Chemical Castration for Dogs

There was a program dealing with this on the Graeme Hall Dogs Behaving Badly TV series recently. He seemed to train the offending dog by offering titbits, making a fuss of the dog and playing with a toy, he may even sent the dog out of the room every time it tried to hump.

YouTube have at least two clips, it just takes time and patience

My 4 year old female Labrador was spayed after her first season. This, however, has not stopped her from humping. Bend down to look for something and whoosh she’s on your back digging in her dew claws - ouch! Nearly ended up in the wood burner as I was trying to light it! So Watermeadow’s comments are worth taking notice of.

My female dog has been spayed. My grandchildren's male dog has been neutered. Before he was neutered, and after she was spayed, she tried to "hump" him (and still does sometimes). So I think that demonstrates what Watermeadow says, -that it is, at least partly, an issue of power and dominance.

I think spaying and neutering is advisable because, as others have said, it goes some way to preventing dogs being stolen for breeding purposes. It reduces male aggression and straying and unwanted pregnancies.

There are already too many dogs looking for homes and we don't need any more.

I don't know if there is research to link these procedures to the development of cancer. However, our previous male dog - a largish cross pointer/spaniel,who had been neutered - lived to the age of 12 and a half, which was the average for his breed.

Graeme Hall isn’t an expert, he’s a tv personality

Please do not go by Graeme Hall!!! Same as ceasar milan. They are far from experts. I always neuter any animal as ive been present in sad situations of holding dogs/cats being pts as no-one offers them a home. Many many thousands get pts every year in UK. I have an entire 8yr old male - not through my choice - he is too nervous in 3 different vet opinions to be neutered. My friend uses chemical castration for one of her dogs due to aggression issues which works really well. Again she has had advice from vets not to have him neutered why I am not sure. There is also no guarantee neutering will stop your dog “humping”. Veterinary professionals are the ones to ask - not tv personalities.

David - what an odd comment!! Why would you want a dog ' Intact' utter madness.

I’ve had 3 labs , the first was never neutered but didn’t have any tendencies for humping or chasing female dogs. Plus this was 30 years ago and we were new dog owners . He died at 15 . Our second was a female and we spayed her after her first season.
Our current dog is male and we got him neutered at 18 months due to neutered males getting agressive with him. Plus all the dog boarders I met with , wouldn’t take an intact male. Because they’d had issues .
Personally, unless you intend to breed , I don’t understand why people don’t neuter.
It also makes dogs less attractive to dog theft . A friend with a female has neutered on her harness .
As for chemical neutering , a friend tried it. It didn’t work and she had him neutered.
Whoever said neutering is mutilating dogs , would they say having the snip is mutilating men.

Neutering reduces/ eliminates the risk of testicular cancer, for obvious reasons. In male dogs don't think there's good evidence it reduces any others.
We've had one entire male (lived to 16 yo) now another 3 yo that hasn't been neutered.Our current one still will chew if they get bored, & our sadly deceased one used to bark rather a lot, but no "hormonal" behaviour problems with either, both very soft & won't leave the back garden even if a fence blows down. I do check him for lumps / bumps every month. I'm not against neutering males & strongly for neutering pet bitches (there are stronger health arguments here) but I lost a 4 yo Setter when he was castrated so I just prefer not to put us both through the mill unless a good reason.

I would be very disinclined to try chemical castration, as it sounds as if no one is sure of side effects. If you do not intend to breed from the dog, castration seems indicated unless you are prepared to re-home one of the dogs, which I feel sure you don't.

Why don’t you join the Flat Coat Retriever groups on Facebook. I’m sure they’ll give you lots of good advise.

I have read that to tell the difference between behavioural/dominance humping and sexual humping you check the state of the male genital at the time. Dominance humping does not involve a full erection. Not that it makes any difference to whether neutering will help because reduction in testosterone should reduce both dominance and sex urges to a certain extent, and hopefully easier to distract when you have visitors.

BTW to whoever mentioned "the snip" it's not the same as neutering. Neutering removes the gonads altogether. "The snip" just cuts the tube the sperm travel down to get to the outside.

Castration is actually a minor procedure. Much better to just get it over with instead of mucking about with alternatives. May I suggest that the vet may make more money out of chemical methods?

Personally I don't believe in neutering unless for a very good reason which this is.
I have 2 female dogs and neither are spayed. The risk of incontinence in spaying is too great unless unavoidable. Only ever had one dog spayed a border collie who scaled a 12ft wall to get out. After 3 morning after treatments she was spayed.

Barleyfields

I haven’t heard of chemical castration before but I would prefer not to introduce chemicals into an animal’s body unnecessarily, and in this case it is unnecessary because surgical castration is a quick and safe alternative. Surgical castration can also prevent some cancers.

