LAKEWOOD, Pa. - It seemed a gathering of canine polygamists - one owner after another, walking down the forest paths, each leashed to two or three golden retrievers.

It seemed a canine hall of mirrors - each golden retriever confronting its reflection as it romped across a meadow to the next batch of goldens.

For the fifth straight year, they came from across the nation for a Friday-through-Sunday festival for goldens - 367 folks, and more than 400 dogs.

It's called Goldstock 2002, a doggie Woodstock, a mix of training, sport and ceremony.

But it was primarily a national fund-raising effort for the 26 groups that find homes for neglected golden retrievers.

At last year's event, 17 groups raised $45,000.

"It's used for the medical needs of rescued dogs, the foster care, their transport," said Gail Lustig, owner of two goldens and president of the nonprofit Goldstock Fund.

Lustig's family owns the 104-acre Camp Weequahic, the site of the event, a children's summer camp in the far northeast corner of the state.

So why do goldens need to be rescued?

Well, all aren't as well cared for as those pictured in Ralph Lauren ads in glossy magazines.

Jerry Rodgers knows why.

Rodgers, 52, a pharmaceutical-firm engineer from Spring City, Chester County, was at the edge of Sly Lake on Saturday morning, watching his two goldens splash around with lots of others.

In November, his family got from a veterinarian a golden that, Rodgers said, "was kept in a crate for the first two years of her life, 14 to 15 hours a day.

"The people worked, and the dog got too big for the house."

That dog, now playing so strongly in the lake, "couldn't even swim. She would sink because she had lost muscle tone, from being in the crate."

Rodgers got his second golden in June from a rescue operation in Frazer, Chester County, after it "was chained outside for two years, padlocked, with very little food and water."

So why had he driven more than three hours to get here?

"To try to figure what I need to do to train these two," he said, so they can provide therapy for folks in retirement homes.

A Middletown, N.Y., police-garage foreman was testing would-be therapy dogs, while a professional pet-sitter from Wilmington, N.C., was showing how to give a good-looking haircut, a golden trim-and-fluff.

A Golden Olympics tested dogs' strength in swimming from point to point, diving for floating tennis balls and such.

And a Sunday evening memorial was scheduled, a candle-lit ceremony for the dearly departed - dogs and owners alike.

One evening, Jane Moore was sitting on a bench, looking out toward a forest-covered mountain, and admitting she was a canine polygamist.

Moore, 58, a retired paralegal, had driven from her home in Aquone, N.C., with three of her eight goldens - all rescued.

Her first golden, 20 years ago, was "a smart dog, a field golden... a true hunting dog, a true duck dog."

Not so the three with her.

"They work at being lazy," she said. "These are older - 10, 8, probably 11."

She was here, she said, to meet with more like-minded folks than she could back home.

"The South is growing," she said, "but hasn't grown in some dog education. In the South, you still have the mentality of: 'You don't want to spay or neuter.' "

Arlene Blouch had left her four goldens at home in Phoenix, flown to her Lancaster County childhood home, then driven here to sell memorabilia for her group, Rescue A Golden of Arizona.

Blouch, 50, a computer-network engineer, wasn't overwhelmed by the numbers of goldens here. Last year, the Golden Retriever Club of America held its annual show in Albuquerque, N.M., and there, she said, she was in the midst of "maybe about 1,500 dogs."

All barking at once?

"Goldens don't bark that much. They don't."

And she recalled the old saying about the friendly breed: "If a burglar broke in, they'd help him carry everything out."

Joan McCarn and Lyn Skeuse, retired teachers from Spring Lake in Monmouth County, N.J., were walking their three goldens in the mountain quiet.

Their first two goldens were Jersey rescues, Skeuse said, but the youngest rescue "we found on the Internet, from Houston."

So why bring them here?

"It's a vacation for our goldens," Skeuse said.