What is the best age to neuter a dog? - Males and Females

Author: John Stephens
Date Of Creation: 28 January 2021
Update Date: 4 November 2024
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New Research: The Best Age To Spay Or Neuter A Dog
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As soon as we make the wise decision to neutering our dog, we may have several doubts about the best age to do this? You've certainly heard many versions, and seen all kinds of assumptions and experiences that can sometimes confuse us rather than guide us.

At PeritoAnimal we try to expose, with pros and cons, what is the best age to neuter a dog or bitch, and what result can we expect according to the moment it undergoes the intervention.

The breed and the best age to neuter a dog

The most recommendable is castrate before the first heat. In general, castration is done at 6 months of age, however, taking into account the breed of the dog, this period may vary. What else must be taken into account to know the ideal age to neuter a female dog is to consider that she has not yet entered the first period of ovulation


In males it is something more complicated to define because there is no heat (we do not "see" when they produce sperm), but sexual maturity is taken into account, when they begin to be fertile. This is inferred by secondary behaviors like marking territory with urine, lifting to urinate, mounting females... 6-9 months is a reasonable age to consider "puberty" in dogs.

How does the breed influence the ideal age to neuter a dog?

Although they are all the same species, there is a lot of difference between a Chihuahua, for example, and a Neapolitan Mastiff. To continue the comparison, if we have two females of these races, the first will, as a general rule, go into heat much earlier than the second. Everything is faster when the size of the breed is smaller: heart rate, respiratory rate, metabolism, digestion... and the beginning of reproductive life.


Therefore, the smaller races are usually precocious at the time of reaching sexual maturity. However, many other things influence the breed, such as the environment, genetics, food, presence of close stimuli like a male dog, etc.

We can find Yorkshire breed bitches with their first heat at 5 months, and Dogue de Bordeaux bitches that do not appear until they reach 1 year of age, being much more complicated if the opposite happens. That's why it's difficult to talk about what months the bitch will have heat, or fertility if it's a male dog, since each breed is a world (even, there are bitches that only have one estrus cancels, and it's normal), and each dog in particular, a continent. For mutts, predicting the age at which heat will appear becomes an almost impossible task.


The best age to neuter a bitch

To address the topic in a summarized way, let's list the advantages and disadvantages of spaying the bitch before the first heat, and so we can compare with the case of doing it after several heats:

Benefits

  • You risks of suffering breast tumors in bitches, directly related to the sex hormones produced by the ovaries, they are drastically reduced. Female dogs spayed before the first heat have an incidence of breast tumors in the future practically nil, only a percentage reserved for genetic possibilities. However, those that are castrated after several heats should continue to be periodically checked for the appearance of tumors. The breasts have already suffered the action of hormones.
  • You risks of suffering from pyometras (uterine infections), cancel themselves totally, when the ovaries, responsible for the cyclic stimulation of the uterus, disappear, and the same uterus if the surgery performed is an ovary-hysterectomy.
  • Thickness and vascularity (blood supply) to Organs reproductive organs before the first heat is much lower than after it starts functioning. The tissues are not infiltrated with fat, and the surgical bands are much safer.
  • There are usually no obesity problems in so young bitches. The presence of excess abdominal fat makes the intervention very difficult.
  • does not stop the growth. Contrary to what many people believe, it simply gets slower but sustained over time, that is, the bitch will reach her final adult size a little later than would happen with non-neutered bitches.
  • We prevent our bitch from going through unwanted pregnancies, or pseudo-pregnancies (psychological pregnancy) and pseudo-lactations, which can affect all bitches two months after heat, even from the first heat.

Drawbacks

Possible appearance of urinary incontinence: Estrogens appear to be responsible for the correct functioning of the muscles of the urinary bladder and urethral sphincter. When it disappears with ovarian surgery, there will be no estrogens and, therefore, urinary incontinence may appear after a few weeks or months. They are slight urine leakage that occurs while the dog is sleeping, or while exercising.

