Keep her with people, because company is her comfort
A Golden Retriever in a power cut is usually less troubled by darkness than by separation, so the kindest setup is her bed in the room where everyone has gathered, not a utility room with a blanket and the door shut. Put her bedding somewhere warm but not in the traffic path to the kitchen, since a Golden will position herself hopefully wherever food is being handled, outage or not. Her thick double coat copes well with a cooling house, but a damp coat does not — if she comes in wet from a rainy garden trip, towel her thoroughly before she settles, because lying damp in a draughty room chills even a well-coated dog.
Give her a long-lasting chew and short bursts of attention through the evening. Goldens read household mood accurately; a family treating the outage as an adventure with lanterns and board games will usually have a relaxed dog, while whispered worry and constant door-opening produces a dog who shadows every person and cannot settle anywhere.
Make the dark house safe for an enthusiastic tail
A Golden's tail at lantern height is a genuine hazard in an outage, so swap candles for battery lights placed high, and keep drinks, torches, and anything breakable back from table edges she patrols. Portable heaters need a clear zone around them: a friendly dog backing her feathery hindquarters towards warmth while watching your dinner can singe coat before anyone smells it. Trailing cables for lamps or phone charging should run along walls, not across her route between bed, water, and door.
Check the garden before her first dark toilet trip and use a lead until you have. Retrievers are athletic and cheerful escape artists when a storm has dropped a fence panel, and a Golden who finds a gap will trot out to greet the neighbourhood in the rain. Afterwards, wipe mud from her paws and the feathering on her legs; grit and mud carried onto hard floors make the next person's trip to the kitchen a slip risk in poor light.
Hold meals, water, and exercise to the normal pattern
Feed your Golden Retriever her usual food at her usual times, measured normally, and be firm about outage grazing. A house full of people snacking by lantern light, plus a Golden performing her most pleading expression, can double her intake in an evening — and fridge food that has sat warm during the cut must go in a lidded bin she cannot open, never in an open bag.
Replace her walk, if streets are unsafe, with indoor work: hide pieces of her normal food around one room for her to find, practise her retrieves down a clear hallway with a soft toy, and finish with a settle. Short sessions repeated through the evening suit her better than one wild game that leaves her panting and overstimulated in a stuffy room. Contact a vet during the outage if she eats spoiled food and then vomits repeatedly, becomes lethargic, or cannot settle to rest.
Share the checks across the whole household
The tasks that slip in a long outage are repetitive ones — refreshing water, drying a wet dog, re-checking the gate the wind keeps rattling — and they slip because everyone assumes someone else has done them. Naming an owner and a time for each round keeps a comfortable dog comfortable instead of relying on goodwill and memory at midnight.
KinsLe's Care Teams lets you assign those Golden Retriever outage duties person by person and shows each finished round with its time recorded, so the midnight gate check is provably done before everyone goes to bed in the dark.