I’m going to beat this dead horse and just say that I find it amusingthat in every one of these spay/neuter ‘debates’ someone tries to argue that a person who dedicates a great part of their own time to providing for their dogs and ensuring their welfare should snip-snip their dog because many irresponsible pet owners let their dogs reproduce.
accidentally hit the nail right on the head, got right to the root of the problem.
I think of it as a precautionary measure. There are so many dogs in shelters and if your male dog gets loose on accident (let’s be honest, it’s always a possibility) he could impregnate another dog and you don’t know if the dog has anyone to provide for the puppies. If your dog is female, it’s still not a good idea to not have them spayed because if you aren’t planning on puppies it can be very demanding and it’s very hard to find good homes for each and every one of them. If you don’t plan on breeding your dog, i think it’s really in your best interest to have them spayed or neutered. Just my opinion.
I hear you, but I also think there’s a massive cultural divide here. I live in a country where surgery (in general, and neutering dogs in particular) on animals without a specific (usually medical) reason is illegal - and as a result of that every single dog in my family have been intact, I’ve only ever met two (?) males that I knew were fixed. None of these dogs has produced accidental litters, despite most of them living in the same house as an intact dog of the opposite sex. Here, properly managing, supervising and training an intact dog is just what you sign up for when getting a dog. We don’t have a population problem, despite the majority being intact. And that leads me to believe, personally, that the prevalence of accidental litters relies more on the ownership culture than the actual animals.
So to me, it sounds super backward when you see people who put more than average effort into properly managing and caring for their dogs be told that because other people can’t/won’t manage theirs, they should put their own dogs under the knife.
Like I’m not smacking anyone over the head and saying don’t spay, there are many reasons for why desexing might be the right choice, but to me, it will always be a decision to be made for an individual situation and I think that particular argument in many cases (most, in my experience, but that could be more abt my social circle than the general public) is whack.
I’m not going to rip out vitally important endocrine system organs from my animal as a “just in case”. Are there dog owners who don’t do enough to keep their dogs from breeding irresponsibly? Yeah, unfortunately. Does that mean that I – a responsible owner – should put my dog under for unneccesary surgery that will irreversibly remove important parts of their bodies, forever changing their hormones and increasing their risk of serious health issues and behavioral problems to make up for the mistakes of those irresponsible owners? Hell to the fuck no.
If you want to neuter your own dog, go for it. But don’t judge me or try to pressure me for not doing the same. I’ve done the research, I’m putting in the work to be a responsible owner and trainer for my own pets, and I have my own very good reasons for not neutering just as you may have your own reasons for neutering.
I thought that if you spayed or neutered your animals, they tend to live a healthier/longer life? Like, I could be wrong, but when my lab wasn’t spayed, she went through a false pregnancy and she ended up developing an infection in her uterus that was common in unspayed labs.
Getting her spayed saved her life. And all my vets in 3 different states push for it. And not just for cash - these were people I trusted. I would like to know if what they’re saying is wrong and where you guys drew your conclusion from! :)
Source dump! There’s a lot so I’ll put it under a read more. Most of these are dog only studies and articles, not cats unfortunately. And I myself know little about this subject concerning cats since I only own dogs so I can’t really comment on cats specifically. But at this point I do consider neutering dogs to be a risk not worth taking unless it becomes medically necessary. For people who do want to spay and neuter I recommend looking into vasectomies and ovary sparing spays as these don’t rip out important hormone producing organs.
Oh and this is a compiled list of articles and studies from facebook dog group discussions, MOST of which I have read through but not all so if a link is broken sorry.
Dogs actually do have a language center in their brains. They process language just the same way we do, just not as well.
Theydo understand our words. This is not true of all domesticated animals (horses, for example, can only manage to distinguish a relatively small number of spoken commands…but boy do they know what you’re really saying).
They don’t understand “just your tone of voice” as a lot of people think.
As of 2016 the record vocabulary for a dog demonstrating understanding of words is over 1,000.
So if you give them a way to talk back, they’re going to use it.
The development of language skills is probably a side effect of domestication and of being kept in close contact with humans. A dog that was a better hunting partner would be kept and bred and over time they developed a better understanding of language.
In other words, dogs are pretty dang smart because we need them to understand us.
And also that is a very good boy.
^ Would like to agree and make one amendment - very good GIRL. This is Stella the dog!
Check out the owner Christina’s Instagram: one of the first things I saw was a video where the dog started barking and, when prompted by the owner, said “outside, look look look look look look look, come outside.” Which is basically exactly how one would expect a dog to speak.
The owner described bringing an unknown package into the house, and the dog ran away to push the buttons for “help no no help help” which is also about what I expect goes on in a scared pup’s mind.
In another video, the dog tried to push a button, and the button wasn’t working. The dog paused and then pushed the buttons for “No. Help.”
In yet another (which the owner seemed impressed by), Stella said “come eat come play.” The owner asked the dog which she wanted to do, to eat or to play? And the dog clarified “come eat.” After eating, then the dog tried to instigate play. So the dog may have been able to understand a short spoken question, and how “questions and answers” work, and also understands sequences, even if she can’t express them (”I want to eat, THEN I want to play”)
Stella can even recount short-term memories, like when her family returned from the beach for dinner and she said “water good, no eat, play”
By the way, the owner uses the buttons as well, which probably really helps reinforce their meaning. She uses them to say things like “Stella all done eat” or “Stella and Christina go outside, bye!”
Wanna know my favorite part? Stella sometimes pushes the buttons for “Stella good” when she’s done a good job. Stella IS good! :D She also makes phrases using “love you,” like “Christina, love you, come play!”
