When I was a kid, people generally spayed their bitches to keep them from having unwanted puppies. Male dogs were usually left intact unless they had behavioral or health problems. Nowadays, it is considered politically incorrect to keep your dogs sexually intact. Mandatory spay/neuter laws actually make it illegal to keep intact dogs. There is a growing body of research that shows that desexing a dog is not a benign procedure; there are side effects, some of them serious. Messing with the endocrine system will almost always have some effect on the body, just ask any woman who has taken birth control pills or undergone a hysterectomy. In dogs there are many side effects associated with spaying or neutering a dog; here is a very good paper on the risks and benefits of the procedure. I encourage you to read it if you have dogs.

This is Lolly. He is an intact male Saluki. He’s still got all his bits, as you can see. We have no plans to breed Lolly, he has some conformational faults that cause him to be fairly clumsy on turns, though he is fast on a straightaway. Even though he will not be bred, he’s still going to keep his balls. Generally a healthy breed, Salukis are subject to several health issues, including hemangiosarcoma, a type of highly malignant cancer. Hemangiosarcoma in Salukis often occurs in the heart. According to one study, neutered dogs have 1.6 times the risk of developing cardiac hemangiosarcoma than unneutered dogs. We would like very much for Lolly to stay healthy and not develop cancer, so he is keeping his bits, thank you very much.

Under a mandatory desexing law, we would have to pay a fee, sometimes quite large (the proposed law for Texas has a $300 fee, which Lolly would not quality for since he is not a show dog), in order to keep Lolly intact. That’s right, $300 a year to do one small thing that may help lower the risk of Lolly developing cancer. Lolly does not run loose, terrorizing the neighborhood, he doesn’t randomly impregnant errant bitches right and left, and he is not aggressive towards other animals or people. He is a good boy who just wants to keep his testicles to help him, in however small a way, to stay healthy and live a long life digging in the dirt and running after rabbits.

Mandatory desexing laws do not help prevent pets from dying in shelters. Invariably they result in either greater kill rates or slower reduction of kill rates, lower licensing compliance, and increased animal control costs. Whether to spay or neuter a dog is a decision best left to the owner of the dog, the one responsible for it’s health and well-being. There are legitimate reasons to keep an dog intact, beyond breeding and showing that dog. I will decide when, or if, my dogs are spayed or neutered. Not the state. The government doesn’t know my dogs, their breeds and related health issues, and isn’t responsible for their well-being. I am. Taking that decision out of my hands is equal to telling me how to vaccinate them or what to feed them, or myself, for that matter. If the state is supposed to stay out of my bedroom, they can stay the hell out of my dog yard as well.