TO NEUTER OR NOT?

As they come, and then on the hour, that's when—

that's when you're live, guys. I think we're live now.

Yeah, we're on. We're just waiting for the guys to arrive. You see, we're picking the post. They're normally thinking we're going to be a bit late, so we're just—

yeah, we've never been—

we're excited about tonight.

So therefore we're not normally late though.

Oh no, people, people don't know what to do that we're early. It's kind of like, does the fridge light come on early? It's very, uh, we can do anything we want. Oh, here's Jude.

Jude's with us.

You joined us, you heard us speaking about you. Hi, you granddad. And there we go, Conor.

Hi guys.

Wow, they're jumping in already. What do you reckon, Conor?

I think tonight's going to be a very busy night. That's what I think. When I posted it on my page earlier, like, the feedback is unbelievable. You get the messages, you know, it's, uh, it's definitely going to be a busy night, surely. There's Matt Barry. Matt Barry's deadly. Matt Barry's on it. Actually, when I say deadly, by the way, everybody, I mean great.

If you ever hear me saying deadly, you know, cheers, Guy, because he already said— he's already said hello to me on Facebook. So he's great.

Yeah, he's always there. It's great. He's like a— he's like a warm hug.

Um, he's normally on quite frequently, so not— Jane, nice to see you.

Debbie Williams, often see her on my page. Lynn Hobbs, great stuff.

Sarah Thomas, she's here. That's great. She's— she's She's on very often. Sarah, are you the person who's doing all the research and offered to do some research for us?

Send us your ideas so we can take them as our own and pretend.

Yeah, and run to the hills.

Yeah, that's a good idea.

Yeah, good, good.

So how are you getting on this weekend, guys? How did you— what happened this week? Who will I start with? Brendan, what happened this week?

Busy week at the practice and getting ready. I've got to say hi to Colette, who currently is cruising in the North Sea I thought she was going off on holiday, and I think she is actually, but she's trying to pretend to me that she's working off on oil rigs, and her connection tonight might be a little bit dicey, she said, depends on the weather. So I'll say hi to Colette, and no, I'm not on holiday, I'm working, you're the one that's cruising.

Is where? In the North Sea?

In the North Sea. All by herself, or is she on a boat, or Well, apparently it's, uh, well, I think it's on holiday, but she's saying she's flown out to an oil rig and she's working on the oil rigs in the North Sea. So, wow, okay, leaving her lovely black Labrador at home.

I definitely wouldn't appreciate that rocky surface. I think they're kind of scary, oil rigs. Do you not think? Could you imagine being on an oil rig and big waves underneath it? I would be a little bit intimidated by that.

They're really high, aren't they? Yeah, high off the— the thing is, do Do they float or are they anchored to the seabed?

Surely their legs are in the ground.

No, no, no, they're not. They're mobile, but they're anchored mobile, I believe.

What? Concrete? How do 4 legs keep their balance?

Concrete.

It's marvelous.

That's nuts. I don't understand how that can work. If you've got 4 legs sticking out of the water, how could you just balance?

Can anyone— It's what's underneath the water that's really important.

Okay. All right.

Interesting. Okay.

Is Nick going to disappear and do his science project? And I just want to show you guys how an oil rig works.

No, don't, don't. Do you have Archimedes? Did he ever make it to Ireland?

I have heard of Archimedes. I think it's a type of Mercedes, is it?

It's the one up from that. Yeah, that's it.

Yeah, it's a really posh one. I have to say, I don't know much about Archimedes, but, uh, I'm not sure if it's got a whole lot to do with you. So, uh, so that was your week, Brendan. You were worrying about Colette over on our oil rigs.

Oh no, there's so many things going on. I'm still waiting for some more goats, uh, to kid. And, uh, yeah, I've got to mention the goats.

Uh, I wish that was my life. I wish that was my life. I had to worry about goats and I had to get a couple more goats. It would not be such a nice, nice life, Nick. He got there first, I have to hand it to him. What about you, Nick? How are you getting on?

It's, uh, nothing, nothing really strange or startling. I'm busy, just, yeah, really busy, but it's been a really good week. I feel Sometimes I feel like the practice is leading me, but this week I've been in charge, so I feel, I feel pretty happy about that.

That's nice. It's just one of those weeks where you feel the captain of your ship. That's nice. Yes.

Yeah. How about you? Anything?

Not much. Um, no, I'll just, I'll just recount two little, uh, posts I put up, uh, during the week. And one of them I was very impressed with. I should have had the picture ready and now I don't, so I couldn't be bothered trying to do it and trying to share my screen. But I did a picture of a little bowl of kibble with a napalm bomb cloud coming with a mushroom cloud coming out of it. And the title of it, orange and red background, very dramatic. It actually worked a treat. And the title was Gut Flora Napalm. And I just recounted some of the studies that showed, you know, dry dog food is kind of decimating your gut flora. And here's what it means and here's where the inflammation and the gut issues can come from. So that was kind of cool. I like that one. But the other one was more pleasant. It was a springtime post, a picture of daisies, and I said, make your pet a herb garden. So I started talking about herbs that we all like to use all the time, and you can plant them in a pot and you can have your bit of German chamomile and your bit of barley grass and your bit of burdock or whatever. I said horsetail, but somebody told me off because it's very invasive and it'll take over your garden. I don't know, I just nodded politely. So yeah, so we put these ideas in. You can grow your own garlic, fresh little garlic kind of sprouts just from a little from a little clove of garlic, put it in the soil in a certain way. And so I put that up and people ate that up because folks like to know, to do a few bits and pieces themselves, don't they? So I do anyway.

So is this your— this is through your website they can go and find that?

No, Facebook page, Dogs First Ireland on Facebook. Oh, Facebook. That's where I was posting all that. But that was my week, just doing a few posts. And the same as Nick, I just felt like it was a good week. I thought I had it clear to get some projects off my desk. I got nothing off my desk, but I enjoyed it. I wasn't stressing. So guys, tonight we actually got to talk about books.

