Why we should castrate male dogs

One patient today stood out from all the rest. He was a beautiful 12 year old Rough Collie called Sable.His very distraught owners carried him in as he had collapsed at home. The only sign he had shown for the last few days was a straining to pass faeces. All he was managing to pass were hard ‘rabbit pellets’ as his owner described.

I admitted him as he was very pale and I could feel a lump in his abdomen. X-rays revealed a growth of his prostate gland and the surrounding lymph nodes. The owners were devastated to hear that Sable had cancer and sadly it had progressed too far and he had to be put to sleep.

Had Sable been neutered when he was younger, he would not have developed a prostatic problem. We tend to advise neutering in bitches as routine as it removes all complications associated with womb and ovarian complications that can be lethal, but so too can leaving males unneutered be lethal as I witnessed today.

The only side effect from castrating is that your dog can put on weight (especially greedy breeds like Labradors), but their weight is entirely in your hands! If it means feeding more low fat foods or adding extra carrot peelings or vegetables to their food to bulk the food out and make them feel full, then rather that than losing your beloved male pet because he has developed a prostatic (or testicular) cancer.

This entry was posted on 22/03/2008 at 10:28 am and is filed under A veterinary day. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.