I'm looking for a more comprehensive side to the argument. No offence but if I'm having trouble trusting my vet so some stranger online who learned how to enlarge the font and has trouble repeating themselves will really have trouble convincing me. For everyone else thank you for the advice, I appreciate it. I'll admit that I had not thought about them running off and mating but then again where we live that really isn't an issue.
So to be clear, while unwanted litters is a big reason for a lot of people’s decision it will not be affecting mine (I hope you choose to respect my opinion but if not… ok). My only concern is the well being of my dogs as far as health goes and as far as social behavior.
In order to better put my worries into perspective let me briefly describe myself: I am a college student, former psychology major till I switched to biochemistry. It’s in my nature to look for the actual metabolic or physiological causes of the problems. So when someone tells me something new then I don’t immediately assume its true, regardless of its’ source. One of the most important lessons that I’ve learned in college would be that even the top scientists of the day all throughout history and through the modern age can still be wrong, but they prove whatever they believe through deductive reasoning and logic. That’s all I’m looking for.
I don’t even see why they brought up topic of cancer prevention to be honest. It seems more like a device used to get people to neuter their dogs. For starters it’s the obvious statement of the decade that removing the testicles would prevent testicular cancer. But that’s backwards logic in my opinion, you remove a cancerous organ because it’s cancerous, you don’t remove an organ to prevent cancer (especially when the only leads we have to the causes of cancer are related to carcinogen intake and radiation/ not hormones). Note: I’m using the term organ as a generality; their testicles are not like our appendix and should be treated as such. Which makes me ask to any parents out there reading this: would you go get your child’s appendix removed so that they can prevent appendicitis? Or would you get it removed because of appendicitis? Note: Appendicitis can kill you faster than cancer if left untreated. The appendix serves no purpose and we can directly diagnose the cause of appendicitis. For those of you who don’t know, appendicitis is the infection of the appendix from lodged fecal matter causing your appendix to swell with poisonous toxins; this pressure can build to bursting causing the poisons to fill the body typically resulting in death if not dealt with in time. This is renowned for the crippling pain in your side. Seems like something you’d want to prevent, yes? But no one does that. Why? Like I said it is backwards logic. You don’t go under the knife for prevention, only to fix a problem. (Bringing up the carcinogen intake again; this is just my opinion but the closest link to cancer in dogs could be related to the preservatives used in some wet foods/ which I don’t feed my dogs).
And as far as behavior goes: I’m hoping someone will explain why it seemed like my vet was giving me an ultimatum. It seemed more like a “now or never” kind of scenario after she said that the surgeries effects might not work after they reach a certain age (“around two years old”). This also made me question the correlation between neutering and behavior problems. And being an aspiring doctor I would like to think that if I was describing a procedure to a patient that I could promise consistent results (especially for an elective surgery used entirely for preventative measures). It seems a little odd to me that she’s blaming the seemingly destined bad behavior on the fluctuation of hormones that the testicles produce, but then says that if they are removed (cutting off the hormones) too late that it might not work. That to me is a red flag for several reasons. Number one, ultimatums always make me question the legitimacy of what anyone says; if I have to make the decision fast then that doesn’t give me much time to think about it. This seemed really odd for this kind of surgery. Number two, why would cutting off the hormones now prevent the problem, but cutting them off a year from now might not have any effect? Hormones are hormones right? And if they are the real reason for the behavior then the behavior should go with them, but apparently that’s been known not to happen frequently enough for her to warn me about it. Three, after spending a number of hours writing up lab reports, if I found the results of a treatment to be more variable and inconclusive when the problem actually immerges then I’d probably assume that the preventative measures probably aren’t working. This makes me think that the two might be corresponding with each other more so then causing each other.
For instance, the dogs increase in testosterone may cause a dynamic change stemming from a weak alpha position that the owner demonstrates. This would make the last stages of puberty and hormone fluctuation take the blame for what was originally the owner needing to be a leader. Also keeping in mind that dogs focus considerably more on non verbal communication then we do, due to a language barrier. So seeing as how they have different social cues and non verbal then we do, it would not be that farfetched to say that most people don’t pick up on the dogs asserting themselves through ranks in the family. I know a lot of people who own dogs and have to make their meals special or they won’t eat. While the common consensus is “whatever gets them to eat” the dog is really winning and having that privilege viewed in an alpha male light. My dogs have tried this with little success, one will attempt to be a picky eater and the other is not. The picky eater got used to me governing over meal time so he didn’t worry about his brother trying to take his food. Unlucky for him though, if he shows no interest in the food and leaves his bowl unattended I will begin to sprinkle out his dry food one small fist full and a time which they know floor food means that it’s for anyone. Seeing his brother take his food is all it took to have eaten the rest of the meal, no complaints. It worked out very well seeing as how I only had to do this twice.
Lastly I think that vets have a biased and skewed perspective on the subject. For one, most people don’t take their dogs to the vet unless there is a problem to start with so of course they are going to be the first to know about behavior problems but I highly doubt they keep track of any well behaved unneutered dogs for the obvious reason that there would be no need to. And two, at least in my experience, the vet asked very limited questions about the environment that the animal was in, usually just focused on the biological side. This gives limited perspective, not to mention environment is as important if not more important than the biology of the animal. The biology of any organisms changes in order to better cope with the environment. This not only refers to physical development but mental development as well.
I don’t mean this to offend anyone but the atypical pet owner probably is not that hard to manipulate. Not every pet owner is a scientist and chooses to ask question and understands the little details. When a person in a medical status starts throwing words around like cancer and behavior problems most people just take it at face value and pay for the surgery, the alternative they described is a little too frightening. I’d like to know why I should have my boys’ boys taken off.
I appreciate people taking time to answer my question, please know though that I’m looking for causation. If I just needed someone to throw random supposable facts at me I would have just listened to my vet, at least then I would know the source. I want to do what is best for my dogs, but I need an explanation with an answer before I agree to let anyone cut anything off my dogs.