Hang on, look, you've got these. These are the books of the week to read. Okay, you know, this is going to turn into a book club. Yeah, that's a really good one to get your teeth into by Stephen Gundry.

Okay, good old Gundry. And then, uh, and Lifespan. Brian, you must get into that age where you're reading longevity and lifespan books, are you? A bit of a wobble.

This is mine for the week still.

Oh yeah, good calories, calories, bad calories. Yeah, cool.

It's about 24 hours long, so it's quite a long book, but wow, it's just, it's a revelation every minute. Conor, would you just, because we're, we're just at the beat getting towards the end of recording the, our sessions for the ITCH webinar. Uh, Conor, would you just relate your experience today at— just tell us.

I'm gonna get angry now. I'm gonna set me up badly for what is going to be an emotional podcast. So, um, I don't know, I seem to be the technophobe out of the three of us, and I'm not enjoying it. I'm not enjoying being the— I just can't work anything. I mean, There's one mic, there's a second mic. I've got brand new phones, brand new laptops, and I have shot my webinar, my part of the webinar, 3 parts of it, about 45 minutes, each segment is 15 minutes.

About 4 or 5 times, I think.

I'm on take 4, I've done it 4, the exact same thing. Phone has died, the mic didn't work, the laptop turned off, the phone turned off this time after 10 minutes. It just said, I'm just going to stop now after 10 minutes.

So guys, for all of you guys who are supporting us on Patreon, as you'll see it coming across the bottom of the screen, thank you so much. But at the moment, all of that funding we think is going to go to a producer and director just for Conor so that he can actually complete his, um, his video parts.

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, we've got to, uh, I need to, I need to focus up. But tonight, guys, tonight, look, first of all, I want to say thanks to Patreon. Thanks to people that have, uh, helped us through Patreon, patreon.com/rawpetmedics. Uh, um, the, like, even the price of a cup of coffee a month, guys, really helps us get to the bottom of these things. It helps us prepare. We now have to do an hour or two preparation beforehand that get our thoughts in gear. So it does take a lot of work to bring it to fruition. So thanks for your help, guys. If you can afford it, great. If you can't afford it, that's totally understandable. Free to view, as always. And also thanks to our sponsors for tonight's show, which is Paleo Ridge, organic, ethical, raw dog food. And you know, I'm a fan of this company. So outdoor-reared meat is what it's all about, really. So I kind of think that if we're if we have to feed these dogs as they deserve, which is a meat-based diet, I kind of feel like we need to make efforts for the diet to be, you know, as least impactful as possible. And that's what I'm going after. So I like Paleo Ridge for those, those reasons. I like the organic content, the ethical content of it, and the spread of ingredients. And so check out Paleo Ridge at paleoridge.co.uk. Thanks very much for your help tonight, guys, and we will get on with the show. So tonight, guys, we're going to be talking about neutering It's a very— it can be an emotive topic because it feels like everybody is advised to do it at some point. And can we just understand a little bit about the— Brendan, let's start with you. What, like, can you tell us a little bit about the gonads and like what they do? Just tell us, just start us off.

Okay, so I think let's sort out a bit of confusion that goes on there about neutering. So neutering is a generic term for both female and males. So castration for males, in normal terms, we would be talking about removal of the testes. Okay, so that's both, not the scrotum. Scrotum remains where it is. The testes are usually taken out at the level of the vas deferens, so the tubes that feed to them. We tie them off, remove them, and that's the entirety of castration There are some other things that we're going to talk about later as alternatives to that, and we'll talk about, you know, how to get information about those. But this is the basics of what's going on there first. For the classic spay, okay, for females we're talking about spays, and that's removal— that's an ovariohysterectomy is normally talked about. So that's removal of the ovaries, which are the gonads in the female, all the way down to the cervix So they normally tie off through the cervix, okay, to remove the female reproductive organs.

Is that a lot of tissue? What's that look like in a laboratory?

So actually, in a non— so we prefer to do this, or we're taught to prefer to do this when it's not, when the season's been gone for 2 months, so they're in anestrus, so they've not got a load of blood supply going into the uterus they've not got a lot of ovarian activity or anything like that. So the tissue is as quiescent as possible, it's as quiet as possible, it's not pumping out loads of hormones. And that means that the surgery is much less risky because there's less blood flow. There's other elements to that about the hormone shock, and we're going to talk— somebody asked on Facebook about do dogs go into any sort of hormone shock, so like a menopause when you neuter them. And so we've got to decide why you don't choose when they're in the middle of that high activity to neuter, because that can be more of a hormone shock. But I think there's lots for us to discuss tonight. There's going to be so much we're going to talk about— the alternatives, what's available, and how we deal with that. But the basics are ovariohysterectomy, which is a spay. That's everything from the ovaries to the cervix is removed in the female. And we're going to talk about benefits in a moment and then the problems with that going forwards. And then for males, it classically is removal of both testes.

Is it a big job? The likes of a, like a hysterectomy sounds like a big job. Is that, is that like a job that it becomes very simple to do, kind of repetitive? You know, it's, it's not like a very risky job In general, you need to understand, you know, you're giving an anesthetic, okay, to any dog.

