Tried to make it a poll…total pain in the ass on this site, not worth it. Straightforward question, really…
Dog personalities and sex
Your opinion: assuming they are neutered as young puppies, well beforeany potential hormonal changes are possible, do you think…
A. males and females strongly tend to be noticably different in ways clearly delineated by sex
B. Males could be females and vice versa. Without sexual hormones, bitches and dogs revert to an indistinguishable canine baseline from which all behaviors are possible for both sexes equally
Here you go. Just select “build poll” from the reply settings icon and enter each option on a separate line.
Poll
males and females strongly tend to be noticably different in ways clearly delineated by sex
Males could be females and vice versa. Without sexual hormones, bitches and dogs revert to an indistinguishable canine baseline from which all behaviors are possible for both sexes equally
Tangential and not about dogs ---- Emus can distinguish humans by gender, and at some times of the year, it can be dangerous for a human female to be around these aggressive and powerful birds.
PS. What does the “reply settings icon” look like?
Little gear wheel on the right side. It’s not normally light grey on dark, that was just a quirk of the screenshot. When creating a new topic, the layout is much the same.
With just anectedotal dog science to rely on (I got 5 of the buggers), I think probably B is closest. However, I’ve noticed there is a dominate male, and a dominate female, and an ‘Overall’ dominate that varies with whoever is that the group at the time.
Doxie (oldest, biggest male) is overall when he’s around. When he’s gone, the youngest, biggest female tries to take over the pack.
I have male and female dogs, if they’ve been fixed, it’s only happened after they’ve sexually matured (we tend to allow the females to undergo one heat). We still have a male that has not been neutered and we have no plan to. He’s not marking his territory in the house or anything usually associated with that.
I have seen no appreciable differences between the sexes, personality wise. In fact we have a un-neutered female that still tries to play alpha (dominating/humping the other dogs, etc), just like the male.
I suspect that any such “personality” difference would be even more muted if they were fixed. Now, I know that people’s miles may vary, but I would say D. Females and males are quite similar even with sex hormones.
I don’t know how you’d find data on the personalities of people who have sex with dogs. It’s probably a small sample size. The only person I ever knew with information on the subject said his girlfriend talked him into getting his dog to mount her. He said the dog ran out to his death under a car the next day. He took it as a bad omen, and he quit dating that woman.
If you have spent a lot of time with entire (non-castrated) male dogs you’ll find that they do tend to have some strongly gendered traits. But most of them apply to their feelings about other dogs, not people.
I would say that unneutered males, and females, both spayed and unspayed, act about the same, except if an unspayed dog is in heat.
Unneutered males definitely act differently.
Any real differences are based in the way that owners treat them. I have certainly seen that owners treat male dogs differently than female, and that is going to end up having a bearing on their personality.
I feel this about the dogs I have encountered. Females seem to be more aloof and mature where males always seem more goofy and puppylike. Hmmm, kind of like humans.
Been around a lot of dogs, male and female, neutered and not. I think there are some clear, but small differences. It could be bias on my part, I wasn’t conducting a scientific study, but my experience shows males to be more aggressive than females, neutered or not. I don’t think it could be a huge difference because we had a dog named Dude, except it was actually a spayed bitch who got the nickname Dude, was routinely called ‘he’, but her aggressive dominant behavior didn’t lead to questions regarding the name or pronouns. So it’s going to be all over the place, but I think the male dogs start out with a genetic structure and hormonal mix that would make them characteristically male without interference, and some amount of that affects them past neutering, correspondingly the same with females. The real tell may be in how well male neutered dogs will show maternal concern for others.
Now maybe if the dogs were fixed at a very early age, perhaps even too early in the view of some, there may be little to distinguish between the sexes at that point. I hope this is not something anyone finds the need to find out.
I tend to rescue dogs and they usually come to me already altered but I acquired a male heeler pup at 8 weeks with a contract to have him neutered from the breeder and he began to be a real handful around six months old or so. Lots of aggression–he already was food aggressive but he got really stroppy with my older female heeler mix and was biting her, humping, just being a real jerk to her and was getting pretty pushy with people as well. Had his trouble puffs removed and in a couple weeks he was back to being a friendly goofy puppy again. I really don’t think I’d like to have a strong personality dog who kept his nuts. My old dog was neutered at, I think, six months too and it’s a good thing because he’s pretty aloof and dog intolerant in general and I think he’d be much worse with nuts on.
