09 — Unintended Consequences of Early Spay/Neuter

Marty and Laura tackle some tough topics around when and whether to spay or neuter our pets. Research has shown that early spay/neuter in dogs causes an increased incidence of several cancers as well as cruciate ligament tears and increased odds of both problematic and nuisance behaviors. “They don't routinely spay and neuter dogs in the European countries and they don't have a pet overpopulation problem. They don't have a mixed breed overpopulation problem. So when I've traveled in Europe and you go places on the train or go to a restaurant or a cafe or whatever, and there's dogs there. They're intact dogs, and they know how to behave themselves because they have been trained to go out in public and behave. "So it's a whole different experience, and they don't have oodles and oodles of puppies pouring out of shelters and rescues because they have inappropriately bred dogs. So I think we really need to take a hard look at ourselves as Americans to say, where have we gone awry? And what have we done wrong here? And what do we need to do to regain that? Because there's some really important information about the improvement in health and longevity by keeping our dogs intact.” Below are links to a few of the studies and research Marty mentioned. https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Suggested-Guidelines-by-Breed-for-Age-of-Neutering-Suggested-guidelines-for-age-of_tbl1_342751264https://cdn.ymaws.com/www.therio.org/resource/resmgr/docs/spay-neuter_basis.pdfhttps://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36656681/ The Marty & Laura Show is produced by Pure Dog Talk Inc., with sound design and editing by Premium Audio Services.