Who We Are

Who We Are & Our Breeding Philosophy

Welcome to HomeGrown Trilogy’s Labrador Retrievers & Golden Retrievers. In our breeding program, we strive for all of the following: good health, intelligence, sound temperament, happy disposition, confidence, train-ability, stamina, drive, correct coat and structure. In our breeding program, our aim is to produce healthy and happy puppies and never to waiver from the breed standard and try our best at producing a beautiful show-worthy pup by selecting the very best parents. We look for soundness of the pedigrees, we perform the health clearances and genetic testing, and we produce those jolly-happy souls – the true retriever temperament – that is very much desired. We are a small private non-commercial breeder located in the Central Hills of Wilton, Connecticut. No kennels – just a home-based establishment.

We specialize in breeding dark chocolate Labradors – some of which have been the finest English Labrador Retrievers! Our Labradors can be recognized by their stocky bodies, deep chests and blocky heads. Our Labradors walk proudly and have that certain gait that shows their ownership of space! Our Labradors amaze us with their trained and untrained talents!

Our Golden Retrievers are the most beautiful, obedient and smart golden retrievers there are to offer! Our American/Canadian Goldens can be recognized by their slim build and their blocky heads. We breed Goldens whose majestic coats are honey blond. Our Goldens try and outsmart us when given the opportunity – this is how smart they really are!

Our goal is to not only to produce healthy, well rounded puppies for shows, workforce or therapy dogs, but also for families across the United States and abroad!

In 2017, we will be celebrating our 20th year – a marked cornerstone of loving-showing-breeding the best of breed.  We have owned Labradors and Goldens for over 15 years.  When we started breeding in 1997, our first litter was that of a smaller breed, the Yorkshire Terrier! Since that time all our dogs are treasured members of our family and we love sharing our lives with them.

We have a passion for all dogs big and small but our current concentration is that of two dynamic sporting breeds -HGT’s Labradors and HGT’s Golden Grands.. They accompany us at work and are always hanging around in our kitchen when it’s time to eat. But they perform – “spot-on” when asked a command or to achieve that “top-spot” in any agility event or even to show their talents at an advertising shoot. They know they are loved and as a return gift they treasure us with their endless devotion and willingness to please – not to mention a shoe or sneaker!

We try to train our dogs at a very early age to be obedient. As a result our dogs are well-trained, smart, agile and lean. They are always in the game wanting to please with every retrievable tennis ball or frisbee that is thrown their way. They seem to know the game of hide-n-seek by following the scent of the person hiding! They help us build and alter the look of our snow people from the freshly fallen snow, they glide through the pastures creating a path for us to follow. But most importantly they walk beside us making us feel that we are the most important things in their world. When the hose is on or the rain starts to fall, they anxiously await the door to open and to leap into mud puddles always leaving a trail of paw prints in our entrance and throughout the kitchen. When we leave the house, we look through the windows quietly to see what they do when we are not home and amazingly every dog finds their own space and spends their time differently. It seems like our oldest female, Wilhelmina, spends countless hours on the sofa near the front window, just looking outside to see the passersby and long for our return while our younger dogs send their toys flying while wagging their tails with delight. But once they sense that we are home with them again, they make this wonderful cooing noise, while pressing up against us and just truly want to be near us all the time and we love their unfailing loyalty and devotion. Our dogs give us a hero’s welcome each time we round the corner and are in seeing distance.

We have experienced the joy in whelping and helping our female dogs bring forth new life. To us, each pup is a treasure and each litter is like experiencing a gift-giving ceremony.

Our puppies are whelped and raised for the first 8 weeks of their lives in our kitchen and after their 6th week vaccinations they are allowed to move around freely in our mudroom and in their warm log cabin type of whelping box filled with stimulating and interactive toys, a soft and cuddly dog bed and all their litter-mates. They instinctively start to understand the use of newspaper vs. floor and the opening of a door that leads to the outside litter box. The puppies love the closeness of their mother, our other dogs and their litter-mates. They sleep in their large whelping box that eventually becomes a cozy den.

