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Are there negative behavior changes after neutering?


Tommy Coyote
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I just read an article in Psychology Today by Stanley Cohen, PHD, FRSC: Are There Behavior Changes When Dogs Are Spayed or Neutered?

 

This article stated studies done on behavior changes in dogs that were neutered or Spayed. The studies included a total of over 15,000 dogs.

 

Bottom line : Spayed and neutered dogs showed considerably more aggression in both males and females.

31% increase in fearfullness

33% increase in touch sensitivity

8% increase in excitability

 

And the dogs were less trainable.

 

Any thoughts on this? This is so opposite of everything I have ever read.

 

The only positive thing was a lessening of urine marking.

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How was trainable defined? How did they get the information from the owners? The owners own subjective observations? How were other variables factored in beside from being spayed/neutered? Did the owners know they were participating in a study about behavior changes after spay/neuter?

 

How was fearfulness defined? What ages were the dogs in the study? What other factors were going on with the dog and owner's lives.

I tried to find the article but just found generic links to articles about "should I spay or neuter my dog". Do you have a link?

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I vaguely remember reading somewhere that neutering could result in increasing aggression in dogs with a tendency towards it. I ran across that when Wink's aggressive behavior was quickly escalating when he reached adolescence and was trying to decide whether to neuter him or not. (He was neutered very shortly after I returned him to the rescue. It didn't solve his aggression issues.)

 

I'd also be interested in knowing how such studies are done. It would have to be some sort of comparison of trends over large numbers of subjects (with some sort of defined measures of behavior) because there's obviously not going to be any way to have controls with identical genetic make ups and identical behaviors to compare.

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15000 dogs in this research; sounds like a demographic study, this means the bias could be huge.

Why are those dogs castrated, many pdople think castration, especially in males can resolve behavioral problems (so there might be a bias toward problem dogs in the castrated group).

And were the castrated dogs in this research compared to the non castrated population in general, or to themselves, prior to castration? I suspect the first.

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There were 2 different studies and they used the C BARC Scoring Scale.

 

There were 2 studies. One by Deborah Duffy and James Serpell of the vet school at the University of Pennsylvania using 2 groups of dogs. One of 1,552 and one of 3, 592.

 

The 2nd study was a Master's thesis

Submitted by Parvene Parhoody at Hunter College in New York. 10,839 dogs.

 

C-BARC is a test of 101 questions that is considered a reliable source of information for evaluating various aspects of canine aggression, fearfullness, anxiety, attachment, excitability, energy level and other factors.

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My male was neutered at 2-2.5 years of age. He was neutered because he spent a weekend snarking at many males at an agility trial. He was totally fine and completely focused while he was working in the ring. The behavior only occurred while we were walking around the show grounds. I later found out that there was a bitch that was crated near us that went into season the Monday after the trial.

 

Neutering attenuated, but did not cure the snarking at males, especially tall leggy males that make eye contact with him. When he was intact, he seemed to be targeted by intact and neutered males and neutering seemed to attenuate that as well. The neutering eliminated the urine licking and teeth chattering. He had also been marking in the kitchen--I never could catch him in the act--and that stopped. He still remained sexually interested in one of my females, who had chronic skin and urinary tract issues.

 

Neutering did not affect his desire to work (agility) or interact with me at all. His behavior did seem to become more juvenile when he was not working.

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There were 2 different studies and they used the C BARC Scoring Scale.

There were 2 studies. One by Deborah Duffy and James Serpell of the vet school at the University of Pennsylvania using 2 groups of dogs. One of 1,552 and one of 3, 592.

The 2nd study was a Master's thesis

Submitted by Parvene Parhoody at Hunter College in New York. 10,839 dogs.

C-BARC is a test of 101 questions that is considered a reliable source of information for evaluating various aspects of canine aggression, fearfullness, anxiety, attachment, excitability, energy level and other factors.

My main question still stands; were the dogs evaluated with these instruments, then castrated/spayed, then evaluated again. That would be quite interesting.

The other possibility, that dogs were taken from the general population, evaluated once, and the results combined with their spay/neuter status, much less so.

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That is the opposite of my experience.


After Bandit was neutered, he finally realized he wasn't a Beagle and he got his nose off the floor.

 

His confidence level clearly increased. His comfort level around other dogs increased.

 

He gets along better with the other dogs in our household.

 

And his performance in dog sports improved notably.

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