I took thor to the vets today for his final vaccination and they said he's fully healthy except only one of his testicle has dropped. She said it means he should almost definitely be castrated to prevent testicular cancer and shouldn't be bred as it could be passed on. Also, that it makes the castration more difficult because they have to find the second testicle. We weren't planning on breeding him anyway but I was wondering if there is anything else we should know?
Our Euan also had one testicle. At first the vet wanted to wait and see if the testicle would drop. It didn't. When he was 2 we had him castrated. It is so that the body temperature is too high for a testicle that didn't drop. The chance of becoming cancerous would be high. So we were told and made it for us plausible. During the operation the vet couldn't find it, which made the operation much longer. They finally found it in his inguinal canal and was difficult to remove. Euan had after the operation problems with leaking urine. He was prescribed some medication. Euan was not a typical male dog... he was more or less more feminine. Never payed attention to bitches. My sister could come and visit us with a bitch in heat. He wasn't castrated yet....
Have a good chat with your vet about the right timing for castration. It is important to make sure its not too early so that castration doesn't affect bone maturation and growth (and so increase joint problems). But equally important not to ignore the extra cancer risk. It's not going to happen overnight though, so plenty of time to do your research.
How do we know when is the right time for castration? Also, will we have to declare this to his pet insurance company? Not sure if it would be classed as pre existing condition?
If he is insured now, he should be covered by the insurance when it needs to be done, since it is a castration for a medical reason. If you change insurance now, a new company would class it as a pre-existing condition.
Thanks for the reply! He currently has the four week beginning insurance from the breeder, if we stayed with pet plan I'm guessing it's still classed as a new policy? I'll ring a couple of companies tomorrow to see what they say
Be really careful with this. We had a six week insurance from the breeder then took up insurance with another company. No break in cover but two different companies. During the first six weeks we happened to mention to the vet that Ella had been itchy at one point. This was written in the vet notes and classed as pre existing with the new insurance company so no skin condition of any kind will ever be covered.
