Neutering male bully

[RiiSi]

I must of been lucky with my 3 males and 1 female. If they have tried to hump, it's been stopped there very firmly and it has never happened again. I just don't think that's good enough reason to compromise their healthy growth.

 

[nubonics]

We neutered Curly at 6 months. Neutering early didn't stop him from developing; he is really big for an EB and is 71 lbs. When we took him to an EB meetup he towered all of the other EBs.

The reason we got him neutered early was because the vet was concerned about his breathing while under anesthesia if he was too large - Curly was already a large puppy at 6 months, weighing in at about 55 lbs. She said that there was already a concern with EB under anesthesia and the risk goes up the larger they are.

With him, neutering early did not prevent any aggressive tendencies. His personality changed a bit when he turned 3 and he started to be come more dominant and aggressive (work in progress). He also started lifting his leg when he turned 3 too.

He does not hump either - he never did.

Wegot our Great Dane neutered at 6 months too. Our vet explained to us that neutering early slows down the closing of the growth plates which will make dogs taller and more susceptible to conditions like hip/elbow/knee dysplasia. With GDs there are also cancers we have to worry about.

Our decision to neuter the GD early was based on our behaviorist theory that the reason Curly kept trying to attack the GD was because Curly was threatened by the scent of an unaltered dog. About a month after we neutered the GD, Curly slowly started to warm back up to the GD.

I digress - If there is family history of dysplasia I would wait until he has stopped growing as long as he isn't on the larger size of EBs. There are some benefits of waiting, and some not but I really feel like EBs take longer to mature and unless he is humping everything in site/displaying aggressive tendencies, I would wait to closer to a year.

 

[nubonics]

Hes starting to hump young children and im comcerned he will get into the habbit and fixing later on wont help. Vets here say you can fix as early as 4 months but that seems early to me

Humping at this age is a dominance thing, where neutering will prevent sexual humping. In this type of situation, he need a bit more training to realize he isn't more dominant than humans.

 

[Old School Dropout]

Dozer is almost 6 months old, already 17" tall at the shoulder and 40 lbs (he is pretty lanky except thick neck and shoulders). His dad was on the lean side, tall with a big head and weighs 65 lbs. Mom was a bit taller than average and not heavy at all, about 45 lbs.

I have read about the anesthesia concerns regarding EBD's but it had slipped my mind thinking about neutering procedure, thanks for mentioning it. Humping is not really an issue, he just really likes my wife :D, and I think tried to start on the female neighbor once but I cut him off. Aggressive behavior isn't an issue, he has a really mild disposition when it comes to other dogs and most people. He is pretty smart, only goes into defense mode when it's someone at the door or around the house working he doesn't know and watches me to see how I interact with them. If I'm ok with them he calms down and of course then wants to "meet" them.

We have a 10 year old 15 lb Shih Tzu (Buster) that he thinks is great. They play together and now that Buster has warmed up to him they even nap together often.