Everyone knows it’s a good idea to spay and neuter your pets. Bob Barker, (rest his soul) made sure we knew. However, not everyone knows the many reasons behind this practice. It’s not as cut and dry as simply preventing unwanted, neglected, and abandoned puppies or kittens, although that is certainly the most prescient motive. The fact is that there are a multitude of reasons concerning health, behavior, and genetics that make it very important to keep your pets from copulating. So let’s take a moment to try and understand the causes behind the castrations.

Let’s start with diseases. A wide range of dog diseases can be completely neutralized by eliminating the testicles. Everything from skin disorders to small cancerous tumors around the anus can be avoided simply by making a quick snip. This is because elevated testosterone in the blood of dogs can be very toxic to their systems, and produce a boat load of problems. For example:

• BPH, or benign prostate hyperplasia
• Prostatitis
• Prostatic abscess
• Perianal or perineal adenomas (those aforementioned tiny cancers occurring around the anus of male dogs)
• Perineal hernias
• Some forms of dermatoses, or castration-responsive skin disorders
• And these are just the conditions that can be brought on from testosterone! There’s a whole other list of conditions that can occur just because your dog’s testicles are out and exposed to the elements. Needless to say they’re even less pleasant to think about than the ones listed above.
  
  Then there are the behavioral issues that neutering can solve. If your male dog is super aggressive, and still running stock with all the equipment nature gave him, the chances are a quick trip to the vet will make him a lot friendlier to the mail man. Not only that, but it greatly reduces the chances of an embarrassing humping episode from playing out in public. Neutered male dogs are much less likely to mark territory inside the home, they aren’t as prone to roaming about looking for females, and they shouldn’t be as aggressively protective of their resources: toys, food, companions, etc.
  
  
  Finally, neutering is important so as to keep the gene pool free from defects. Dog breeding is a prestigious profession for a reason. It’s hard work that entails a lot of research into family lines, and genetic histories of different dogs. The reason being that they don’t want a pup with a family who has a history of canine leukemia. If your dog even has a recessive trait that could be passed on to his pups, it’s very important that he not be allowed to procreate. It’s up to human beings to keep our best friends a healthy and happy domesticated species.
  
  And of course, it would be silly not to at least mention the fact that millions of puppies are annually abandoned, neglected, and/or euthanized for the simple reason that no one has the time or resources to take care of them. So unless you know for a fact that your pup is fine breeding material, do the smart thing and visit your local vet!