Neutering is not some short-cut to a better-trained dog.

A dog - like most animals and people - comes complete with sexual urges. Adolescent teenage boys are very obnoxious, but we don't neuter them, do we??

Sorry but the idea of neutering your dog to create a dog which is better behaved is to me in line with declawing your cat so your furniture stays intact, or debarking a dog so it can't bark incessantly. Train your pet, don't remove parts of its anatomy surgically, for your own convenience and to make your own life easier!!!

In Sweden until very recently it was illegal to neuter your dog unless deemed necessary for health reasons: It was considered (rightfully) a mutilation. Yet Sweden don't have a problem with gadzillions of unwanted dogs and rescues overflowing.

Rescues are routinely neutering tiny 7wk puppies these days.

During adolescence, a male dog has EIGHT times more testosterone in its blood than an adult dog will have. Owners commonly reach adolescence and believe that their dog is going to be like that forever - and no one tells them otherwise (usually). Instead of vets telling them to have their dogs neutered, they need to know that there IS an end. (As any parents with adolescent kids will know!).

Finally, the people who are breeding and want to breed dogs irresponsibly, will always do so. It matters not what the rest of us do. Meanwhile those responsible pet owners who would have managed an intact pet well and not bred from it anyway, are the ones who neuter. It affects nothing in the scheme of things.

Oh, and one more point: These days, it's increasingly being realised that the gene pools for many breeds are very small. Going down the route of 'everyone neuter except for the very few people who show/compete with their dogs' has aided this, since we then move in the direction of only a very small number of people breeding pedigree dogs - excluding the puppy farms, of course. Now, shutting those down would be a much better cause than neutering your average pet dog.

Do you know why Sweden has no rescue problem?

Why is it not illegal to neuter now?

rune

What an excellent well thought out post - agree with pretty much everything you have said.

Welcome to Dogsey!

Paper showing that female dogs left unspayed until over the age of 4yo will likely live an exceptionally long life, due to 'ovary exposure': http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/arti...5/?tool=pubmed

Research (sample size 10,800 odd dogs) showing that neutering dogs increases incidences of aggression: http://www.vizslacanada.ca/SNBehavio...taSnapShot.pdf

Neutering male dogs increases prostate cancer risk by 4x: http://www.dogcancerblog.com/bladder...reases-risk-2/

I could go on. The research is there. Just no one is applying it.

Lastly, just because it is good for the species as a whole for there to be less dogs, doesn't mean that it is good for the individual dog to be neutered: The two things are not the same.

It is good for the human species for there to be less people on the planet. But I'm not throwing myself off a cliff or getting myself sterilised, because that's not in my own individual interests. I don't want to sacrifice the interests of my own individual dogs for the entire canine species.

Although I would never breed from any rescue dog, I can never own a rescue - because it will come neutered, and I want to have all of my dog. Including its sexuality.

PS I am not against neutering for medical reasons, or when all other behavioural approaches have been tried, obviously. Only as a default 'for everyone' thing.

Hello, thanks Azz.

Azz, could you address the points I made re the studies you cited please.

Thanks

rune

Likewise Runningrabbit---do you know why Sweden hasn't got a rescue dog problem? Why have they changed their neutering policy---I didn't realise they had until you mentioned it.

Thanks

rune

Actually runningrabbit---are you saying in your last paragraph that we should breed from unneutered pet dogs to enhance the gene pools of various breeds?

rune

Are we seriously comparing humans to dogs now? Sorry all credibility lost for me right there

Those who disagree with neutering, I'm interested to know, do you apply the same rules to stallions? Or cats? Or cows? Or any other animal, or is it just dogs?