There are anesthetic risks, okay? You know, people don't understand that actually when you're anesthetizing a patient, you're not— it's not simple of, you know, a strong right hook to the jaw and that they're flat on their backs and you can do this and they'll be fine. You know, this is a delicate art of making sure your dog is given sufficient pain relief is kept deep enough so it's given a sedation protocol. And there are benefits— we're going to talk in the future about different anesthetics and things if you have to have them done, because there is so much to talk about tonight. We should talk about different anesthetics and the issues of behavior that that can cause. But certain sedative protocols, then an induction agent, then a maintenance. For females, you're going into their abdomen, okay? So this is before you've even got to the and everything else, you've got to understand you're anesthetizing a dog. The current rates in dogs is classically without any problems, the perfect dog, okay, 1 in 10,000 will have a reaction, and that's it. You give the anesthetics and there's no turning back. That's about equivalent to the human side, 1 in 10,000. Actually, some anesthetic protocols that are out there that is 1 in 1,000. Okay, so 10 times more likely that you will just, you know, there'll be no particular problem seen, they will perceive that there's no issues, they may never have had these drugs before, you give those drugs at the normal ratios, normal amounts, and then before you know it, they've had an adverse reaction and that's it. So you must, must discuss this with your vet. You must ensure that you understand the relative risks if you're going to go ahead with neutering.

Yeah, okay, cool.

So that's anesthetics. Then yes, you know, it is talked about as routine amongst vets because so much is done, but hopefully tonight people will be making an informed choice about what the right way forward is, whether that's going to be something that they want to go ahead with.

All right, cool.

So like we always, we always say it's a serious operation, but it's a routine. We do it a lot.

Yeah.

So, so it's something that we know a lot about, you know.

What are the pros, Nick? What, like, what are the pros for New Zealand? Start with that.

Pros, um, my mate Mark Elliott has written a fantastic, uh, article for the guys at Wolf Tucker, and he's gone through all this stuff. He's, he's, he wanted to be a, uh, barrister at one point, so he's, he's, he's got that kind of analytical mind. And so his list is this. It's an 8-point list, and he says the main reason for neutering is actually done is for perceived social benefit for the human population, which, which is, I think, a pretty interesting way to start the list. And he said it avoids some inconvenience and expense for owners. It stops heat, uh, it stops the heat cycles in the girls. It means you don't get any accidental pregnancies in the girls, and if you do the boys, then they can't impregnate any of the girls. Prevents unwanted puppies being born. Now that's a moot point, which I think, uh, Conor, you want to talk about. Okay, yeah, within a population, if you neuter a lot of animals, that you get less unwanted puppies. You can come in with that in just a second. Yeah. Um, um, reduces abandonment of unwanted pets, resulting in mass euthanasia. Euthanasia and neglect. Okay, so again, that plays to your point. I'm sure you're going to tell us about that. Male dogs are thought less likely to roam. Early neutering— and this is a really contentious point— and early neutering for me would be anything before about 4 or 5 months. Some, some of the Labradoodle breeders are doing it at about 6 or 8 weeks.

That was a comment made on Facebook actually earlier this week, uh, in America, you know, absolutely 6 to 8 weeks.

Yeah, 6 to 8 weeks, which I think is criminal, but we can discuss that if we have time. Let's discuss that. Um, so male dogs less likely to roam. 7 is really interesting: early neutering is said to offer, offer breeders the chance to preclude others using their bloodlines. And I think that's something that we really, really need to get on top of there. And finally, vets find early neutering is a lot easier because most puppies are fairly slim and there's not a lot of fat to it, so you can find everything really easy. So it makes vets' lives a bit easier and so you can do it more quickly.

It's interesting that, like, you know, cancer and health didn't pop up in those 7 that Mark saw the top 7 benefits. Where was, like, the health benefits?

So those are the societal benefits. If you're looking at the benefits Benefits to the bitch is that she is not going to get a pyometra where you get pus in the womb. She's not because she hasn't got— she either hasn't got a womb or she hasn't got the— if she has an ovary sparing spay, then you remove the womb. You can just remove the womb and leave the ovaries, and that's another option. Maybe that's something that we need to discuss another time, or maybe we can discuss that tonight.

I think I've scheduled that in. But the, uh, yeah, versus a gonadectomy, which is actually ovarectomy, where you just remove the ovaries and leave everything else.

And the pyometra, Nick, is it common, and how lethal is it?

Briefly, before I distract you, the pyometra, depending on who you talk to, between about 1 and 3% of bitches will get, and some authorities will take that up to 25%, by the time they're 10 years old, say, it can go up quite high. But the thing is, if you, if you find a pyometra, the treatment is you just neuter them there and then. You just remove— you do an ovariohysterectomy there and then, and they seem to respond quite well to that. And so if it's any consolation, I have not— so I've got a 2-year-old and I've got a 18-month-old, 18-week-old, and obviously the 18-week-old, she hasn't been neutered. But I'm not going to spay Bluebell, the 2-month, 2-year-old bitch, if just, just to show you where I am. Because the way I look at it, and I say it very, very, um, tongue-in-cheek, that if they were meant to be spayed, they would been— they would have been created with a zip. Yes, and boys would have had a zip on the scrotum. Okay, that's a little bit simplistic, but I think that there are, in a nutshell, there are pros and cons to both approaches, and you just need to be informed and make your choice. Yeah, we've lost Brady.

We have. He's hidden himself. He's going to come back. You'll have to reboot his system, I think. We've all just discussed about his his acumen with the technology. But there we go, he'll be back with us very shortly, I'm sure. So the other things that we wanted to discuss around that is, because I've, you know, been in two minds with this, and I've got, you know, Artie, who's the spaniel, who definitely is, you know, entire, and, you know, she's happy as Larry and absolutely not a problem at all.

How old? How old?