Our job begins before the pups can even see or hear us. At birth, we spend many hours watching over the puppies, stoking them, ensuring that each has enough nourishment and are attended to by the dam. After two weeks, things begin to change and their world opens up for them being able to hear and see. We then become jungle-jims and they love to climb on us and kiss our faces! As a result, our puppies are very people-friendly, confident and command trained when they leave for their new homes at the age of 8 weeks. The puppies learn the following commands while with us: sit and down. Depending on the size of the litter and if we have the time, some of the pups actually know the command “paw”. We ask the families first to tell us if this command is desired. We are teaching a small pup that will soon grow to 80-90 lbs, so by giving the paw command at 8 weeks is cute but as an adult it can be a gentle swat. If the families have very young children, we tend not to teach the puppy this command because the puppy will outgrow the young child during its first year of life and could unknowingly swat the child when hearing the taught command. We are always open to discuss what you would like your puppy to learn while the puppy is with us.

Each litter is registered with a Limited Registration from the AKC or the UKC.

Each puppy is examined by our veterinarian a few days after birth to listen to their hearts and lungs and to examine the dew-claw site after the dew-claw removal. At 4-weeks they have their 1st de-worming. Starting at 6-weeks all pups are started on their vaccination regiment and 2nd de-worming. All of this happens before their 8th week when they start their new journey with their new family. (At the 9th week, the pups should continue their vaccination schedule with your veterinarian.) All of our puppies leave us with their Brag Sheets, showing pictures of their journey with us, some attributes on personality and all our veterinarian notes and procedures. Each puppy is healthy and happy when they depart to their new families and start a new journey.

We do all that we can to prevent genetic abnormalities passing from our breeding females and males to their offspring, by certifying that each dam and sire has been cleared of heritable defects. Our dogs go through rigorous clearances and certification programs, before they are candidates for our breeding program. Our dogs go through the following health certifications and genetic testing and are cleared of the following:

OFA (Orthopedic Foundation for Animals) for hips and elbows.
CERF(Canine Eye Registry Foundation), OFA
PRA (Progressive Retinal Atrophy DNA Test – Specific for Labradors
EIC (Exercise Induced Collapse) DNA Test – Specific for Labradors
CNM (Centronuclear Myopathy) DNA Test – Specific for Labradors
+ Coat Color Analysis DNA Test

We do all we can to prevent these genetic defects however, this does not guarantee that the offspring will not exhibit any of these defects, as it is not known how the combination of genes carried by the dam and sire will affect their offspring.

HGT’s Mission Statement – Our reason for being…

HomeGrown Trilogy, HGT, grew out of a small company just geared to creating that best-of-breed pup.  As we have seen, some of our puppies have traveled many miles, to join their new families and take up residence across the US and abroad.

Our aim is to select a pairing that will create a litter of amazing puppies that have the potential to show well but also to be friendly members to all our HGT families.

Our goal will always be to perform all critical genetic and health clearances on our females before allowing them to enter into our breeding program. We research and develop lasting relationships with the sire owners to ensure our lines are compatible, strong, healthy and growing.

Today we have not wavered from our love of genetics but we have also had the need to offer our dogs that wonderful healthy sense of freedom.  To do this, we decided to think outside the ‘retail box’ in creating our very own dog gear that helps train our puppies – hands-free and when the pup is older to use our “To Have AND Not To Hold” ™collars that allow the dog some freedom on the walk.

So our mission statement is simple but astounding – HGT’s members are respected breeders and our values go beyond the love we have for all our dogs; it is a feeling of delight that we get when we release our hold on each one of dogs to see them run joyfully – free and unleashed.  This, to us, is an unsurpassed feeling of mutual respect, loyalty and acceptance – especially when each dog comes back to us, bearing a newly found stick or along with some new friends –  but always managing to have fun while keeping an eye on our whereabouts!  Our HGT dogs simply get that ‘wild’ and beautiful well-deserved supervised freedom through the constant efforts of HGT!

Pam and her assorted chocolates!