Well, why did you have to get a big, hairy dog?
That makes handling dog allergies much harder.
You will be allergic to the dog and much that comes in the dog’s coat, like pollen and molds from the outside.:no:
Now the good news: You can try to make it work by keeping your puppy very, very clean.
A weekly bath, which don’t believe those that say bathing a dog is bad, many of our club’s goldens get bathed more than that for shows and theraphy work and are still happy and healthy.
As a puppy, you may not react that much to your dog, but you will once it gets the adult coat, sorry to say.
If you religiously get it bathed once a week at first, then you can try going a little longer, until you reach your personal limit, that may be from a week to maybe even a month.
Then you got to get a towel, soak it in plain water, squeeze the water off and rub the whole dog once daily with it, so the water soluble oils the dog produces will be minimized, rubbed off.
Also rub the dog off when it comes in the house, see above for reasons.
Teach your dog NOT to lick you, as the saliva also has that protein that your body will see as foreign and make you react with allergy symptoms.
Best if you can teach your puppy to sleep in a crate, not on your bed.
Best if you can have someone brush and handle your dog for any grooming.
Allergies are cumulative, so if you are already exposed to many things but not over your threshold before you have symptoms, that dog may throw you over the top, so avoid other things, so you can be around your dog more without too much trouble.
There may be a time where, sadly, if your dog allergies are bad enough, you may have to choose if to breathe or keep the dog, after you may have ended in the ER with an asthma attack.
Allergies with upper respiratory symptoms will slowly damage your lungs, so there will be a time where you may have to make some hard choices.
You absolutely need to work with your Dr, preferably a specialist.
For some people, weekly allergy shots work over the years to at least keep you from reacting to so much other out there and let you keep the dog with good care on the cleanliness end.
If we are talking about little kids, I will have to agree with the Dr that it is not fair to have them live in misery, so you may want to rethink what you are doing there.
There are no truly hypoallergenic dogs, just some we react to less than others and many times it is because some dogs are kept or naturally stay cleaner than others.
Goldens are not known for that.
Sorry, sometimes things in life are not supposed to be as we want them, but you can give this a try and see how you may get along with the dog, good management to keep all very clean and maybe medications like Advair and such.