So she is now 5. Okay, and I have Pippa, who's 10 and a bit, nearly 11, but she's been neutered. And this was interesting because I was having this debate with myself at the sort of 12 to 18 month stage and really sort of like trying to work out, is it the right thing to do, is it not? Now you will find lots of different ways to do this with laparoscopic spays and neuters, and I wasn't going to let anybody because we try and minimize sizing. You can neuter them through, you know, less than 1 inch, so you sort of 1.5 centimeters to 2 centimeter wound. And that's what we teach all of our guys, you know, is what to do with ovarian sparing spays through that versus full spays. So before the articles that came out that we're going to discuss today as the downsides. I had already gone through making sure that the— they'd gone through— she'd gone through puberty, and then I'd gone for neutering in that way for minimal risk. But so I've got both, both sides here, you know, and I'm sort of like always debating, was it the right thing to do, was it not? But, you know, the difference is science moves on, and that's the thing. Science has actually now shown that, you know, through— and that's one of the upsides to some of these big organizations in the States especially, is that they are doing case reviews, and they are absolutely, you know, and hats off to them to actually come forward and actually publish some of their case data to show what we're going to discuss tonight is actually the good thing and the right thing to do and actually gives us informed education about what we should be doing going forwards. And I just hope that more people listen to that.

Can I just touch on something that Mark Elliott brought up there, the societal kind of benefits of it? And like, one thing, you know, and we only need to touch on it because it can get a bit emotive, but like the overpopulation, the dog overpopulation problem that Ireland has, the UK has, and the US has You know, the idea that, you know, the problem with neutering is that responsible pet owners neuter. If you tell a responsible pet owner to do something, they do it. And the bigger problem is that irresponsible pet owners won't do it, and the puppy farms sure as hell won't do it, which is an Irish, mega Irish issue. And everyone has it, but we've got it the worst. Government incentivized in 2009 after the crash, if you can believe it, tax. So, and still being done. So the problem is that the irresponsible pet owners are always the issue. They're the ones clogging up the, you know, we've got all these greyhounds and lurchers turning up and all these. So, you know, it's not responsible pet owners that are having too many accidental litters. And if they did, a responsible pet owner would look after that litter. They'd find homes, they'd do the due diligence, they'd do the work. That pup would not be looking for a bad home. It wouldn't be, uh, would only get a good home. So I'd like to compare our strategy of relatively aggressive neutering policy to Scandinavia who consider the practice a little bit barbaric. Sweden don't, don't do it. They're a nation of 13 million people, nation of dog lovers. They've got one pound. We've got 200 animal shelters, pounds, all sorts of people and groups collecting unwanted dogs here in Ireland. One in Sweden, and they take our unwanted dogs like it's a commodity. There used to be a van from Sweden that would turn up in Ireland once a week to take our unwanted. So, you know, they don't neuter at all. So if aliens were to come down and have a look and see how neutering was going, they go, well, it seems like, you know, the difference between Sweden and us— to cut a long story short— is they've got the same laws, welfare laws, as we have, except they enforce them very diligently. Roaming laws— we catch them once, it's a week's wages. Catch them twice, it's a month's wages. Catch them 3 times, he's gone. That kind of thing where it's like, we'll find him and you're going to get punished— that doesn't happen in Ireland at all. I still walk down the street and bump into—

you've got to understand, though, Conor, when this dogma of neutering first came on, yeah, we were talking '50s, '60s, that it was starting to— oh, look at the benefits to neutering, let's talk about this. But actually, in that era, there were latchkey dogs, you know. It's like the Indian situation, you know, you went out in the morning, you just let your dog roam.

Yeah.

Okay. And, you know, they were out mixing, doing their own thing, and then before you knew it you know, your dog was knocked up and you had a litter of puppies alive, and they were having loads and loads of litters. So they put forward that actually this neutering campaign would be beneficial to stop those unwanted puppies. Things have moved on.

Yeah, yeah, it's true.

Mortified if someone lets their dog roam the streets.

That's interesting to see where that came from, actually. That makes perfect sense. There's like, there's a heap of downsides to neutering, right? So I saw Karen Becker do a video on this, and if anyone hasn't seen it, check out Karen Becker's video where she kind of breaks down saying, I really, I feel so bad thinking about all the dogs I neutered early, uh, when I should have left them on. And you know, it, that's, that's, it was a very moving video that worked for me. That was like 2013 or '14. And so I got to researching and how many studies could I find. So I started looking for the negatives and of course there's a whole heap. I started looking at the cancer thing first of all, because they say a lot of people can make the throwaway comment, it reduces cancer. It's like, it reduces what cancer? Like if you don't have testicles, you can't get testicle cancer. I get it, but like, you know, testicle cancer isn't something they're too terrified of in dogs, but it does increase— neutering early does increase bone cancer in rotties. In neutered golden retrievers, it significantly affects their lymphosarcoma, 3 times more likely than intact males. And so there's a few cancers that increase when you neuter early, it seems. And that was—

mast cell tumors are mildly increased in girls if you neuter. Hemangiosite sarcoma is increased in both males and females, osteosarcoma both males and females, transitional cell carcinoma increased in both males and females, cystitis mildly increased in females.

The growth, the growth issues and the joint issues, the developmental issues, like you look at the difference between a 12-year-old boy and a 14-year-old boy, like you know there's some serious hormones going on there. You can't just lop them off and expect everything to be perfectly fine. And the hormone in particular besides testosterone is estrogen. So I mentioned earlier, estrogen is what's going to govern the closure of the growth plate. So if you take estrogen away from males and females, both of us have it, the bones can grow a little bit erratically. So neutered dogs are taller. The big studies, I mean, very large groups of dogs, 1,444 golden retrievers They're significantly taller, both males and females, and that comes with ACL issues, cruciate rupture, joint issues. We've got hip dysplasia is more likely. A study of 759 golden retrievers, neutered males are 10% had hip dysplasia, double the occurrence than intact.

We as a profession have definitely seen an epidemic of cranial cruciate ligament rupture, you know, ACLs and stuff like that. Are just like— everybody knows to watch out for that with the lameness, hind limb lameness in a dog now. So it's so common, and it's mortifying to think that actually that's down to all of this early neutering.

Yeah, that's mad. And here's one from Waters, 2009, found that neutering female Rottweilers before 4 years of age reduces life expectancy by 30%. Oh my God.

