I had a particularly frustrating conversation with a dog-walker friend of mine over on Facebook yesterday, about the challenges of owning an intact male dog in a city where virtually every dog you encounter has been spayed or neutered.
She didn’t say anything outrageous, just recapitulated the conventional wisdom about how intact animals trigger or cause behavior problems in group situations, how intact males will be aggressive, how intact males “incite” aggression in neutered dogs even when the intact male isn’t aggressive himself, and so on. Nothing we all haven’t heard before, and probably nothing many pet owners would think twice about.
But those of us who have kept intact males for decades, who take our dogs to conformation shows and field events where all the animals are intact, know that some of these statements being presented as universal truths are, in fact, situational.
When dogs aren’t used to being around intact dogs, yes, they may very well freak out when they meet one. But at dog shows, conformation handling classes and performance events, problems of aggression are very rare, because people and dogs are used to that situation. Everyone knows what to do, and the dogs know how the dogs next to them in the ring are “supposed to” walk, stand and smell.
After the exchange, I felt myself gearing up to go into a long rant about how we’ve lost our animal sense, and people can’t deal with animals as nature made them anymore, and we’re turning dogs into neutered little robots because of the demands of society and blah blah blah, when it struck me.
Spay/neuter is the kibble of reproductive biology.
I mean, think about it. Would pet ownership be so widespread if we didn’t have near-universal spay/neuter and easy, cheap commercial pet foods?
While we often give other reasons — altruistic ones or health ones — most dog owners have come to rely on neutering to change dogs’ natural behavior so they fit into unnatural crowded urban environment, just as they’ve come to rely on commercial processed diets to feed their pets cheaply and conveniently.
But our dogs, like us, will do best on a diet of fresh, varied, wholesome foods, even if such a diet is more expensive and time-consuming than putting kibble in a bowl. And while a dog with a specific health problem may benefit from being neutered, for most male dogs, neutering increases, rather than decreases, health risks.
Both kibble and spay/neuter benefit dogs in general by making it easier for people to own dogs, which is something I’m in favor of. And I don’t want to make it harder to own pets than it already is, either.
But I’m increasingly uncomfortable with how few people seem to question or even acknowledge that we’re making some pretty signifcant trade-offs in terms of our dogs’ health to get that ease of ownership.
For instance, it’s shocking how many people I respect — people who I think have some pretty good knowledge and experience about dogs — honestly don’t know there’s any medical or behavioral downside to spaying and neutering dogs.
And there’s something fundamentally skewed when a dog isn’t considered “normal” by dog owners or their dogs unless he’s had his testicles removed. Being intact is, in fact, normal, even if it’s no longer common. It’s not a health problem to be cured with surgery, it’s not a tragedy, and it’s not a sign that the dog’s owner is stupid or irresponsible.
I know that I’ll continue to feed my dogs fresh food and make decisions about their reproductive organs on an individual basis, just like I do for myself.
And I’ll continue to be glad that so many people want to share their lives and homes with dogs, and want to do the right thing for their pets.
But I’ll also remember that there is a natural conflict between those two statements — and wish a lot more people would realize that, too.
View the original article here
