Hi Everyone, We have a beautiful 2 year old black lab- Brody. His behaviour is lovely and he’s very lean, fast and healthy. We haven’t castrated him as we haven’t seen the need so far. The vet said if you’ve no behavioural reason then leave him be- she said the advice has changed over the years on this. My problem is he gets picked on on off lead hill walks where we live. There’s been so many scary moments where big dogs have really gone for him and he’s been bitten a couple of times (thankfully not badly as I’ve pulled the dogs off him- owners have some nothing ) It’s been dog walkers dogs a few times and they always say “it’s because he’s still in tact, you need to get him done because my dog wants to be top dog” I’ve spoken to the vets about this twice now and they say there is no evidence at all to suggest that “whole dogs” would be bullied or picked on. Really unsure what to do, we don’t want to get him done ideally when everything else is fine but I just don’t want him to get hurt. Any advice would be really appreciated X
It does seem to be a thing and was the main reason we had Toby neutered in the end. He started to fight back when it was getting to be every walk and I didn’t like to see that side of him coming out. He is a big powerful dog. It stopped straight away. Maybe worth a bit more research as to how dogs know. A scent maybe.
Thanks for the reply. Can I ask how Toby was after castration? Was there any negative side effects? The vet has booked him in to investigate if he’s giving off any kind of weird scents or needs his anal glands sorting
Well that’s a tricky one. He was neutered at 14months and at 18 months was diagnosed with Mast Cell cancer. Someone on here suggested it was because I had him neutered/vaccinated/wormed/flea and tick treated. The specialist felt it was genetic and bad luck to get it so young. I will never know if the neutering played a part. That aside he had no side effects and recovered very quickly.
