My dog is getting neutered next Tuesday and ...

[Madsometimes]

a woman in the park has roundly criticised me for doing this .

She thinks that I am going to mutilate my dog and artificially try to manipulate his personality. It is true that she is an experienced dog person, has shown dogs at crufts etc, and I am a first time owner who has a lot to learn.

I said to her that she was making me feel bad about sending Patch for his op, and she said, "Good, so you should."

When I explained that my dog is a cross breed, and cannot be compared to her medal winning dogs, she said that she has dogs which she has never bred from but which are intact. She thinks that I should tough out the teenage years and that there is no difference between a neutered 3 year old and an intact dog. She said that it is responsible to spay a bitch, but is cruel and unnecessary to neuter a dog.

I'm still going to send my dog for his op on Tuesday, but it was quite upsetting.

Glad your dog is doing well.

We left our first GSD "intact" as was told it would be like "having a Porsche firing on 2 cylinders" !

Regretted it though when he got old, had prostate problems etc and ended up having the snip aged 10!

Next dog was done MUCH sooner.

I met a woman like that walking my dog yesterday. I made some remark about him not having had his balls off yet and she started lecturing me on the horrors of castration, then kept on almost yelling "DON'T get it done!" Most odd, not sure what she thought gave her the right to order around a COMPLETE stranger. Having a dog with you seems to give people the idea that they can march up to you and quite aggressively dispense their "wisdom" on dogs and dog owning, or maybe there are a lot people without frontal lobes where I live .

Hope your dog recovers well .

This morning he seems fairly normal. I have been told that he can only have lead exercise, so we did the school run on foot, which is about a 40 minute round trip at a relaxed pace. He got lots of attention because he was wearing his collar, which he always loves. Now he is having a nap in the sunshine.

If he is in pain, he is being very brave. There is no whimpering or anything to suggest that he is in any discomfort at all. He just seems normal. However, he is a bit of a contortionist. This morning he stretched his head around his collar, and was licking his wound.

Kid - I do not know if Patch would be OK for puppy class tomorrow. He may well be, but only for work on the lead and probably would need to be kept away from the other dogs. The class I did always had the dogs on the lead, and was at a basic level. We covered sit, stay, heel, leave and only did recall in the final 2 weeks of the 8 week course. The dogs were also not allowed to socialise with each other (which was quite difficult because they were desperate to say hello to each other).

I'm going to speak to the dog trainer this weekend to see what she suggests. It's a bit annoying as the classes have been paid upfront. But pups health will always come first.

Glad to hear Patch is doing so well