Some thoughts on neutering.

You may be thinking "oh God is this a deliberately controversial thread to start a huge forum bust-up?"

Nah.

I was just walking Finn the other day, and I had a thought. 
Finn walks after Milo, because Milo is impatient and will sulk and sulk if he is made to wait a bit for his walk. So I had just been out with Milo. Now, I love the black lump of grump, but he is at least mildly stressful to walk. Being lead-reactive, he makes it so that you have to always be ready to react if someone were to come around the corner. He jumps at balloons that weren't there the day before, he lunges after squirrels; he's basically a lovable maniac! 

So I was walking Finn after having walked Milo, and I looked down at him and he was walking along looking up at me, grinning, and I suddenly thought: "Jesus, what happened?" When I moved here, Finn was 1.5 years old and he was a nightmare! I loved him, but oh God he chewed stuff, stole food, ripped blankets, weed in the house, couldn't get through a night without needing to go outside etc. etc. If Finn was in the room, the attention was on him for whatever reason. At that time his recall was fine, but as he reached 3 years he started to run off after scents and eventually had to be permanently kept on lead. As he got older, the indoor issues were ironed out but the recall was a real problem, and he became increasingly obsessed with female dogs and scents in general. We started to have serious doubts about keeping him intact because we wondered if neutering him may allow him to have a better life (as in, if he could go off lead.) This went on for months, it was a very difficult period with Finn because he pulled on the lead but couldn't go off, so he became a chore to walk rather than a pleasure. I was starting to feel a bit like I was at the end of my tether with him. 

We don't want to neuter him for many reasons. There is a lot of evidence of joint issues related to neutering early, and so we knew we wouldn't neuter him before a certain age. But the fact that some people have found neutering made their dog more anxious was the main issue, because Finn was already a nervous wreck since his fireworks incident, so really we didn't want to neuter him at all. 

So for a long long time we felt stuck with a slightly crazy dog and no way of improving his behaviour. We did put a lot of effort into training but at times it felt pointless and too difficult! 

So imagine my surprise when, looking down the other day at a 5 year old little red monkey walking calmly on lead, I found we now have a balanced, well rounded and relatively calm Setter who is just generally a GOOD boy! The comparison between walking Milo (sorry Milo!) and Finn makes it very noticeable. We have for a few months been letting Finn off too, and he comes back! He actually listens to us now, and he loves treats which he didn't really before. His recall is snappy quick, he can do clever things like sit/down from a distance, he can do lovely 'waits' and 'stays,' he doesn't pull and he will even (9 times out of 10) come away from another dog. Obviously all this happened gradually and not suddenly, but it does seem we have broken through that 'terrible teens' period and have come out the other side with sanity intact  

The way I understand it is that dogs, like us, have a period where they are most fertile and strongest (and therefore most likely to win fights.) Once they get past the age where their body is telling them to hunt/hump everything they may begin to calm down, as they are after all social animals who rely on being able to get along with others in order to survive. It would seem that Finn has reached his "time to retire" age! 

As I said, we put a lot of effort into him and certainly never gave up even if we felt like it at times! One real breakthrough for me was figuring out how to deal with Milo and having realised what positivity but most importantly staying calm can achieve. That mantra applied to Finn did seem to make a noticeable difference. 

He is a lot more confident in general too. Apart from guns and fireworks, he doesn't get scared by noises any more. He also now lets people stroke his head which he didn't when he was younger

I wanted to write this for anyone else who has had or will have a similar situation where they doubt their conviction not to neuter because of their dog's behaviour. It DOES get better! Finn has proved that, and more than made up for being a stinker teenager. He is the cuddliest, friendliest, cheekiest, sweetest boy now, balls and all!