And earlier, you know, the percentage that, that's So that Rottweiler one for osteosarcoma, I think for females it takes them from about a 7% likelihood up to a 27%. That's nearly a third of Rottweilers, if they're neutered early, will end up with osteosarcoma. I think that the males— in fact, sorry, I might have got that the wrong way around. I think it's up to 22% for females, up to 27% for males. So it's more likely if you early neuter a Rottweiler, you are, you know, almost a third of those will succumb to osteosarcoma.

And for me, they are the—

that's a major—

they're the canary in the coal mine because I think that these, you know, if you're doing early neutering, okay, because it's more obvious than doing kind of puberty, just post-puberty neutering It's the, the Rotties and the Labradoodles and things where you've got this obvious difference. What about all the rest of those animals who were early neutered? They're going to have stuff happening, but it's subtle. But over a lifetime, so that's— they describe it as a mutilation. In Sweden, they describe neutering as a mutilation, and it's actually illegal. Yeah, it's not just they don't do it, it's actually illegal. To do it unless there's a surgical necessity with pyometra or something like that.

You know, I've got two girls, I've got two baby girls. I'm not going to give them a hysterectomy at 12 because I'm worried that they might get pregnant. It's not the end of the world. It's quite a major operation. The last few side effects here: early neutered dogs are at increased risk of hypothyroidism. Early neutered dogs are at increased risk of incontinence. I mean, you're worried about spots of blood on your floor twice a year. How about spots of wee on your floor every morning? Early neutered dogs are increased risk of disease. Not a single one of these is ever mentioned to a non-vet pet owner when we're going to make this decision. And like, so I mean, the last thing is behavior.

I beg to differ. If you look at that website, okay, and you give them informed consent, okay, that's not the average.

I understand your sentiment, but that's not the average vet. The average vet does not give us the side effects. I mean, every time we post about this No, it's never been discussed with me. It's never been mentioned in Guide Dogs. Large populations of dogs, like, this is just the norm. We've got a breeder in Ireland, very popular breeder, who breeds a type of doodle. I won't say which one. She's neutering at 6 and 7 weeks. Let's face it, to protect her lines. But that's, that's right, that's just to protect her wallet, isn't it? That's it. And the last thing is behavior, guys. It increases anxiety, aggression towards family members. Now, behavioral studies, they are questionable at best. So if there's any proper behaviorists out there, I apologize, but, you know, there isn't benefits to losing your sex hormones or any behaviorally. The questions that people were posing at the start was, is there questions, is there benefits to behavior after the—

so like neutering a male to stop him roaming, like, I don't know, he probably will, probably.

Yeah, yeah.

But if you got, for example, there is a paper where they neutered about 8 anxious German Shepherds and 6 of them got worse. Yeah. So, so whereas I think often when you have the conversation, it's like, oh, my dog's a bit anxious. Oh, well, if you neuter them, they'll mellow. They probably will, but not every single one.

Yeah.

You know, and if they get worse, whoa. Because think about neutering, whether it's boys or girls, is it's a one-way street. Yeah, you can only, you can only take off the gonads once. So I think one has to be very, very careful about this. In the old days, we used to neuter everything, but nowadays I think that it's advanced to being, shall we or shan't we? Let's look at the lifestyle, let's look at the dog, let's look at the age and all these things.

And your ability to, to—

yeah, so that's progress rather than just going straight in with everybody. Yeah, we're making a decision. If you do have to neuter, Brendan, when would you— when would be the time to do girls? Would that be the least worst time to do girls?

Okay, so right, well, let's deal with the first thing. It's best— basically you want them to at least get through puberty. Okay, for all of the studies that are out there, they talk about those increased rates are all about if you neuter early, i.e. before before they've gone through puberty. Okay, and yeah, people have asked, well, how do you tell when they've, they've had puberty? And I would say, um, you want to look at when their growth plates close. So I'm going to give a little bit of a demo here. You can create a little bit of a growth thing with two sticks. Okay, um, now bigger sticks obviously for bigger dogs. This is a Chihuahua size. Okay, and basically as the puppy grows, you measure up the stick. Okay, now some people do this on the door frame. I did that with my children. And basically what happens is as they reach puberty, the lines that you draw across this stick get closer and closer together and then eventually stop. So you can then say they've reached their optimum growth, fully intact. And at that point, that's when you can have that conversation about is it the right time now to neuter? Okay, and then you would be looking at making sure it's at least 2 months post their season.

Yeah, but also, you know, with girls, you're going to see the vulva swelling, you might see some, uh, some, some dripping. Let's— but even if there's— if it's a silent heat, you know, if it's a, if it's a small dog, you're going to be looking for season at about 6, 8, 9 months. And the bigger the dog, the later that's going to be. So some of the giants, they're going to be I don't know, 12, 15 months or so. So you're going to be looking for it and you'll see a change in behavior. You know, the clingy dog will get distant, or the distant dog will become clingy, or suddenly you go to the park and you are the most— she is the most interesting dog in the entire park. There will be changes that will tell you, aha, this is puberty. Or you nip along to the vet and say, her vulva has changed, what do you reckon? Do you think she's in season?

Yeah, can you still debate though? You're going through that level of puberty as to the, um, you know, she started to cycle. Yeah, one level. But I think with all of the stuff that's being talked about with joints, actually, you know, it's really important that they reach their optimum growth. They've closed their plates, they've actually got—

it does help with that bit for sure.

So you're talking skeletal mature— skeletal maturity as opposed to puberty?

Yeah, yeah, as opposed to hormonally being able to—

yeah.

Yeah, okay, so skeletal maturity in a small dog is going to be 12 months or so. In a kind of Springer Spaniel, it'd be about 18 months or so. But in, you know, the Leonbergers of this world, the Great Danes of this world, you're thinking way into 2 years.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Silent— somebody said there, Nick, just as you were talking about seasons and assessing things, someone said something that I don't know about. She said silent seasons are a new interesting one.

