Thank you Elsie!  I wouldn't believe anything else than people working for a better now and future for their loved ones, but I think it's a responsibility to take in other opinions and reflect over these and then take a stand.

I'm not saying I think it's wrong with neutering, but I think there are better ways to approach the problems and that vets and people are, in general, under educated in the matter. Obviously I don't know everything about the situation over there so I'll be careful to say too much but I, personally, wouldn't do it. If I had a contract on it, it would be different But we don't have contracts concerning neutering here.

Neutering when they're fully grown sounds great to me!

This is what I mean Roxy, I know there are huge cultural differences. It's quite sad for the dogs really.. My point is that it is better to do something about the cause rather then the symptoms. This won't happen overnight of course. I only want people to be aware the risks.

I'd like to believe that people that are open minded enough to take this to heart will also take proper care of their dog not to run around and mate like crazy

Cato was neutered at almost 9 months. He is completely fine.

Playing with the Big Dogs wrote:

I don't think I will have much of a choice but I was able to push back the neuter of my pup till 18 months. So at least he will get all his growing done with his proper level of hormones.

I don't have much of a choice either, especially since I signed a spay/neuter contract with my breeder. I'm going to try to hold off until Anya is 2 so she can finish developing. I think I will take her to Dr. Karen Becker (her practice is about an hour and a half from me) to have an ovary sparing spay when she is ready. Taking her to have her uterus and ovaries (a typical spay) removed at 9 months is the equivalent of taking a 15 year old girl to have a hysterectomy which is unnecessary and can cause future health problems. I understand that pet over population is a problem and I agree that all shelter pets should be fixed before going into their forever home. But I think very responsible and careful dog owners who are willing to deal with the side affects of having an unaltered pet should take advantage of their freedom to choose, and hold off on neutering until the dog is finished developing.

Dr. Becker wrote an article about her change of heart regarding neutering because over the years she has seen many spayed or neutered dogs come in with endocrine imbalances. http://healthypets.mercola.com/sites/healthypets/archive/2013/09/30/neutering-health-risks.aspx

Kingsley started humping at 9-10 weeks old. We tried to train him not to, and it got to a point where he would only hump ONE stuffed animal and not everything. We got him neutered at around 7-8 months and the humping immediately stopped. Since then he's developed quite nicely. He isn't incredibly hyper or at all destructive. It was hard dealing with his dramatic self right after the surgery, but he was back to his normal self at around day 3. No running until 2 weeks.

Here are some instagram videos of him right after the surgery:

http://instagram.com/p/h36Bq9kM4K/ day 1
http://instagram.com/p/h36Bq9kM4K/ day 2
http://instagram.com/p/h36Bq9kM4K/ day 3

Humping is a dominant trait - sometimes neutering will not help. My male will still hump another male if he deems it necessary.

Humping is actually almost always stress related.

Not in the case of dog to dog mounting. Here's a short article.

http://www.whole-dog-journal.com/issues/7_3/features/Dog-Mounting-Behavior_5615-1.html

Dog mounting is often dominant - human mounting is a stress induced behavior.

mbarnard0429 wrote:

Not in the case of dog to dog mounting. Here's a short article.

http://www.whole-dog-journal.com/issues/7_3/features/Dog-Mounting-Behavior_5615-1.html

Dog mounting is often dominant - human mounting is a stress induced behavior.

I would have to agree, I fell much less stressed after mounting.

 

mbarnard0429 wrote:

Not in the case of dog to dog mounting. Here's a short article.

http://www.whole-dog-journal.com/issues/7_3/features/Dog-Mounting-Behavior_5615-1.html

Dog mounting is often dominant - human mounting is a stress induced behavior.

I'm not quite sure why you'd see this as a reliable source of information. A dominant dog wouldn't mount another one.
(for the lolz, that site also have an article on why humping isn't dominance.)

I suggest some reading on dominance and what it really is, keep in mind that dogs are not indeed wolves but this is a starting point. The last link is an article written by a professor in ethology and I think it should be readable after copying it to google translator.

http://www.wolf.org/wolves/learn/basic/resources/mech_pdfs/267alphastatus_english.pdf

http://www.ncrs.fs.fed.us/pubs/jrnl/2000/nc_2000_Mech_002.pdf

http://dogma.nu/artiklar/den-missuppfattade-dominansen/

Let me know if I've missed something, it's barely morning here and I'm sleepy as ****

Why wouldn't it credible? It's a holistic based site that many vets write for. The only reason i linked to it is because it's a short article.

Dogs are not wolves. They do things very differently. I feed raw and I even acknowledge that.

I'd rather see something scientific

How does raw-feeding fit into here?

My puppy attempts to hump Cato. Cato then mounts Teddy - Then Delilah (who truly is Queen Bitch) humps Cato and asserts her dominance. It only happens in that order and only began as soon as I added another dog. Before that, Delilah only did it to Cato is a dog was at our house.

You may think what you want, but I'll still to dominance because it's what I see in my dogs. Have a nice night.

There is no reason to be condescending. I mentioned raw feeding because the only things you linked to, that were scientific, were about wolves. These are domesticated dogs we are talking about.

I haven't been condescending at all, so there's no reason to take it that way. I'll try to find studies on dogs if you wish but my point is that these dominance theories are aged.
It's not impossible at all that it's stress related, I know how stressful it is for my adult female with a puppy at times. Also.. Puppies don't show dominance, why would they? They know they're puppies and it's pretty obvious for them that they can't "dominate" over an adult who could easily hurt them or keep them away from their food, toys and whatever.

I still don't see how raw-feeding fits into this though.

Arrrrghh...

As I said, you are welcome to your opinions.

Keep in mind we are going a little bit off topic... should be discussing the viability of neutering getting rid of the humping urge rather then what humping means.

Tut tut!

I'm sorry for going OT!

I'll just end this with saying that it's not really more of an opinion than it is a fact that dominance doesn't work in the way you think but that you are too entitled to your own opinion.
I'm not sure how I could have put this in any other way to make it less "offensive", I assure you that I don't mean anything personal

You're welcome to PM something scientific in the matter. Have a nice day/night or whatever it is there. If you have something good to show I'll change my mind.

Nah your all good.. just thought I would try to difuse the situation, looks as if it was getting a wee bit heated from some angles.

histi wrote:

Keep in mind we are going a little bit off topic... should be discussing the viability of neutering getting rid of the humping urge rather then what humping means.

Tut tut!

Why the HELL have I losted treats for this?????

It happens sometimes when people are on mobile. If you read through many of the other threads you will see its pretty common. I've lost many treats that way because someone's hand will hit it on accident.

Gee well I've just lost the right to give treats so that's a ....swear word.

You didn't lose the right..there are stickies about it. You don't earn it until a certain number of posts. It's to keep people who troll ( we had some byb problems) from just going on a treat rampage.