themselves with an enthusiastic pack of loving and energetic golden retrievers. No doubt, most of these good boys and girls would be more than happy to chase after your tennis ball.
The farm’s owners, husband and wife Doug and Becca Worple, launched this heavenly “experience” in September 2023, pairing their own golden retrievers with their neighbors Dana and Susan Menne’s 13 golden retrievers. The Mennes are also “conscientious hobby breeders of AKC Golden Retrievers” via their business Butternut Golden Retrievers, so there are plenty of dogs to join in the festivities at farm events.
The idea was to offer people a joyful opportunity of playing with or cuddling cute dogs, exploring the farm and enjoying hot chocolate or snacks in the barn.
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“We [initially] put it up on our socials to see if anybody would be interested and we had [a few signups], but it certainly wasn’t an overwhelming response,” Doug Worple told People. “But then a TikTok account called Vermont Lifestyle posted about things to do in Vermont during fall foliage season and they had scraped some of our content and put it in their video and four to five million views of that video later, we sold out.”
The experience has been going strong ever since. The Worples host groups of 28 people at a time, at $75 per person. Guests get to play with a group of at least 10 golden retrievers for about an hour. Weather permitting, the experience can go longer, until the retrievers “get tuckered out,” says Worple.
Becca Worple is a professional photographer, so visitors can also go home with a gorgeous photo of themselves surrounded by lots and lots of fluffy canine beauty. Watch this TikTok video that captures a few moments of the Experience:
@goldendogfarm Nothing beats Vermont Fall Foliage and golden retrievers 🍁💛 #goldendogfarmvt #goldens #vermont #fall ♬ Coastline – Hollow Coves
To sign up for the Golden Retriever Experience, visit Golden Dog Farm.