And if you let her have several heats, she won't have urinary incontinence?

Letting go one or two heats to operate, thinking that this way you won't suffer urinary incontinence after the surgery, is a mistake. Urinary incontinence appears equally in medium-breed bitches castrated at 4 years, for example, as in the rest of age intervals. Furthermore, it affects a low percentage of neutered females.

Although they do not neuter, over the years, the levels of hormones in the blood drop a lot (bitches are less fertile), and with this drop in estrogen, urinary incontinence can also appear, just as it happens in humans.

If it does, is there any treatment?

There are several drugs that can solve the problem of urinary incontinence, from small amounts of hormones to drugs (phenylpropanolamine), which act on the innervation of the bladder muscles, and which have already been shown to be effective only in castrated females to treat incontinence .

The best age to neuter a male dog

Here we talk about the advantages and disadvantages of neutering our dog before reaching sexual maturity:

Benefits

  • we avoid escapes to sniff females in heat, since it often happens in puppies a few months old, who still don't obey too much, and on top of that their hormones are accelerated.
  • We save the default of territory marking that it starts to perform in a systematic way, regardless of the place, when it reaches sexual maturity, the days without eating when they detect a bitch in heat in the neighborhood, and the anxiety and/or aggressiveness that can appear in this circumstance.
  • You won't have the constant need to get in trouble at park meetings with other dogs. its territoriality decreases or it doesn't develop and the will to fight too, although its character remains the same.
  • The prostate is not influenced by testosterone, with which it will not suffer from the hyperplasia that practically all unneutered male dogs have at 3-4 years of age.
  • The weight gain we all associate with neutering in dogs is less noticeable or goes unnoticed when the operation is done before 12 months of age.
  • Does not acquire the behavior of riding and this is important. Dogs that have learned from observation of other males, or because they are allowed to mount females, can continue this behavior despite being neutered. Because they have a bone in their penis, dogs do not need hormones to be able to perform copulation. If they have acquired the habit, they can mount a female after being neutered although, obviously, there is no pregnancy. It is a shorter mount, but the risk of becoming infected with herpesvirus or suffering the wrath of other males or owners will continue to exist.

Drawbacks

Practically none. Many people believe that their dog will not reach the size it could have as an adult if you had not neutered it at 8 months of age, for example. But if there is no genetic basis, no hormonal stimulation can get a dog to measure or weigh anything we want. Muscle development is favored by testosterone, but genetics, combined with adequate nutrition and physical exercise, give rise to sizes practically equal to the castrated males at 3 years old, to say a value.

And the character...

Sometimes, after overcoming the fears of surgery, as there can always be complications in the anesthesia, or in the process, as in everything, although they are minimal, and after having weighed up the advantages and disadvantages, someone tells us that the our dog will have an infantile behavior, or that its character will change and it will not be the same if it is neutered before the first heat.

We may hear the same if we decide to neuter him when he's several years old, but in the first case, some argue that we won't let the dog develop well if it's not under the influence of sex hormones. In view of this, it must be taken into account that character is defined by genetics, socialization, length of stay with your mother and siblings, surrounding environment, habits... and that receiving a few waves of estrogen or testosterone in your life will not make our dog a more balanced animal or more or less hostile. Hormones can influence but cannot determine. We advise you to visit the PeritoAnimal article on the ideal age to separate puppies from their mother to understand how important this issue is.

We hope that the doubts about the best age to neuter a dog have been clarified, and as we always do, we recommend that you consult with your veterinarian about each particular case, as we cannot always apply generalizations to our dog or bitch, although that they work with the other congeners.

See also our article on care after castration.

This article is for information purposes only, at PeritoAnimal.com.br we are not able to prescribe veterinary treatments or perform any type of diagnosis. We suggest that you take your pet to the veterinarian in case it has any type of condition or discomfort.