by Lorraine Messineo

Created on: February 24, 2009

I am the proud owner of a beautiful neutered German Shepherd dog. Both of his parents were pure-bred and papered by AKC, but as is common in large dogs, Scoobie suffers from hip dysplasia and therefore was not good for breeding. In addition, being the runt of a litter of 13, Scoobie was born more than an hour after his mother and her owners thought all the puppies had been born.

I am totally in favor of spaying and neutering and even if my dog did not have a hereditary hip problem I would have neutered him. I consider spaying and neutering as a humane solution to the growing problem of unwanted and abandoned pets. Many of my dog owning friends don't agree.

Among the most ridiculous reasons people don't spay or neuter is because they associate the natural urge to mate among animals to the human urge to have sex. Humans have sex for a number of reasons that don't relate to animals. We use sex as an expression of emotion, and (sometimes unfortunately) as a form of recreation. Animals are simply reacting to hormones and pheremones. They don't have the emotional capacity to make love and a male dog in heat is more like a rapist than a lover. Ironically, it has been my experience that male owners of male pets are most adverse to neutering-perhaps because they fear emasculation themselves. My Scoobie has never missed not having sex because he doesn't know what it is.

The best time to spay or neuter an animal is before they have developed the capacity to mate-generally in the first year. But even if a dog is spayed or neutered later in life, they don't miss sex as we might if we suddenly were incapable of having sex, although once they have experienced mating, they might still express some of the stress it creates. By neutering Scoobie as a pup I was spared the embarrassing humping that many dogs engage in. He also never felt the need to mark his territory by peeing all over my home.

Not only have I done my part in reducing the unwanted animal population, but I have a much better behaved dog in general. Spaying or neutering reduces the stress that animals experience when they feel the need to mate. I can take my dog anywhere and not worry that he will run away chasing the pheromones of a fertile female. Unneutered males have been known to break chains, destroy screen doors, and even engage in fights with other males in their natural desire to mate with a fertile female dog. Even if one is able to contain an unneutered male when a female is in heat nearby (or within a mile

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