VMD 513: Pet animal Breeding, Management, Nutrition and Health Care (1+1)

MALE DOG CASTRATION

• The extirpation of the testicles helps to solve many conduct problems in male dogs. Sometimes, it is convenient to supply certain medications with similar effect to castration (chemical castration), even when it will be only temporarily, before the surgery, to make sure that the castration will have the expected effects on the conduct, but that should be decided by the veterinary.
• The advantages of the castration on a male dog are the following:
  • The non castrated male dog usually runs away from the house to follow the smell of female dogs in the heat.
  • It is more probable that they will develop aggressive conducts and try to turn themselves into the dominant individual of the family pack when they are not castrated.
  • The male dogs that only attack other males usually decrease their aggressive conduct after the castration.
  • Many male dogs use to cover people's legs, puppets, cushions or pillows. This conduct usually disappears or at least decreases, after the surgery.
  • The custom of raising the paw to urinate in order to mark the territory, totally natural in the non castrated dogs, is reduced with castration.
  • A castrated male dog is safe from prostrate problems, from testicle tumors and from those tumors that can only develop in the presence of masculine hormones.
• The castration produces similar side effects on the male and the female dogs (more tendencies to gain weight, for example) in any case, not very serious as a general rule.
• Even when there are veterinarians that only castrate a male dog when it has already begun to present conduct problems; there are others that prefer castrating them when they are still puppies as a preventive measure.