What's the earliest a dog can be neutered?

[YankNCock]

The puppy has starting humping his cushion.

He was born 01/09/2010, so isn't 6 months old for nearly 1.5 months....but he's already lost most of his baby teeth and grown adult ones and seems firmly in the adolescent stage now.

I thought I remembered reading something saying they could be neutered earlier than 6 months? Any ideas or did I dream that?

I'm not sure we can take six more weeks of him being intimate with his cushion in our lounge, hilarious as it looks now!

Some vets will neuter routinely from about 4 months old now. Worth calling your vet and see what their policy is or calling other local practices to see if anyone is offering early neutering. Previously was done at 6mth+ as it was thought that they needed a certain amount of hormonal input for proper development, but this is now realised to be not the case and early neutering studies have found no long term issues around early neutering vs 6mth+ age.

mine was done at 4m as he was showing these tendancies - unfort he is now 7 yo and still has them.

Most vets recommend neutering at 6 month or thereabouts.

Personally, I would never again neuter dog/bitch so young. Far from curing such behaviours as you describe, it can make no difference at all or make them worse in some instances. neutering before maturity also interferes with normal mental and physical maturity so they can stay 'puppyish' for much longer because they don't get the right balance of hormones to allow them to mature properly.

Also, early neutering causes the growth plates to close more slowly and affects growth, Dogs neutered young will often grow to be taller/leggier...not a concern for most pet owners as such but it is another of the known physical effects and can be an issue if you have a large/giant breed where correct rate of growth and joints are a major concern.

If you don't want your puppy to hump the cushions, remove them from the living room for a week or two. If he transfers the behaviour to something else, simply distract him with a toy or treat and play a game with him (tug, fetch or whatever he liked to do). Consistently distracting him will help to banish the behaviour, which he'll likely grow out of ina few months anyway.

Incidentally, humping cushions is nothing to do with being an un-neutered male. My male dog has never been a humper. My bitch, on the other hand, is intimately acquainted with the sofa cushions on a daily basis...

yankncock I had planned on not at all or waiting till he lifts his leg to piss. the soft furnishings are unmolested so far. 4 months seems a long time ago, mine is far different in many behavioursnfrom xmas. born 19/7.

lucy are you an [ahem] expert in the chop? I have a large puppy and have never considered before, but he is both bigger and less meek than my previous dogs. He is humping for dominance I think, but on larger adult dogs which makes me think.

has stopped on people except 5yo ds who just picks up dog front legs and does wheelbarrow walking.

Our vet said ideally minimum 8 months, can be done from 6 but best to wait til 8

An expert on dog neutering? Hmmm...plenty wouold say that I do indeed talk bollocks a lot of the time, but I'm not sure they're referring to the removal of said apendages

No, not an expert by any means but I have done a lot of research as my main breed is a giant breed and early neutering can be terribly detrimental to their physical and mental development, not to mention what it does to their coat.

I would doubt that your puppy is humping for dominance....very, very few dogs display dominance in this way...and a truly dominant dog can exert authority with a look and doesn't need to hump other dogs to show it.

Humping is far more often done in play and excitement, especially by over exhuberant youngsters, than in dominance. Older dogs do tend to give puppies by-ball and will put up with such behaviour from a youngster which may be why you're observing him doing it to older dogs. You may find in a few months, they start to put the your young upstart in his place and let him know that it's not acceptable.

Thank you lucy. the enormopup is so vast = special measures. also I hadn't realised how strongly dogs and dog ownersnreact to large black dogs.

What Lucy said ^. Excellent posts.

TBH I get a bit fed up of neutering being touted as a cure-all - especially EARLY neutering.

He's definitely not a giant breed, not sure what he is really (pics on profile if you'd like to guess). His mum was a stray (they think staff cross of some sort) who gave birth at the dogs home.

He's more than doubled in size from when we got him, but judging from his paws I doubt he will get much bigger (about 11 kilos now).

He's often got the 'lipstick out of the tube' when he gets excited in play, but tonight was the first humping we'd seen. I was just hoping early neutering would make him a bit happier and less frustrated, I honestly am not bothered if we have to let him hump his cushion for another month or so.

Humping is normal puppy behaviour for both dogs and bitches. It is a behavioural problem and can be solved as such. Neutering does not solve humping (or any other behavioural problem) in some/all/most cases. (dependong on what the problem is)

I have a male dog here who will be neutered when he is fully grown (around 2 years old) and not before for the reasons stated above and also he has confidence/nervousness/slight fear agression problems and I want those resolved prior to neutering as neutering can exacerbate problems like this. That is in spite of the fact keeping him entire makes my life difficult as I have three entire bitches in the house. We have no problems with humping, marking or any other problems associated with entire dogs though, due to training.

Yank, no idea what cross your pup is but he's gorgeous! I think I can see some Bull Terrier in there (it's the ears!) but who knows what else.

If I recall correctly, my current boy started humping at about 8 months of age but grew out of it fairly quicky, with a bit of assistance from us in distracting him or just reinforcing 'no' (he was about 6 stones in weight at 8 months therefore bloody painful when he decided to try it on with us)...just pushed him away with a firm 'no' then distracted him with another command - a dog can't hump whilst in a sit or down position so it's really useful to have trained them well to obey a few other commands.