They are behavioral changes, and they, they will usually give it away some way or another.

They don't necessarily spot the first time they have a seizure. Yeah, well, yeah, they will just—

yeah. But skeletal maturity, I love the, the measuring. And if in doubt, go and see your local chiropractor or osteopath and say, is this a skeletally mature dog? And they'll be able to tell you. Yeah, so I would like to come back to the whole hormonal thing.

That was interesting reading some of the theory behind why the tumors are an issue, because actually the tumors actually seem to be streamlined to certain breed types. So for instance, you've got, you know, the retrievers out there seem to be more predisposed to lymphomas. You've got the spaniels seem to be very much more predisposed to transitional cell carcinomas of the bladder. And you've got, you know, the large breeds of German Shepherds. It was a crossbreed from hemangiosarcoma and osteosarcoma, a bit of lymphoma as well. So you've got those elements which were to do with that. But it seems to be for the transitional cell carcinoma, they actually were looking also at the TSH feedback level. So that's a hormone released by the brain when it feels a lack of the gonad hormones, then it kicks in with more and more TSH. and the increase in TSH has also been shown to cause tumor growth rates. So you're overstimulating other tissues, so it may be linked to that excess amount of TSH they start to produce. The other thing to remember is any immune-mediated condition can be initiated by surgery. So it's not just about the fact that you've spayed and removed the hormones, which will also have some effect. But also when you interrupt or disrupt normal tissues, you're exposing that to the immune system. So it is noted that immune-mediated conditions can be initiated by surgery. Surgery is one of those conditions that can predispose them to it, so be careful when you're thinking about that.

Pancreatitis— remember on the list of things that can kick off pancreatitis, surgery is one of them, one of the dozen things.

Addison's is another one.

What's the pancreatitis thing? Is it like an infection from a non-sterile environment? Is that what keeps it going?

Inflammation. It's all about the inflammation.

Yeah, that's mad. I think the cancer studies are like, you know, it's kind of interesting when we get the raw-fed dogs online because a lot of those cancer studies are done in dogs fed 50% sugar diets. And if you want cancer, you eat 50% sugar. So it'll be interesting to see what these cancer figures turn into when we're looking at raw-fed dogs that that don't have that cancer feel, because you'd wonder how much of those factors are related for the real kickoff to happen. So guys, what is the— okay, we're on a— we've kind of discussed about neutering and the standard way we do it and that leave it later if you're going to decide to do it for whatever decisions you can take with your vet. What are the alternatives? Gonadal sparing, vasectomies for dogs and the snip for girls, is that happening at the moment? We've only one vet in Ireland doing that, Emily McAteer in Portmarnock Vets in Dublin, everybody. Get into that.

That's, uh, but I've trained all of our, you know, 5 surgeons in our surgery do it.

Okay, how common is that for vets?

There is a Facebook page, okay, for, um, going out sparing spays and stuff, so you can have a look on that. Okay, if you look at OSS's Facebook— OSS, I think it is something like that—

um, OSS stands for Ovary Sparing Spay.

And so that is what we do, is— and there's some more information on this website from BAHVS that's put up there from a great friend of mine, Sarah Chapman, who's over in the States, who was looking into this well before I was. And there's a lot of articles discussed, and actually there's been a review by the AVMA on this, and, and WSAVA, the World Small Animal Veterinary Association, actually had a whole conference session set to this stuff 3 years ago. I'm just still surprised that the veterinary profession— 4 years ago now, actually— I'm surprised that the veterinary profession haven't embraced it as well as a lot of others. But it is certainly out there. It just means, look, we usually remove everything except one ovary, and that is enough of a feedback to allow all of the growth stuff to happen. So you can go in, you can check which— if there's an ovary that's cystic, you remove that, but generally right remains. Okay, and then you just—

why does the right remain?

Because it's easier then to remember which ones. We always note down on the record which one, but right remains because then if there's a future problem down the line, you know where you're looking. Okay, that's the— you've got to know where to look at these. So we release those, we keep those there. Some people actually transplant those into the subcutaneous tissues so that they can find them, but then you've got to find out where they've transplanted it to, and it's not going to be in a normal position, and you then have a situation where some of them won't take as far as the tissues have to develop another blood supply and start to generate. So we tend to leave them intact in where they are with a blood supply supply, albeit the ligament is loosened so that they're easier to access. And then we have to remove to below the cervix. And this is really important when you're doing an ovarian sparing spay. People worry about stump pyometra, so infections of the womb, of the remnants that's left. And actually, it's really important that the vet knows to remove below the cervix because that actually stops a lot of the physical symptoms of the spotting of blood and everything else. Because you've got an active ovary that's still cycling. So you're still going to have some behavioral issues, some behavioral changes, some pheromone release.

Do they still attract males?

Yeah, so you've got to describe all of that to the owners. Now remember, look, the vagina that's left is really flexible, that the likelihood of anything nasty happening, you know, rupture or anything like that, is just really, you know, not the situation because you ligate all of the tissues off below the cervix.

So males will still have a goal, Brandon? Sorry for the phrasing, but males will still want to kind of hump a girl?

They may still be interested. The females don't seem to be that interested in the males necessarily, but, and there's no discharge, remember, there's not the excitement of all of that discharge and pheromones, you know how dogs sniff and they sort of go in for the discharge. Yes, there's a pheromone release, but there's not necessarily the discharge for them to also get excited about. So I would say, look, it allows us to reduce the rates of infection if it's done properly to that level. It allows for the female to continue to cycle. And, you know, it's one thing to then, you know, have the the social conscience to just try and control, uh, that, that scenario in those circumstances. And I think a lot of people do. I think there are— it's a discussion to be had. If it's for you, then have that discussion and go for that. If it's not for you, there are other ways to deal with it, okay? Um, and I think for the males, vasectomies are becoming more popular, um, I think, which is just removing the tube Okay, do you remove it or snip it? No, we remove at least a centimeter and actually tie off both ends, because if you just snip, which is what they do with humans, there is a small risk that they will heal. Yeah, okay, so you've got to be really careful doing that.

