Jim K. asked:
Should I spay my female- or neuter my male dog?
Hello Jim,
If you have to make a choice between spaying your female or neutering your male, because they live in the same house hold, we suggest you consider spaying the female. You get rid of the situation of him going nuts for ten days twice a year. You also get rid of the mess of her bleeding twice a year.
Here is our take on spay/neuter in general, before you consider this irreversible step:
Spaying or neutering is the first thing a Vet will recommend when you bring your puppy in shots!
It is so ingrained into society that the owner not even asks the question- “WHY”?
-And if they ask, it will always be the scare answer:
“When he doesn’t have his testicles, he can’t develop testicular cancer. If she doesn’t have a uterus, she can’t develop cervical cancer”.
One should give it some more thought:
These organs are there for a reason. The reason is not only reproduction purpose.
Of course one can always ask Google, but Google is NOT always right!
This website about advantages and disadvantages of neutering ( just a random example) covers part of the answers. Yet these answers can only partially be confirmed by what we have observed over decades.
It doesn’t touch on the fact that neutering a male under two years of age definitely will be hindered from proper development of secondary sex characteristics.
That just makes sense as testosterone is needed for the physical development of a male to look like a male.
Here a very informative video about the negative effects of spaying or neutering.
Just take a look at horses. The colts are commonly “cut” at a very young age. Therefore the gelding ends up looking like a mare.
If a breeder decides not to cut the colt as he looks like a prospective stallion for his breeding program, an later on decides to cut him because he didn’t develop as expected, that gelding will look like a stallion.
That neutering a male will help behavioral issues, can not be confirmed by our observations either.
An American Bulldog that came to us for training at twelve months old had been neutered by the age of six months, because he was excessively humping anything there was. When we received the dog, he was still doing the same behavior.
Multiple dogs that we encountered over the years had been neutered to depress aggressive behaviors. No changes in behavior were noticed!
All these examples are training issues. Neutering is not the easy fix.
The only consistent outcome we can see, is that dogs gain weight after being spayed or neutered.