Yes. I was told by a vet to socialize my dog with lots of dogs when I got my FCR. Huge mistake. Much more important to teach them to focus on us and socialize with lots of different people, places, and things over other dogs as a priority. Socializing with other dogs is good but should never be the priority as they will focus much more on other dogs over their owner or handler. They can be very independent teenagers so are always looking for whoever or whatever is more fun. They do best in their natural setting like retrieving, field work and hunting, and a lot of fun obedience training is crucial to start early on and keep up throughout their lives. ❤️

Everything you say applies to my flattie Django. He is actually a flatcoat and golden retriever cross, but he has got 99% of the flatcoat genes. He is the friendliest dog I've ever known, a clown, has never growled, highly intelligent. He loves to play, and when wet he will run, jump and slide on his side or spin on his back like he's breakdancing. But he's super keen to go off to say hello to other dogs without waiting for permission (after meeting them he relaxes pretty quick), and when off lead in the open fields where we live, he's trained to sit even at a distance of 40 yards, recall and stop again and sit once more at 20 yards .. but the moment I drop my control level, he's easily distracted, going off 100-200 yards to the other end of a field to explore something he's seen. If he catches the scent of a deer he will run until exhausted. He retrieves from 150 yards really well but after 3-4 retrieves becomes bored. I would love him to be trained the way I've seen him trained in this video

Love them

beautiful dog💛🤗

Flatties are pretty tough to train in my experience but that’s partly because they are huge characters and partly because they act like adolescents for the majority of their lives