There's a couple of great questions booming up here, guys. I have to get to some of them.

I've just had a little thought though. That all the studies and all the stats over the last 30, 40, 50 years on pyodes in female dogs are on probably kibble-fed dogs. And I would wager that the raw-fed dog, because they're just less inflamed, healthier, better, uh, maybe they're going to be less prone. Maybe a pyometra is a function of poor nutrition and over-medication throughout a lifetime.

I would say so. I just thought, because we do a whole view, we do conventional and we see out of hours and all of those bits that we've done, we have— I can remember two holistic raw-fed dogs, large breeds, that had got to 110, and I'd had to— we'd had a piemeter.

So, you know, it's So I'm not saying they won't get it, they might get 10% of the others.

Absolutely.

What's up, sorry for cutting across you guys, I'm just aware of time, but I got 5 minutes left and we still got a little bit to do, okay? So here's two really relevant questions. First one, Claudia Stockton, what's the price range— sorry to put you on the spot, Brendan— what's the price range difference for OSS comparing to a normal spay for a bitch?

That's about £50.

Okay, that's great, that is fantastic, and that's good to hear. And the second question I have for you is— oh yeah, sorry, if people were looking for that Facebook group you mentioned earlier, I found one that's called Ovary Sparing Spain Vasectomy Info Group, but it turns out that's for humans, I think. So it turns out Joe Laura has the right one. This is the OSSFB group. If everyone could scroll to Joe Laura's page if you're looking for it, it's facebook.com/groups/ossfb. Alternative Altering Info. Alternative Altering Info. That is one Facebook page dedicated to the idea, because you're guaranteed whoever's running that has a load of pages saved on the group that you can access.

I think in the States the Pessimist Group have, um, they definitely have a website, and I think they also have a, um, uh, a Facebook page as well to discuss it.

Okay, cool. And somebody says Germany also has a protection law that does not allow folk to neuter animals without a medical reason. Didn't know that about Germany. That's interesting. Cheers for that.

Yeah, I think Denmark does too. I think Denmark used to, but they've changed. I think Norway do. I'm not sure Sweden do anymore.

Ah, okay, cool. And so guys, let's— Nick, what do you recommend here? So your dog, I suppose there's two ways to look about it. First of all, best advice, you're going in for a neutering, best advice for afterwards, what do you do with a dog that's coming out after a neutering. What do you recommend?

I just think, I think, uh, I would feed raw because just the raw-fed dog is going to be healthier. They're going to be slimmer, they're going to be healthier, they're going to be less inflammatory. So in, in a very short nutshell, because that's really all we've got, I'd say raw before, during, and after. Um, for— I've got, I've got a thousand reasons. Well, I know I've got, I've got about 12 reasons here why they're going to do better, but Essentially, that's— that would be in a nutshell. Okay, so afterwards you're gonna, you're gonna have an advantage if you've got a raw-fed dog because, um, uh, let's have a look, because the protein quality in a raw-fed diet will allow better healing. You've got a broader exposure to vitamins and minerals, and so you get better healing. You're going to have better immune function going into the operation, and therefore you're going to have a better immune function afterwards. Many hormones are derived from fats and fatty acids, which you're giving those as part of a raw-fed diet, and therefore you may mitigate the impact, that menopausal impact. You know, girls, can you imagine having men going through the menopause at 14 years of age as a human being? That's what we do to our, to our bitches. Okay. Improving fat quality. Yep. Gut microbiome. If you go into surgery with a good gut microbiome, you're likely to come out and the gut microbiome is going to help with behavior. It's going to help with inflammation, general health, immunity, and absolutely everything. Also, your skin microbiome is going to be improved going into the operation. So having good skin microbiome can but help to reduce post-operative complications in the wound. Brendan, I imagine you see them all the time.

Yours perhaps.

Could I just say on that one note, I would say, you know, guys, ask your vet what they've given. Just the anesthetics will disrupt the microbiome. Any drugs will disrupt the microbiome. Antibiotics are not an excuse for poor sterility. You should make sure Ask your vet, are they going to give your dog antibiotics around that operation? Because you don't want it. They should be able to give good sterility. There should be no need for antibiotics around a good operation like that. Okay, so double-check with your vet, make sure about those elements. And guys, the more of you that ask about if they can't do ovarian sparing spays or give you the alternatives, can they refer you to somebody that does? Because that will make them realize that if they don't do it, somebody else will be doing it.

Yeah, OSS, guys.

OSS.

Overeat, sparing, spay. Yeah, it's a good idea. It's a good idea.

I will answer a lot of the questions that are going down this— yeah, there is a furious amount of cryptorchidism and what to do in those circumstances.

We're not going to have time tonight, guys, because we can take our time and get to these, and you'll get better answers that way. But I'd like to Just, just one more here. Chemical castration, yes or no?

It's a good— if you want to trial your dog behaviorally to work out whether that's going to work for you, the Superlurelin option is there. There is a zinc injection which has been used in the States a lot.

Zinc into the testicles?

Yeah, zinc into the testicles.

How does a dog tolerate that?

It causes a lot of fibrosis of tissues, doesn't stop them It makes them infertile, doesn't stop hormones necessarily. It is talked about in the BAHVS article. Wow, very interesting.

Nicky Collins, do I need to worry about a retained testicle? I nearly know the answer to that. Yeah, I took all these one out.

Yeah, although it doesn't need to come out immediately, finish their growth, they will not get bigger within the first 3 years.

Yeah, the reason, yes, it's a tumor risk, but don't do it straight away. The reason your testicles are in a sac outside the body is to keep them a degree cooler than the rest of the body. They don't want to be, let's say, 37.5, whatever a dog is, they want to be 36.5. So inside the body heats them up and that leads to baddies.

