I'm a little behind this week (already), but I wanted to post a link to apost by Dolittler that appeard this week on a new study by the JAVMA. The article isn't available online yet, and I'm very much looking forward to reading it.
The study, which is a retrospective study of over 1.2 million dogs in their database, showed the followinng result:
"Castrated males were significantly more likely than other dogs to have hip dysplasia and castrated male and spayed female dogs were significantly more likely to have cranial cruciate ligament deficiency."
This follows a post a few months ago at Lassie Get Help that shows some new research that links early spay/neuter to bone cancer in Rottweilers (that is believed to exist in other large-breed dogs).
All of this or course leads us to what this means when cities start imposing mandatory spay/neuter laws on owners -- especially in cities that put the age at a very young age for dogs (Kansas City's is 3 months old for 'pit bulls", many cities put the law at 4 months, well before the time of sexual maturity.
Rationally, it only makes sense that juvenile spay/neuter would have an impact on a dog's ability to have the right hormone levels to mature correctly. I still favor spay/neuter. I particularly favor spay/neuter for dogs that are being adopted from rescues and shelters. However, I do think that cities need to realize that there is a pretty good possibility that mandating the spay/neuter of dogs, particularly very young dogs, could have a detrimental impact on the long-term health of the dog.
This mandating that some owners do something to their dog that may cause permanent (and painful) health problems for their dogs is very unethical. It's additionally important to note that these policies continue to show themselves inneffective at minimizing the number of shelter euthansias (in fact, they often increase them) and at minimizing bites.
Correction on KCMO - they require sterilization at EIGHT WEEKS!?!?!
Posted by: MichelleD | June 18, 2008 at 01:00 PM