I understand the benefits of neutering but what are the side effects of neutering?
I hear about personalties are changed, dogs get fat, dogs are less protective and this site talked about a study on osteosarcoma and neutering dogs http://www.leerburg.com/neuter.htm . Any truth to this?
Also, I always thought it would be better if a dog grow up before neutering, so that they can at least reach their full size. Is there any benefits to neutering dogs before they are 2?
Your average medium breed male reaches sexual maturity at around six to nine months of age, though often they don’t start actively mating until they are around one. So there is a definite risk of impregnating someone’s poodle if you wait until he’s two. I don’t think it’s true that neutering stunts dog’s growth. It certainly doesn’t cause obesity, unless you overfeed him to compensate for his sudden lack of balls. Neutering also lowers the risk of prostate cancer.
What about guarding ability? is that affected by neutering?
Not at all, in my experience. After all, female dogs are just as good of guard dogs, and they don’t have testosterone to worry about.
I’ve always found the claims of being fat or lazy to be grossly exaggerated. You control what your dog eats. If he seems to be packing on the pounds, put him on a low-fat diet. It’s as simple as that.
The only personality changes I have ever noted are positive ones. Think of a young male dog like a teenage boy-- sometimes moody, sometimes erratic, and with even less self-control than a teenage human. Granted, most of these problems in un-cut dogs (aggressiveness, erratic behavior) comes from poor training, but hormones are pretty powerful things.
Neutering a male makes his temperment more even. It takes away the urge to roam about looking for females, and sometimes makes them more easily trained. They do not become less protective of their families-- just somewhat less likely to all-of-a-sudden take it into their minds to bite someone.
[cat hijack] I have worked for vets for many years, and they all disagree with the “stunt their growth” theory. I have a male part-Siamese cat who was neutered at age 8 weeks and I sure am glad if it stunted his growth. He weighs nearly 28 pounds and it’s not all fat - he’s bigger than a Jack Russell. If you wait until a male is two years old, you are simply allowing hormone related bad behaviors to become habits. [/cat hijack]
Bitches are IMHO better at guarding than males. They are more likely to bark their heads off when a stranger walks by. Spayed females less so, but still more protective than uncut males.
I have been told that there have been no recorded instances of a neutered dog killing a person. Don’t know if that’s true, but if it has happened it’s darn rare.
There have been several studies looking for ill effects in animals neutered at a very young age. As far as I know, there really aren’t ill effects in dogs or cats. The problems with neutering very young are more technical - a young puppy or kitten’s sensitivity to anesthetic and the tiny size of the immature organs.
Whether an early neutered dog has less muscle tone and looks less “masculine” is kinda a moot point as AKC rules are that neutered animals can not be shown.
Even if this is true, there are other factors. This could say more about dog owners than about dogs: Irresponsible dog owners are more likely to not neuter a dog, and they’re also more likely to allow a situation where a dog might kill a person.
And how a dog looks could be relevant to plenty of folks outside of a dog show, so I wouldn’t say it’s moot for that reason.
Correct. In fact, it has been shown that prepubertal castration causes the growth centers of long bones to remain active longer, leading to a slight but demonstrable increase in growth.
Correct again. When calories in exceed calories expended, weight gain results.
Actually, this is incorrect. Castration decreases the occurance of prostatic hypertrophy, however prostatic carcinoma is very slightly increased in castrated males. It is a rare cancer to begin with, and the statistics showing the effect are not impressive. Basically, a very rare event becomes very slightly more likely.
Other cancers that are much more common (perianal adenocarcinoma for instance) are reduced, however.
One of my relatives (human 
)was once tested for prostate cancer. The doctor told him that if the test came back positive, it wasn’t necessarily something to panic about-- that prostate cancer was the “best” kind of cancer someone could get. It’s a cancer which responds very well to treatment, and has excellent survival rates.
Is the same true with dogs?
I see, it is to prevent behaviours, like spraying, humping and aggresive dominant behaviuors, into becoming a habit.
Does it matter with the breed though? I would imagine a labrador would less domineering than a rottweiler.
Not really. It is very rare in dogs and tends to be diagnosed late. The meds that can be used tend to be costly, and at least in my area people are reluctant to spend megabucks on an incontinant old dog.
My beautiful yellow lab was ‘snipped’ a few weeks ago at 6 1/2 months old.
Our contract with the breeder included a provision that we have it done – the breeder keeps 1 or 2 of each litter for show, the rest are sold but not for breeding. From discussions with her and various Vets, the only suggested changes we might see:
- Possibly, a more even-tempered disposition.
- Possibly, less definition to his muscularity.
- Probable continuation of the posture he assumed to urinate before getting the procedure done - i.e. leg-lifting v. squatting. Squatting is preferable to us, as we have a lot of rose bushes and flowering plants that I wouldn’t think respond very well to dog watering.
My Standard Schnauzer bitch was neutered at age 2. The vet told us she prefers to have bitches go through at least one heat before neutering. I can’t remember the exact reason, but I seem to recall it had something to do with hormone levels.
I have seen no negative effects on Bea; her appetite has always been quite small, and neutering didn’t seem to increase it at all. Her guarding instinct has become stronger as she grows older, but she’s still quite playful compared to other 6-year-old dogs.
Of course, this is a female dog we’re talking about, so her reactions are obviously different from a male’s. That being said, my parents’ neighbors have a male Labrador who was neutered at a very early age (around three months), and he still exhibits very masculine traits. This could be due to breeding, though, since he comes from a line of frontier guard and customs drug-sniffing dogs.
Neither of my females had a heat cycle before they were neutered. The older one was neutered at about six months old, and the puppy was neutered at 13 weeks old.
The two vets I spoke to about it saw no benefits to waiting until after the first heat cycle. They said that, yes, that used to be the common opinion, but research has shown it to have little or no benefit, and also has the added risk that a dog may become pregnant before the surgery can be done.