Neutering young male Labrador

[cashmerekisses]

There is so much conflicting advice on this topic on various forums, not quite sure why I'm asking for more but here goes.

We have a young male lab (nearly 1) and he has started humping everything in the house. Our vet mentioned he would ideally wait until 18months to neuter him but if he started displaying unwanted behaviour we could look to do it sooner. We really don't want the humping to become habit so I'm wondering if we should go ahead and get him neutered sooner.

I wanted to hear any experiences people have had with neutering labs (or similar breeds) around a year?

This article looks at different breeds and different ages at neutering, so it has a lot of detail.

If you go to the additional info (I think the link is in the paper), it tells you for labradors:
'Bottom line. For males, given increase in joint disorders at the < 6 mo. neutering, the suggested guideline is neutering beyond 6 months of age. For females, given the increased risks of joint disorders with spaying through 1 year of age, the suggested guideline is delaying spaying until beyond a year of age.'

My only caveat is that dogs take more than a year to mature mentally. In your shoes, I'd have a chat to a trainer about how to deal with the humping and try and wait until he was 18 months or so. you have to do what works for you as a family though, without messing him up, and the data so far is that neutering at a year won't have a bad impact on his physical health.

My own personal bias it to neuter later or not at all, but I own a late maturing breed who are nutters till they're 3.

Humping generally isn’t a sexual behaviour. So neutering won’t help.
Neutering isn’t appropriate for a dog that’s not mature.
See a behaviourist.

Thank you GrumpyMiddleAgedWoman

I have a session with our trainer next week so I'll speak to her about it all.

Humping isn't always sexual - it's often caused by over excitement or frustration.

Ours went through a period of humping around that age and it stopped after about a month.

We neutered our Dalmatian at about a year, much earlier than I would have liked. He was humping everything, dogs, furniture, us, children. If he wasn't kept away he would hump it. It was a nightmare and our lives were miserable. We tried letting it pass, but we'd had months of it and it was I tolerable keeping him separated from everyone and never being allowed to run off lead.

We had a long conversation with the vet on a couple of occasions. He had no other reactivity, guarding, or anxiety issues, we just had to stop his humping.

The day he forced his way past me to try and mount our toddler god daughter was the biggest driver to speak to the vet again and she said she was happy to neuter.

It made a massive difference. He occasionally still jumped other dogs when extremely overstimulated (like at daycare). But as far as humans and other animals go, and being able to enjoy a normal walk, it was an Almost immediate fix and he could be a proper part of the family again.

I am not happy at having had him done so early but for us it worked out well and I felt like we had a proper conversation with professionals about possible cons before we decided.

Thank you MsMarvellous for sharing your experience, as you say it's definitely not the preferred course of action but I'm so glad for you that it turned out for the best.