2 year old dog showing aggression / personality change since castration?!

[elderberryink]

We have a two year old collie / lab cross (we knew the family, mum and dad had lovely temperaments, dog was chosen for this rather than wanting a specific breed). He is a wonderful dog in the house, laid back, very affectionate and patient with the kids and although outside the house he’s never been what you’d call a model citizen, he was trained and walks were pleasant, he rarely pulled on the lead, and he could play happily with other dogs in the local park.

A few months ago we had him castrated and since then it is like we have a different dog. He constantly strains on the lead, his recall is patchy at beast, he barks and lunges at people we are walking back, and he behaves very aggressively towards male dogs, even if they are at the other side of the street. It is embarrassing and incredibly upsetting as once or twice he’s tried to lunge at small children (I think he’s just trying to jump up at them excitedly, but obviously it is unacceptable and potentially dangerous). As a consequence I am forced to keep him on a short lead and he gets very limited off lead time because we live in a dog heavy area and I can only let him off in the fields when nobody else is about. He acts like he was never socialised.

In the house he remains laid back, friendly, obedient… he is lovely and patient with our five year old and very friendly with visitors (he only barks if someone enters the house unexpectedly without him seeing us let them in, if that makes sense).

Obviously we have tried going back to the beginning with training and will be seeing a behaviourist in September, with plans to progress to one-on-one and then group training depending on what the behaviourist advises. However I am feeling so down about it and worried that he’s somehow stuck like this, making him completely unsuited to our environment (surrounded by fields and woodland but actually living in quite a busy estate with lots of other dogs, its not like there’s a “quiet” time of day unless we walked him in the middle of the night).

I am posting here, while we are waiting for the session with the behaviourist, to ask if anyone has experienced this before and if so, was it fixable? And is there anything you did at home that helped?

What was the reason for you getting him neutered?

Unfortunately, as you've seen, neutering can have a negative impact on a dogs' temperament as you're removing all the testosterone from their body. For some dogs, this isn't a problem, but if a dog is already a bit nervous or reactive, the removal of testosterone can make them even more nervous and this leads them to react with fear (and what appears to be) aggression.

I'm sorry that that's probably not what you want to hear. Hopefully your behaviourist proves helpful and can give you some tips to help him. Are they properly ADPT qualified?

I'd also add, please don't be tempted to take behavioural advice from well-meaning people on here. A dog like this needs to be assessed in person for everyone's safety.

mountainsunsets thank you for your reply - it's not what I wanted to hear, but at the same time I think you're absolutely right. He's such a dopey, affectionate boy when he's at home and it would break my heart if we got to the stage where we felt he'd be happier in a different environment so we just want to make sure that we do everything we can to resolve it. It is entirely my fault as he's our first dog and in hindsight, not an ideal mix of breeds for a first time owner (I was somewhat blind to this as although we never owned a dog I grew up around collies and love them, and this ended up being the deciding factor). For what it's worth, his parents had very good temperaments but the people who owned his mum - who is the purebred Collie - kept one of the puppies and have had similar issues, although we are no longer in close contact. Ironically, we wanted a crossbreed because we didn't want a designer dog and were after something like the mutts that were ubiquitous when I was a child in the 80s.

To answer your question, we were on the fence about getting him neutered as someone did mention this possibility (among a lot of contradictory advice!). In the end we made the decision to neuter as we have a lot of female dogs on the estate where we live and the unneutered females were driving him a bit bonkers! It has in fairness solved that issue as he doesn't react to female dogs anymore, but around male dogs the aggression has taken us completely by surprise.

Don't be too disheartened - a behaviourist should be able to help you but I suspect (from experience) that it won't be an easy fix.

My own (neutered) boy can be a bit reactive after he was attacked a couple of times when he was younger - he's a LOT better than he was but there are still a few dogs he doesn't like (mainly black dogs and Frenchies lol). Most of his reaction is fear/uncertainty - generally once he's met the dog and had a sniff, he's fine and he won't react to them again. He's never once snapped at or bitten a dog - it's just lunging and barking - and he's a beagle so he can very noisy 😂

I've worked with him daily for about two years now to get him to where he is - there have been bad days and good ones - but luckily the bad ones are few and far between these days! I'm a dog walker and he can now walk with every single dog I take out with no issues which is a HUGE achievement for him, so don't give up!

We had to remove our dog from daycare because they insisted on dogs over one being neutered. We discussed with vet and she said she would not be happy to neuter him as he had no negative behaviours and is a softy. She said he’s a dog that needs his testosterone, sounds like maybe yours is the same possibly, but understand why you did it with the female dogs around. It’s a pain isn’t it?

Has something triggered this behaviour.