My Golden Retriever

Question
I adopted a 4 year old male golden retriever in 2008 from a shelter. His name is Sawyer and he is a fine gentle lovable dog and enjoys my swimming pool. We had him for about a year and had to give Sawyer away to my daughter in Austin, about 60 miles away. Sawyer has a bad habit of escaping through her fenced yard and luckily, the neighbors returned him.  Sawyer has escaped several times now and we are getting worried that he may get hit by a car or not come back. I'm sure that's how he probably ended up in the dog shelter. How can we stop him from escaping from the backyard? That's his only fault, escaping.

Answer
If not already, neutering may help.  It is not a guaranteed cure all.  

The other thing is to identify how he is escaping and fix it, raising the fence, being more careful about closing the gate, fixing holes, etc.  

People claim to have trained dogs not to escape, but I suspect it is more of the dog just not being inclined to do so.  Many people let easy dogs give them an inflated idea of their training ability.