Goldies on the leash: Meet Adelaide’s most fetching retrievers
Welcome to the club of Adelaide’s passionate Golden Retriever owners, and see where fashion meets fur balls.
Adelaide’s own Golden Retriever meet-up started in 2023 after Kimberlee Gurren and her husband Peter moved to South Australia from the Gold Coast and were keen to make new friends.
The couple had been attending regular meet-ups on the Gold Coast with their two Golden Retrievers, Captain and Biscuit, and noticed that Adelaide was missing out. Just three years later, their Goldies Facebook group now has 2000 members.
Kimberlee describes their own five-year-old boy Captain as being “the most submissive little angel boy ever” but also cheeky, while their six-year-old “little girl” Biscuit is “very stubborn and she thinks she rules the roost”.
“She’s a bit of a tomboy, and he’s just like a little, cuddly, sweet boy,” Kimberlee says, adding that their dog’s puppies now attend the monthly meet-ups too.
“We just started ourselves with this one friend that we met at a dog park, and it was just the three of us for a while, and then it just kind of spread.
“We weren’t really expecting it to take off, but people just kept inviting more people that they knew with Goldens, and it was just the common denominator: everybody had a Golden Retriever or knew someone that had a Golden Retriever or were getting one or had recently got a puppy.”
The meet-ups are now held on the first Saturday of each month at locations throughout metropolitan Adelaide, including at West Beach and the North Adelaide dog park.
A typical Saturday would see anywhere up to 50 people with 80 Golden Retrievers rocking up, with the dogs playing or swimming while their owners have a chat.
“Goldens have this thing where they’re just glued to each other, so they have a magnetic, playful force. So, Goldens, when you put them together, they just play,” Kimberlee says.
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“It is a very nice group of people that was very unlikely to meet outside of this; there were all different ages, all different demographics, and people chat and ask, ‘Where are you from?’, ‘How did you hear about this?’, ‘How old’s your dog?’.
Kimberlee and her husband handed over organising the event after moving to Canberra earlier this year, but the event is still going strong.
“The people that come consistently, we started to develop good friendships with them, and it was a nice, consistent monthly thing to count on and look forward to — so that is the best part.”
Asked what she loves about Golden Retrievers so much, Kimberlee says it’s “the joy that they bring”, saying the name golden matches their energy.
“They always lift your spirits; they get you out of the house, and they spread so much love, and obviously a lot of fur,” she says.
James May, who regularly attends the meet-ups, says that he would never go back to another breed after his female Golden Retriever Bailey arrived eight years ago.
“I try to go to most of them [the meet-ups] and to see anywhere between 20 to 40, 50 of them running around; they’re just all the same — they’re all very lovable, big, dopey dogs that are just always happy,” he says.
James describes Bailey as “very sociable” and “a big softie”, saying “when she sees new people, she just wants to go over and get a pat”.
Bailey has accompanied James to work every day since she was a puppy at his family’s mini skip business Suburbins.
“She jumps in the truck with me, goes to meetings on site, you name it, she’s been by my side for just about all of it,” he says, adding that she also accompanies him to the pub and other social events.
“The ongoing joke with us in our family business is that she’s very much a part of the family business in sales — she just hasn’t got us a sale yet.”
Asked his favourite memories of Bailey, James recalls a time when he was busy washing trucks at work.
“I was like, ‘God, I haven’t seen Bailey in a bit’, and she was rolling around in the puddles of mud. So, not only did I have to wash the trucks — I then had to wash Bailey,” he says.
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James says everyone should experience having a Golden Retriever in their life.
“They literally have the best personality — they are the biggest lapdog you’ll ever meet. They just want to be part of everything. I can see why other Golden Retriever owners rate them so highly as the best family dogs, because they just want to be included in everything,” he says.
“They share your excitement; they know when you’ve got your ups and downs because they’re just always there and they’ve always got the happiest face.”
When fashion meets fur balls
Golden Retriever owner and well-known Adelaide fashion designer Cristina Tridente says it’s the joy her four-and-a-half-year-old boy Hercules brings that she loves, saying she always wanted to own a dog after seeing a goldie called Sammy in The Parent Trap as a kid.
Cristina is director of couture+love+madness — a fashion house on the Norwood Parade specialising in red carpet and bridalwear — that is celebrating its 15th anniversary in 2026.
The designer says Hercules, who has accompanied her to work every day since he was a puppy, is a “very calm-natured Golden” and “a real people-person dog”.
“He greets clients on arrival pretty much as soon as that bell rings for a client — he takes it in his stride to run out and see who’s there, clearly to see him, not to come for a fitting,” she says, adding that she makes him a bandana and matching outfit every Christmas.
“We just wish that he could open the door because the speed that he gets out there compared to us having to walk through three different rooms, it would make my life a lot easier.”
Cristina has created outfits for the likes of Amy Shark, Dannii Minogue, Sophie Monk, Julia Morris, the Veronicas and Ricki-Lee Coulter — but nothing beats the fits she makes for Hercules.
Apart from having designed more than 1000 wedding dresses during her successful career, Cristina also created a special bow tie suit for Hercules to wear at her wedding to husband Petar Filipovic last year.
“My favourite part of my day is literally when Hercules sleeps on the edge of the bed, waking up and seeing how happy he is every morning; it is a real boost of happiness — he’s literally the best part of my day,” Cristina says.
She regularly attends the Adelaide Golden Retriever meetups, having recently also taken part in an event where 200 Golden Retrievers and their owners walked across the Riverbank footbridge to celebrate the 13th Golden Retriever National.
“It’s really interesting to just chat with other Golden Retriever owners about personalities and stuff like that — they’re like people; they’re all so different, but it’s always really nice to hear other people’s experiences as well,” she says.
“We love getting involved in any kind of group activities with other Goldens. I always have a birthday party for Hercules every year — we usually have about 20 Goldens that attend; just friends or clients with Goldens.”
This article first appeared in The Golden Edition of CityMag, released in September 2026.
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