Home Forums Birds & Dogs Hunting Dogs should i get my dog neutered ?

Ok, I have a 1 y/o male Britt.... He is really a good dog so far.... lot of bird drive and lots of enthusiasm... his first hunting season we got 16 grouse and 7 roosters.... Just an outstanding year for such a young dog. House trained, rides in the truck nice, soft personality.... just an angle of a dog...

My question is... what will change if I get his Ya Ya's cut off ?

He is 14 moths old now.

IMO give him till he's two years old. Waited till 26 months on the one we've got now and nothing changed. He's still got the drive to hunt and around the house he's the same as before. Waited a little longer on his predecessor and nothing changed. There might be no change if you were to do it now but why take a chance You'll be sure he's physically developed and you may be giving his personality, which sounds great, a chance to grow stronger. I've got no scientific basis for my opinion other than that's how it worked for my dogs. Both Labs.

I don't think you will notice much change except for this.

A female is in season twice a year on average, a male is hunting it all the time if he is intact. They can smell a female is season for miles and off the go to check it out.

Maybe you get him back, and maybe not. He'll have one less thing to worry about so it might be easier to keep his attention on what you want.

My vets have told me they prefer to neuter a male for health reasons. Never questioned it and have done so to two male GWPs. My first GWP was three when I did it. I got married and he was crazy humpy with a neutered female my wife had plus he was always sticking his muzzle in any woman's privates. He hunted the same after neutering but lost the urge to hump or put his muzzle where it didn't belong.

Here is an extreme example of what can go wrong with an unneutered male:


Jog posted this in 2004. I copied it and put it in my documents files. Thanks Jog for this story.



"Nobody laff…this isn’t funny.

My brother has two German Shorthair Pointers – “Jet”, a three-year old male, and “Belle”, a 6-month old female.

Belle entered her first heat this spring, and while the eventual goal is a litter between these two, she is too young at present and needs to grow up a little more. Jet of course, doesn’t see things that way – he thinks Belle is juuust right. The only solution to this dilemma is to lock up both dogs under house arrest. Things have been going okay for the last couple weeks, a mess and a hassle, but okay.

Last Tuesday with my brother and his wife at work and the kids at school - Jet staged a jailbreak.

Somewhat fortunately, Jet was in the "house kennel" and Belle was in the "garage kennel". The only thing Jet got to f##k up was the house…and boy did he ever. Whatever goes through a lovesick dog’s mind I’ll never know. I can kinda understand the dog ripping down all the blinds and drapes since windows are a way OUT, but trying to dig through interior walls?

At some point, Jet found himself in a downstairs bathroom. At some point, the door shut behind him. Nobody knows if this was before or after he chewed the water supply line off the toilet. Maybe the huge spray of water startled Jet and in the scramble the door shut – we’ll never know. We do know that Jet, shut in the bathroom with water spraying all over, went into a full-scale frenzy.

He ripped down the blinds.
He ripped up a half-dozen rolls of toilet paper.
He clawed the walls.
He tried to eat the doorknob.
He tore off the toilet seats.
He jumped on top of the vanity and broke four bulbs off the light bar.

And still the water flowed….

A daughter was the first human to come upon the scene. She sloshed through the downstairs looking for Jet to no avail until she came to the closed bathroom door. She pushed open the door and eight-inches of water, dammed-up by shredded toilet paper, added to the flood in the rest of the downstairs. She didn’t see Jet until she turned to leave and came face to face with him perched on top of the vanity. He was wagging his tail…

The downstairs area contains a bedroom, a family room, my brother’s shop, a computer area, and a utility room. The flood damage/restoration company that was called into duty removed all the carpet, the bottom one-foot of sheetrock from all the walls. All the doors (the bottoms had warped), and had piled all the furniture in the middle of the family room. They installed blowers and dehumidifiers all over the...freakin’ disaster area. On the second day of the job the new workers wanted to meet “The Legend” as they called him, the entity that their entire company was abuzz about – good ol’ Jet.

My brother has good insurance and the “over/under” for the repairs is $25,000."

AZshooter, I just read that while in a Zoom meeting and had a hard time keeping a straight face. Thanks for a hilarious (from this distance) story. Great read!

Consult your vet.

In regards to AZShooter's story. When I was growing up, my parents were breeders of Golden Retrievers, so there was hot bitches around on a regular basis. At least twice, maybe more, we had dogs chew through chain link fences on the kennels. In both cases that I remember, the dogs tore the crap out of their mouths. One of them was a neighbor's black lab, but he didn't get in luckily. The other time that I remember, it was one of our dogs and got into the run with the bitch and knocked her up.

I grew up with GSP's... I predicted that's the direction that story was going... didn't take any imagination at all!!!

As to the OP, the wandering when a delightful smell wafts across the property is likely the only change you'll notice, since it sounds like he's already under control and calm. I agree that I'd wait until an age that your vet recommends though.