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Female golden retriever owner here. She is now a year old and we are thrilled we have her. I will give you some of my observations.
Our pup's litter was cleared to leave their mom at about 7 weeks. We happened to know about this litter through friends at work so we got to see them all before any were taken. There were 7 all together; 2 female and 5 male. Our initial inclination was to get a female because of their smaller size. When we first observed the litter we could see immediately that one little female, althought the runt of the group, was trying to boss around the other pups. So we picked the other female LOL. We got her home and she was the most adorable thing, just as snuggly as you can imagine. ( I won't mention the wailing at night, you'll find that out soon enough). At about 10 weeks, a little light went off in her head and she decided that she was to become the alpha bitch of our family. She turned into a little monster overnight. Let me just say that it took months to clearly establish our dominance. I've seen several of her brothers and none of them had such a bossy/dominant streak. So at least in this litter, it was the females that were clearly more strong willed.
I wouldn't worry about the house breaking part, that should be easy with either sex.
I also wouldn't worry about the defending the house issue. Unless you're defending it from squirrels, a golden is not going to be much use. It's just not in their disposition.
Unless you have a farm, preferably with animals on it, I wouldn't even consider a border collie. We have a large rescue farm nearby with loads of them, abandoned by owners who never should have had them in the first place. They are working dogs, not house pets.
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