So in time.

Okay, cool. Yeah, because I got that done with Dudley actually when he was fully grown, so he just got one little wrapping around in there for all the good it does him. So what about implants for males?

Waste of time.

Waste of time.

Don't do that. But I think the— I'm guessing they're talking about implants, as in the Superlurelin implant.

Oh, right.

Silicone balls.

I mean, me and Nick went straight around. I'm an old man. They're a type of ball.

The Superlurelin implants. They do a 6-month one and 12-month one, and they can help you make decisions as to whether you want to castrate or not. So I wouldn't leap to them, and I definitely wouldn't do them one after the next after the next just so that you don't castrate. I'd rather castrate than go with a chemical over a very long period.

But because if it's about behavior, you're neutering, okay, also talk to your vet about the different drugs and talk to your behaviorist about the different drugs because there's certain pre-meds which will absolutely wreck. You know, it's not just about whether you neuter or not, it's about the state that your dog's in in that surgery. You know, if they're using acepromazine as their pre-med, yeah, you've paralyzed your dog. They've got no— you know, they've still got all the anxiety, still all of the work buzzing on around them, but they just can't do anything about it. You don't want that pre-med for your dog in those circumstances.

Just to wrap up, for a person that came on here late and was asking a question like, I have Like, to wrap up, you're asking about the age for neutering your older dogs. Like, listen, you know, it does depend on the size of the dog, and your smaller dogs, if you were to choose to neuter for your reasons, and then, you know, your smaller dogs might be done earlier. So guys, could you just give us some very ballpark figures starting from toy, knee-high, labs, large dogs, and giants? Give us those four.

Okay, I think you can get it even simpler. I I— and Brendan, you're on the cold face here— I always say between the first and second season for girls, if you're going to, if you choose to neuter, and that's absolutely fine if you want to, as long as you've looked at the pros and cons of both sides between the first and second season, okay? Because then that, you know, the bigger the dog, the later the season, and so that she will tell you when she would otherwise need to be spayed. And with boys, it's when they are if at all possible, when they're skeletally mature. If they're running off and they might land under a bus, you've got to do it earlier. If they're humping everybody's leg and they are really, really a real pain, you may choose to do it earlier. But boys, skeletal maturity. Girls, between first and second season. Brendan, would you go with that?

I would definitely go do the skeletal maturity thing. Okay, yeah, absolutely. That, um, I would say, so if you want a rough guide My view is toys, toy dogs, that is 6 months. Okay. Usually they've reached pretty much skeletal maturity. So that's anything that's less than 3 kilos. I would say for dogs which are 5 to 10 kilos, I would definitely be saying 9 to 12 months. Okay. I would say anything that's a spaniel. So 10 to 20 kilos, you'd definitely be looking at 18 to 24 months. Anything that's getting on for Labrador and, you know, sort of up to German Shepherd, 24 to 36 months is ideal, you know, for skeletal maturity. This is, guys, just so that you've got an idea of when to neuter. And that's generally where we're trying to push people now. Is, look, you know, yes, there's going to be exceptions because of your dog driving you nuts because there's a bitch on heat next door and they are ripping everything to bits to get to them. There's going to be exceptions where they're particularly vicious. I've had a behavioral case that we actually put in an implant just to trial for them, made a massive difference, saw it regress as it weaned off, and then they've gone for neutering and they've never—

it's an interesting idea for people It is there, we understand it.

You've just got to do informed consent. You should be talking to your vet about the pros and cons, okay? And if they only give you incontinence in 5% as a con in females, and, you know, and then a whole list of issues with mammary tumors, which are usually benign in dogs, by the way, and pyometras being really, really common, then you need to have another discussion and maybe bring up one of those other articles, the one from Conor Brady or the one from BAHVS, just to show to them and say, okay, can we have a proper discussion about this? Yeah, and there are references in both of those articles.

Yeah, absolutely, they're packed with— guys, it's 10 to 8. Okay, look, we've got a huge amount of questions there, and we will try to get to those questions later, absolutely. Just to reiterate, we are— this patreon.com, if you like tonight, I can see it went down very well. Patreon.com does help us prepare for these things, helps us dedicate some time to them. So if the price of a cup of coffee a month, if you haven't, it's great. We really appreciate it. To the patrons that have already done it, it really, really helps. And we're already starting to use that money to help us with things in the background. More on that as it comes out. So that's patreon.com/wildpetmedics. And once again, thanks very much to Paleo Ridge at paleoridge.co.uk. Fantastic, ethical, organic raw dog food for your doggy. And so next week, guys, there's the list that we keep adding to our list of things that we need to talk about, and it's getting a little bit worrying. But someone just— someone brought up a great one there of teeth and all the issues with them, and I thought that's a fantastic one because we can talk about problems, we can talk about cleaning, we can talk about all sorts of—

yeah, let's do teeth.

Yeah, you want to do teeth?

Teeth is good.

Oh yeah, it's making me want to clean my teeth.

He's got a model as well.

That's nice. Yeah, thanks very much, Brad. Okay, let's do teeth because teeth was on the list, but we weren't going to be doing it for 3 months, so let's just bump it up the top of this because 2 people have asked for it.

So, oh yeah, but we've also got— I think about, guys, you're going to be having to tolerate us for the next 5 years because I think we've got 5 years worth of, you know, weeks of this. Yeah, the list has been given to us. Yeah, and thanks, thanks everybody for coming tonight. Really, really appreciate it. Love seeing the same old faces and some new faces as well.

It's just fantastic. Fantastic. I love these Friday nights. Uh, keep your questions coming into us here. You can contact us at patreon.com as well, uh, and we'll do our best to get back to them. Uh, and we will see you all next week, same time, same place.

Thank you guys.

Thank you.