Aaah, fishie....large black dog syndrome. I am well familiar with it. There's an old trick for dogs that are badly perceived which involves putting the brightest, girliest, most cute collar or harness on them. Instantly people think 'big dog in a cutesie collar...can't be that scary'. Of course, you will feel like a tool walking male dog wearing a cutesie collar but it does work...a friend of mine owns several Rottweilers and this trick has pretty much stopped the grief she used to get from random strangers on the street.

Would love to see the scientific research that says early neutering causes problems?

And just for the reverse arguement links here and here to abstracts (sorry can not access full article online for you but you have the references there if you want to find the full articles)

Beautifulgirls, the article you linked says "To date, adverse side effects are apparently no greater in animals neutered at early ages (7 weeks) than in those neutered at the conventional age (7 months)." I think most (including my own vet) would still class 7 months as early neutering. They don't seem to be comparing neutering at 7 weeks or 7 months with neutering at say, 2 years of age.

Are you saying then that neutering doesn't affect the timing of the closure of the growth plates or increase the risk of certain cancers, urinary incontinence etc as some evidence suggests?

WRT dogs humping each other - my two often do it when they're playing particularly vigorously. It's an excitement thing rather than a sexual thing.

Well, I hope so, anyway - they're mother and daughter and they're both spayed

I am genuinely confused. If there is a good case for delaying neutering/ spaying, why do vets recommend having it done at 6mos?

We have just acquired a puppy. Her breeder has asked us to wait until she has had 2 seasons for some of the reasons mentioned above (growth plates, hormones and coat). My vet says that early neutering/ spaying does not affect dogs coats/ behavioural development/ growth plates and is pressing us to spay at 6mos. I am genuinely confused as to what we should do. Spaying at 6 mos would make our life much easier but I don't want to do anything which would adversely affect my dog.

weird isn't it? Our vet prefers to wait and said to not necc bother, he would rather assess each dog seperately at the time but def no younger than 8 months - he said it can be done from 6 months but that is certainly not ideal

Not all vets will advocate early neutering. I suppose that is because like all professions, whatever training, individual opinion and interpretation of available evidence will come into it.

We were advised by our trainer to wait until pup was lifting his leg regularly for a month before we thought about it. He is now just over a year old and has been lifting his leg for a couple of weeks. Bye nuts

I agree that it seems like a good idea to wait for the dog/bitch to mature. With horses, geldings look completely different to stallions, because they are neutered so much sooner.

My vet advised us to get our dog neutered around 6 months. We booked him in but tragically, he died on the operating table

I now have a new pup who is 7 1/2 months old. We also have a new vet who hasn't mentioned neutering to us. I'm not sure if he thinks it's uneccessary or down to the fact he knows what happened to our previous puppy.

I avoid the idea of neutering my puppy after our experience. I know it is extremely rare for dogs to die during the procedure, but it can happen which is something I was never told.

Midori - I would have thought most vets would be advocating around the 6 months mark for neutering if they are not advocating "early" neutering as I understand the term, so to me 6 months isn't early. In our practice we routinely neuter dogs and cats from 4 months of age, including my own now 1yr old labrador bitch. I have not seen any evidence of early growth plate closure in the literature though I don't x-ray all my cases to follow up and check on this so can not categorically state I have first hand knowledge - if that makes sense. I can certainly understand concerns that have been expressed in the past about development issues around early neutering, and the thinking behind why was mostly quite logical too. It is really the fact that studies have shown some of the expected possible problems actually do not appear to be problems that occur in reality. We neuter from 4 months rather then 7-8 weeks simply because the anaesthesia becomes much more accurate over a certain size and age and we feel that to be the safest for the patient. In terms of the actual surgery for bitches in particular the procedure is actually technically easier at the younger age and so personally I feel this improves the safety of what is being done - not that it is a very high risk, but sadly there are occasional cases where things are not straightforwards (such as Kid's poor dog and his anaesthetic related passing )
It is an interesting debate and probably one that will continue to induce discussion in the profession for a long time. Our clinic really started a couple of years ago in response to charity neutering and only after some consideration of what we believed was the right thing to do for these animals, not because pressure was put on us to do this. It was offered to non charity clients at the same time and we have had no problems that I am aware of due to the timing of such procedures.

Thankyou. From what I have read and what my previous vet (and orthapedic specialist) said, early neutering appears to make the growth plates close later, not earlier.

Certainly, as has been said, in horses geldings look very different to stallions and grow taller than expected. I have seen quite a few very odd looking (pedigree, obviously cross breeds are more of a mixed bag with no specific type anyway) dogs that were neutered early. Very leggy and weedy looking.

That would fit with this text and their findings, although whilst they do find differences in the 3 groups the 7wk and 7mth neuters are found not to be significantly different to each other, though both these groups were different to the un-neutered group. Given that many vets are/have been neutering at 6mths then it does not seem to be a backwards step based on this to move to say 4 months neuters as we currently do. Later neutering (say over 18mths) does start to increase risks (all be it very low risks at that sort of age compared to leaving it to say 6+ years) for hormone related problems (prostate/mammary tumours/pyometra etc). It explains why there is so much debate about exactly what is right - so many variables to consider and pros and cons. How long is piece of string?!