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Risk and Indecision on the Puppy-Fixing TrailJune 04, 2008 Trav's got an appointment to be neutered at the end of this month. Well. There's no question in my mind that he's going to be neutered eventually. I signed a puppy contract that commits me to neutering him before he's 12 months old, and even if I hadn't my barn dog in training and future trail-riding buddy will be spending some time off-leash. Malamutes are renowned for their independence and sense of humor. Rhodry Malamutt had both. That's a large part of what made him Rhodry, and of why I decided my next dog would be a Malamute. Intact, i.e., unneutered, males are prone to wander in search of like-minded females. Do I want to add this to the list of temptations for my trail-riding dog? I do not. So the question isn't whether to neuter; the question is when. This is, I'm discovering, more challenging. Rather, finding the information one wants to make a reasonably informed decision is not easy. I've read several studies, and several more surveys of studies, dealing with spay/neutering, pediatric spay/neutering (of puppies eight weeks and younger), the benefits of spay/neutering, the hazards of spay/neutering, and the long-term risks of spay/neutering. I know much more than I did when I started, but I what I've learned isn't telling me what to do. For instance: Neutering increases the risk of certain kinds of cancers in male dogs. Two of these cancers are prostate and bone. Since Rhodry most likely had these, possibly with the former metastasizing to the latter, I sit up and take notice. Did neutering contribute to Rhodry's cancer? (I can't remember exactly how old Rhodry was when he was neutered. My recollection is eight or nine months. What I do remember is that he spent the night at the vet's because he took longer than usual to recover from the anesthesia.) Who knows? Rhodry was 13. The longer dogs (or humans) live, the greater the chance they'll develop cancer. Would he have developed cancer had he not been neutered? No way of knowing. The studies I read about mostly didn't ask the questions I wanted answers to, like what age were the dogs when cancer was diagnosed? A significant increase in diagnosed cancers at age four or six makes a bigger difference to me than an increase at ages over ten. And even though some of the increases were significant -- two or three times the risk sounds pretty dire -- in most cases the actual risk was low, often less than or just over one percent. Some of the studies suggest that spay/neutering increases aggressiveness. This is so counterintuitive that it took me aback. A closer look revealed the limitations of the studies: how to measure aggressiveness? how to measure increases in aggressiveness? how to control for the myriad other factors that can contribute to aggressiveness? The effect I knew least about is the one I'm thinking most about now: how neutering affects the physical development of the dog. It tends, say the studies, to increase legginess and height. Enough to make a significant difference to the appearance or activity of the dog? In most cases, no. The number of times that words like tend and chance and risk and perhaps come up in these studies is frustrating -- albeit reassuring, if you think about it, because it means the researchers aren't jumping to unwarranted conclusions. Some lay commentators aren't shy about making these untaken leaps, however -- which isn't surprising if you've paid attention to what the mass media habitually does with scientific studies, and what kibitzers and profiteers then do with the media-mangled results. Now that I'm paying particular attention to the frustrated impulse of my own mind to leap to a conclusion that the evidence doesn't warrant, I'm even less surprised. The human mind doesn't love a vacuum, especially when it has to make a decision. Once the decision is made and acted on, the sketchy facts, surmises, and hunches coalesce into a springboard that makes the conclusion look foregone, but don't fool yourself: most conclusions aren't foregone except in retrospect. In most cases, whatever we do works out OK, and if a different choice would have worked better, we'll never know. The miasma of sketchy facts, surmises, and hunches begins to seem like a scrying bowl, within which I see two images. Two dogs. Two dogs, both male, both neutered, who died of cancer in the prime of life: the Oliveiras' Ridge and the Tonnesens' Sydney. They're harder to dismiss than statistical possibilities. Did neutering contribute to the cancer? No way of knowing. If it did, there's no way of knowing what other factors contributed. What can I learn from their examples? Not much; maybe nothing. Mostly the chance that Travvy will get cancer seems less compelling than the possibility that run-amok hormones will lead him astray -- and the biggest threats to his well-being almost certainly have to do with horses and cars, both of which we encounter every day.
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