Dog Community

Neuter increases aggression?? A different study.

Posted : 4/24/2007 4:44:27 PM

Here is a interesting study concerning aggression and other indesirable traits and spay/neutering. I have no idea what their studies are or whether they are valid or not. Just what to put it out there as an interesting read.

[linkhttp://www.acc-d.org/2006%20Symposium%20Docs/Session%20I.pdf]http://www.acc-d.org/2006%20Symposium%20Docs/Session%20I.pdf[/link]

Cita

Posted : 4/24/2007 5:15:32 PM

That is very interesting... anecdotally, from my own experience, my dog never exhibited any aggression or "reactivity" until after he had been neutered. (We also moved at the same time, so we'll never know which even contributed more.)

It's definitely something to keep in mind - it seems a lot of people frequently want to suggest spay/neuter as the panacea for all behavioral ills in the dog population. While I think spay/neutering is great for controlling the unwanted pet population and avoiding many health problems (I had Rascal's neuter done because his prostate was getting a bit larger than it should have), I don't think it's always the cure-all it's sometimes played up to be.

But I do hope John Q Public doesn't hear this, because all we need is more irresponsible owners with intact dogs!

timsdat

Posted : 4/24/2007 5:25:30 PM

I don't think it's always the cure-all it's sometimes played up to be.

This is like the double speak you hear from AC.
1 Dogs would be less aggressive and not bite if they were neutered.
2 They have to put down so many dogs in their shelters because they are aggressive and non adoptable.

Why don't they just neuter them?

Stacita

Posted : 4/24/2007 7:02:18 PM

From a brief glance what the survey describes is a correlation rather than a causation. It would only make sense that the intact animals have fewer poor behaviors such as aggression, otherwise responsible owners speuter them.

timsdat

Posted : 4/24/2007 8:20:00 PM

Agreed, but if that is the case it appears that the neutering doesn't necessarily reduce the aggression.

samshine

Posted : 4/24/2007 8:47:07 PM

I have read this before. It is only with females, and only rarely, but spaying actually can cause increased aggression. Females have some testosterone, but lots more female hormones. Spaying takes away the female hormones that affect behavior. Then you are left with testosterone being the only hormone affecting behavior.

Neutering a male is not going to increase aggression. Sometimes the neutering happens to coincide with the time that the dog is reaching maturity so those behavior changes are due to the dogs maturity and not being neutered.

However, I supposed it could be possible that neutering a male dog could increase timidity which could come out as increased fear aggression. It would not be associated with increased straight on aggression.

Stacita

Posted : 4/24/2007 8:49:38 PM

But at least they are out of the gene pool.

timsdat

Posted : 4/24/2007 9:19:49 PM

But at least they are out of the gene pool.

True. But there are many laws being proposed for manditory spay neuter. One of the excuses for the proposed laws is that neutering decreases aggression therefore reducing dog bites.

I have never believed that a neuter necessarily reduces the aggessive drive of a dog.

mudpuppy

Posted : 4/26/2007 10:57:41 AM

It's well-documented that unneutered male dogs are involved in more bites to humans than neutered males and females of either status. And that unneutered males are more likely to get into dog fights.

Cita

Posted : 4/26/2007 11:04:06 AM

But it's all correlational. There's nothing on either side to prove or even necessarily suggest causation.

Owners who encourage aggression or are totally irresponsible with the care of their dogs probably won't neuter them, either. Owners who don't appropriately train/care for their dogs leading to pre-neuter behavioral problems won't necessarily change their training/care after the neuter, so the behavioral problems might remain.

It would be great to get some clinical studies on this... hormones (particularly sex hormones) obviously have enormous effects on mood/behavior. It would be interesting to see if varying natural levels of these hormones had an effect.

timsdat

Posted : 4/26/2007 11:41:07 AM

It's well-documented that unneutered male dogs are involved in more bites to humans than neutered males and females of either status. And that unneutered males are more likely to get into dog fights.

But is that because the irresponsible owner who doesn't control their dog or train it and treats it like S*** also won't take the time to go out and have it neutered??
And these dogs are the ones loose because if the same owner.

The line you used is one of the bullet points used by the manditory S/N crowd. Without a true study it is just a junk statistic.