[Lovetodream88]

Originally Posted by Ron Sivils

There may be valid reasons for spaying or neutering your dog but for the most part they are not supported by facts. What the issue amounts to in the end is it is a convenience for pet owners. Animals live longer if they are spayed or neutered? I seriously doubt it. It helps prevent cancer? Cancer is like every other fatal disease. If you live long enough you get something that kills you. Your male humps your leg? What the hell? You're the master or mistress. Just don't stand there and let him do it.
My Yorkie, Raider, humps his fuzzy toys once in awhile but I don't have a problem with that.
Now with those issues out of the way here's what I do know about castration, as we used to call it on the farm. By the way the female farm animals were never spayed as it was too costly to perform on female farm animals and besides they produced offspring, which we sold. Male farm animals were castrated, which by the way was done on the farm without anesthesia, which is inhumane but such is life on the farm and part of the production of meat. It was done for two reasons. 1. The animals gained more weight at a faster rate and 2. The meat was tender after they were slaughtered. What this translates to in your pet dog is spayed and neutered dogs tend to gain weight and they lose muscle tone. Since I don't want to have to monitor what Raider eats so he doesn't get fat I'm leaving him intact. If he gets cancer at 12 years of age or whatever and dies then it's not a big deal. In the end dogs are much like humans. They die at all different ages from all sorts of different reasons and in the end it doesn't matter much whether they die intact or not.
In closing I want to touch on two issues here. The first one is if I thought neutering was such a good deal and helped you live longer and prevented cancer hell, I'd probably line up and have it done for myself. But I really don't think that's true at all.
The last thought is a lot of people aren't rational at all on this subject. In fact I've run into a couple of downright nasty people when I've mentioned that I'm not neutering my dog. That's the big reason I'm not going to discuss the subject with anyone except the people on this forum.

There are facts..... And it is a big false statement to say dogs gain weight after being fixed is has been proven a myth. My dog was spayed at 9 months and she has more muscle then me!