As we can never truly fully assess the amount that sexual hormones are involved in a behaviour, the total removal of a hormone can have a big knock-on affect. Therefore, Neutering pets can have a variable outcome or very limited outcome, depending on the behaviours involved with your pet. This could be from no affect, to a drastic deteriorating of the behavioural problem.
Its important as with any medical procedure that this is assessed on an individual level, not a one size fits all approach. This means that depending on the emotions involved in the expression of the behaviour, it could have a neutral, positive or detrimental effect if your neuter your pet. Depending on what emotions are involved it might be necessary to have behavioural support started before neutering to reduced possible negative affects on behaviour.
Often having your pet entire, can help behavioural plans. This can be due to increased confidence, meaning they are more willing to trial new behaviours for us, and thus change their routines and learnt behaviour in a quicker. However, sometimes this confidence could actually be worsening the behaviour change wanted, especially if looking to work with frustration control and calm behaviours. Thus, the diagnosis is important to determine the cause of behaviour, to decide the approach needed.
Just because your pet has a behavioural problem doesn’t mean we can’t neuter your pet later on, once support is in place. This means will help limit the amount the neutering will affect the behaviour a reduce any escalation of the behaviour. We can also look at other alternatives with the help of your veterinary practice, such as chemical neutering to trial before full neutering.
If you would like to neuter your pet, but unsure if it will worsen a behaviour, speak to your veterinary surgeon and/or book a consultation for us to assess the behaviour.
If you have just had your pet neutered and seen a worsening of a behavioural concern, contact us as soon as possible. This will enable us to start the behavioural support as soon as possible to help reduce the deterioration of the behaviour.
Lastly, being neutered, doesn’t affect the outcome of a behavioural modification, but it could reduce the speed of the wanted adaptations. Again, this is dependant on the emotions involved, but it could take longer to introduce confidence to change the behaviours. But this is not important if it takes longer that’s ok! What’s important is the outcome and goals can still be reached.
