Article and source for the photo is here.
This is obviously a working-type golden from the UK.
And working type goldens are unusually “oral.” They like putting things in their mouths, and if they are not trained or given a good job to do, they can learn all sorts of interesting behaviors– like pica.
If you get one of these dogs, you really have to channel that retrieving instinct, or it can turn into a deadly habit.
My previous Golden ate a leather leash (fiance was watching him & didn’t tell me) & vomited up all the bits 6 days later. Vet said they were too large to pass through his pyloric sphincter into his intestine.
Glad my current Golden at least thinks he has a job!
My “golden in a collie” suit is one of those dogs that just *has* to have something in his mouth. You can gauge the depth of his joy by the size of the thing he carries. When I came home from surgery he greeted me with my husband’s size 13 ice fishing boot.
I started shaping that wonderful drive to good uses (instead of evil) quite literally the day he first came in my door. He carries everything. He only chews bones and nyabones. And he only eats food. But in another, less mindful home he may have developed a ‘tumor’ too.