That is an interesting article. I hope I can offer insight into the spay-neuter crazy vets and why the trend is moving towards early spay neuter for the general public. As a veterinarian I can see both sides of the coin. My retriever was neutered at 13 weeks old. Do I recommend it? Not for everyone. He's a tall, lanky, housedog. We didn't get him for hunting (although it's in his genes) and for that reason we went ahead and snipped him before he started marking behavior etc.

If I had gotten him for hunting I would have waited. I see a lot of hunting dogs and a fair amount of police dogs and there is no question that testosterone adds muscle and prevents obesity. It probably aids muscle development but until they clone two dogs and neuter one and not the other we'll have to assume there would be differences. How big a difference? Hard to say...it probably depends a lot on the dog.

There are several reasons that veterinarians recommend spaying and neutering at around the 6 month mark. Some of them are medical/behavioral and others quite frankly are for society. Many of us recommend 6 months because this is when vaccines are finished and it is a logical time to do the procedure. If we recomended that every dog wait until 1 year of age there would be many unwanted litters running around as many dogs reach sexual adulthood around 8 months. I hate to say it, but as time passes pets often become less of a focus in the family and I would guess the number of dogs spayed/neutered would be much lower if we all expected owners to come back in a few years. Those of you that breed dogs or have had a litter of puppies at your home know that it is not all fun and games. I've had several clients tell me that they want their kids to experience the wonder of puppies or that they want one litter from the dog because "it's natural". Like the world needs more black labs being sold out of the back of a pickup at Walmart. Don't get me wrong, I'm a lab guy, but when I get my hunting lab it will be from a proven line...not a backyard breeder.

Other advantages of doing it early include faster recovery by young vs old animals and quite simply, it's a safer procedure in a dog without fully developed testes. By safer I mean that there is less risk for a knot slipping and your dog ending up with a blood filled swollen scrotum. Either way, this isn't very common.

There are also medical reasons to neuter a dog. Prostatitis is very rare in a neutered dog and neutering prevents several forms of testicular cancer. Female dogs are essentially reproductive machines. Without breeding / pregnancy they have a very HIGH risk of pyometra (uterine infection). Surgical correction of this condition is never cheap and not always successful. Lastly, dogs that are not spayed before age 2 have an 80% chance of developing mammary cancer.

All I will say regarding behavior is that intact dogs tend to show more aggressive behavor than neutered animals. So when I have a client in the exam room and they're telling me that their dog growls at their child the first thing we talk about it spay/neuter.

So what will I do when we get our next dog? I'll wait until he's a year old or so. I've seen enough excellent police, search and rescue, and hunting dogs benefit from the magic of testosterone/estrogen that we'd wait it out a little longer than the 13 weeks our boy had. I also think there is nothing wrong with the 6-8 month mark. Like I said, I have a lot of clients with hunting dogs and MOST of them are neutered or spayed...and most of these were done before 8 months of age. And they still get birds.

gopherfan