It breaks my heart lookin at them dogs. Seemingly Bev has done a runner to Texas

That is awful, poor poor puppies, i hate the fact that pups are neutered at 6 months let alone 12 weeks!! Rescues vet people and homes so why the need to do it so so early, didn't new owners have to sign a contract saying they will get pup neutered when old enough before? Better idea imo.

I have found in male dogs especially that when neutered early they keep a high pitched bark, never masculinise (sp)? and generally act like puppies for far to long and i see alot of overweight neutered pups.

Why would anybody make a decision on their dog care based on what they feel, not what is proven best for the dog? Real dog lovers seek out the best possible practices for the welfare of the dog and follow them. Doing what you feel good about may make you feel good at the expense of the dog.

I do have a strong emotional reaction to the millions of dogs that are slaughtered every year for lack of homes.

In some cases where an older spayed female develops incontinence, it is easily controled with HRT. I think Aster received a capsule a week from about the age 12 until being put to sleep at 15. Note, she was spayed after her first season and after a year old.


While that may be true, accidents happen even with competent, well informed, well motivated people. This is even more likely if they read stories about how easy some dogs are to control. Our Raven is into the fourth week since her discharge started. The discharge has been gone for some time and the swelling is going down. We never saw the least problem the whole time. If anything, she has been even quieter than usual. Her discharge was never heavy. I didn't even have to answer too many questions about her sanitary garment when we had her out. I would be doing an enormous disfavor to suggest to others that they could count on the same thing.

I have been around many dog forums for over 10 years. In that time, I have seen many horror stories about people that took careful precautions and their female still was accidentally bred or worse. Caring for a female may not be near as easy as many here suggest.

Speak for yourself Labman and don't patronise me, there are very few accidents if people are careful, I have had dogs for 45 years and run kennels with in season bitches and stud dogs and I have never had one accident. Just because you doubt your ability to keep an in season bitch from getting mated don't class everyone else along with yourself. I don't think you need to worry though, according to your previous posts the poor puppies in your care rarely set foot outside of a crate, when they do they are chained to furniture and never let of the lead so little chance of them having 'accidents'.

As for being around dog forums for 10 years, you are not unique many of us have and we have read tales of 'accident', but that won't prevent the intelligent dog lovers among us having our bitches spayed at what we consider to be the best time for our dogs.

A friend of mine who is a vet (though not my own vet) and I were talking about this a few weeks back as she'd had a puppy bought in at 14 weeks that was already spayed and quite frankly she was horrified, she'd heard about it happening in the US but didn't think that there were many vets over here that would carry out the procedure.

She works in a practice that advocates spaying after the first season and neutering at over a year if possible, they didn't always do this but after the number of bitches presenting with post spay incontinence, and dogs presenting with behavioural problems which the early neutering hadn't solved the practice decided to go back to the way they'd done things in the past.

One of the things that concerns her is that quite a few dogs, of mixed and pure breeds, suffer from age related arthritis, and some of these have onset symtoms by the time they are no more than middle age. The dogs/bitches put through early spay/neuter policies have their entire sex hormones removed which could affect bone density and lead to more joint problems in later life. Sadly until this starts to happen in say 8 - 10 years time we won't know whether the benefit of early spay/neuter is outweighed by the negatives.

Labman since when did you care what is best for a dog or 'seek out the best practises', is shutting a 7 week old puppy in a crate without access to water for 16 out of 24 hours best for it, is depriving a puppy of the ability to run around /exercises/see the world best for it, is feeding a puppy on the cheapest food best for it, is forcing a tiny puppy to submit by holding it down best for it, all thing you have suggested new owners should do in posts on these forums .
10 years and you have clearly learnt very little about how to care for dogs. I don't think anyone here needs lessons in dog care from someone who is only capable of following some outdated manual and still uses the dog rearing practises of a load of monks!

I supposed we should remember unlike the majority of members here you are not raising much loved indispensable pets but dispensable 'service dogs' in puppy farm conditions for an organisation which can't be named in case people 'harass them'

Lynda those you have mentioned are all ASD breeders who do source from RM; Cream of Doodles also do; luckily though (due to the issues raised recently about RM) the Labradoodle does not have any connection to RM. The Labradoodle in this Country is bred from a labrador and a SP unlike the ASD that has almost 50 differnet breeds in it - how can they be crossbreeds; surely they are mongrels (another subject). Like I said, I personally know of one breeder who does ESN and she is in Wales.

Well if the ASD is a mongrel (your word, before ya start a barney lol) what does it make a Labradoodle x ASD then as they sure are expensive lol. So these breeders doing this mix do not recommend early spay/ neut ? I believe their are still quite a few in support of Bev--infact are you still not a member on a Doodle forum who supports her

Thank you for posting this in such a clear way. It is exactly what I have come to believe about early spaying/castrations. In spite of what some people say I am sure there is credible research to back this up.
I also suspect that puppies are neutered as early as 6 weeks, purely for the sake of convenience before they go to their new homes.
There are also probably some breeders neutering before pups leave them purely because they do not want anyone but themselves breeding so called designer dogs and dipping into their money pot.

I agree, a breeder should be only selling puppies to people that they can trust, if they can't trust them, and feel the need to spay/neuter so young because of this then why on earth are they selling to them people? IMHO a good breeder wouldn't sell to someone that they don't trust, and I don't see any good breeders that would spay/neuter so young either.