I agree, surgical castration is proven to be safe whereas chemicals may have side effects. Also they wear off and (presumably) provide a longer income stream for vets.

It’s very much personal choice as there are pros and cons whichever you decide
Mine are neutered. Never any problems. My first spaniel had a planned litter at 2 1/2 . Her seasons easy till she hit eight when her determination to find her Prince became difficult especially as it coincided with our children being teens who weren’t as vigilant about guarding doors.
One night I searched till 3am then woke at 5.30am and went out our back door to resume searching. There she was with the black Scottie dog from down the road, both very pleased with themselves
Our vet said bring her in, we don’t want a litter at her age - I’ll do the necessary
🙈🐶
I’d never risk that again. My dogs aren’t bred from

David49

Sounds like you are all in favour of mutilating dogs for your own convenience.

.. And it sounds like you are all in favour of intact dogs impregnating any random female in the park. What's the big deal? If you're not going to breed from that dog then castrating it is a good deed for everyone. We do the same with cats, those of us who care about them anyway.

Not having your dog castrated does not mean that you don't care about them. There could be any number of reasons why an owner chooses not to do so. As Iam64 rightly says, it all comes down to personal choice at the end of the day. As I said, we have had male Labs our whole life, none were castrated and none ever 'impregnated any random female'. No responsible owner would let their dog do that.

This is the difference between dogs & cats. Cats are out unsupervised (un-neutered toms not a pleasant indoor-only pet!!)
Dogs are always supervised when outside the owner's property (unless they escape but not all dogs can jump 6' & most don't have the urge to). So the risk with un-neutered dogs is an intra-household accident & most owners only have one & wouldn't dog-sit a bitch in season.

David49

Sounds like you are all in favour of mutilating dogs for your own convenience.

What??

It’s completely responsible for both dog and cat owners to have their animals neutered.

We found this out the hard way, many years ago, when the Alsatian next door to us managed to jump a 5ft fence, enter our home via the dog flap and impregnate our lovely Labrador cross, who subsequently gave birth to 11 live puppies!

There’s also medical reason for spading females, our cocker had “false” pregnancies and then when spade later in life had formed two huge benign tumours, only visible when she was opened up.

Tenko

I’ve had 3 labs , the first was never neutered but didn’t have any tendencies for humping or chasing female dogs. Plus this was 30 years ago and we were new dog owners . He died at 15 . Our second was a female and we spayed her after her first season.
Our current dog is male and we got him neutered at 18 months due to neutered males getting agressive with him. Plus all the dog boarders I met with , wouldn’t take an intact male. Because they’d had issues .
Personally, unless you intend to breed , I don’t understand why people don’t neuter.
It also makes dogs less attractive to dog theft . A friend with a female has neutered on her harness .
As for chemical neutering , a friend tried it. It didn’t work and she had him neutered.
Whoever said neutering is mutilating dogs , would they say having the snip is mutilating men.

👏👏👏👏

There are some naive owners these days, younger than our generation I’d say, who think it’s ok to walk their on heat bitch in areas with lots of other often off lead dogs. One such had hers off lead “because her recall is good”
Crazy - an entire male would’ve be disuaded even if she was on lead

Well, Tenko, it was a man who made the comment …. I wonder if he would call a vasectomy mutilation for personal convenience?

I never had my bitches spayed because I thought that owners did it purely out of convenience. Until my first whippet developed pyometra in middle age and nearly died. This was after I’d had a spaniel spayed in middle age because of mammary tumours. My current whippet had a suspected pyometra when she was quite young, but was due to be spayed anyway ( I always have them spayed now although not until they’ve had one or two seasons and had finished growing)I don’t know much about male dogs as I’ve always had bitches. Phantom pregnancies are very distressing for dogs and from what I’ve heard it’s difficult to know the best time to spay them to stop them suffering as their hormones are all over the place ( on the subject of irresponsible owners, someone complained that her dog had ran up to two dogs to play and their owner had hit it with a lead to turn it away; turns out one of the dogs it ran up to was a Japanese dog known to be fiercely protective of it’s family, and imo the dog walker was totally irresponsible in allowing an off lead dog run up to a breed that I would avoid like the plague. Also, the dog that ran up to the other dogs was a nervous rescue dog that was still quite nervous. Why allow a nervous dog to run up to strange dogs to play with them? I despair of people).

Barleyfields

Well, Tenko, it was a man who made the comment …. I wonder if he would call a vasectomy mutilation for personal convenience?

Men can consent

Animal's can’t consent, many are against castrating male farm animals yet happily castrate cats and dogs entirely for their own convenience or enjoyment. We had dogs for years all kept entire, no major issues.