We got our rescue puppy through a reputable organization when he was too young to be neutered. He wasn’t neutered until he was almost a year old, due to health problems on his part. It may say something about his owners having such a solid citizen. Chances are his owners need to be a little more informed, but there is a chance the situation isn’t as negligent as it appears.
This is exactly what I was thinking. I have my own old dog waiting til I’m ok thing going on too.
I think your old pal knows this one will take good care of you until they see you again. :sad smile:
Good luck with him. You’ve been sent this guy for a reason. Embrace it.
[QUOTE=JCS;6086726]
Update! His name is Baxter, and his people are coming to pick him up at 7 tonight. He’s been missing for over a week! I’m sad that we don’t get to keep him, but happy that we were able to get him warm and fed for the day and help him find his way home.[/QUOTE]
I’m glad you were able to make his people happy by finding him but sad you don’t get to keep him - it was such a good story, him showing up like that. Hope they get him fixed!
Yay! A happy ending, either way. Sounds like Baxter found a guardian angel in you and your family.
Bacardi1- really? Perhaps he’s a valuable show dog? A working hunting dog? Dogs get lost for legitimate reasons, and not all intact dogs are owned by idiots. While I would always neuter/spay my dogs, many people don’t. No need to go ballistic.
I agree with Calvincrowe. And I have a friend who had his dog neutered, and had neuticals (I hope that’s the spelling) implanted, and no I don’t know why he did that. And another person actually had a doggy vasectomy so he looks intact, but shoots blanks (don’t know why anyone would do that either). When I adopted my last boy (he was 3 or 4 years old but it was a guess) he wasn’t neutered, and I couldn’t get it done for several weeks so the vet could do one end, and the vet tech could do a dental cleaning (that he really needed) on the other, and so I really made sure he couldn’t escape.
Plus there was a local vet who didn’t like to do neuters-apparently she thought it was unnatural (guess what vet I avoided?) or something like that.
There are people who don’t neuter or spay for a variety of reasons, and maybe the dog is scheduled for that anyway. I have always spay/neutered my animals, but I know some people don’t, and as long as their animal stays secure and they are responsible then it’s not my problem. And who knows how the animal got loose, and I bet it doesn’t happen again.
JCS-If you really like the dog, then tell the owners that if circumstances change that you would take him. Especially in the economic times we live in a backup home can become necessary, and it would be nice to know if something happened that the dog could have a home with you. Hopefully things will never come to that, but sometimes it does.
“What sad, sad uninformed negligent owners.”
Perhaps we should not be so judgmental until we have more information.
This dog was beautifully behaved, housebroken, polite, apparently so well socialized and biddable that the OP instantly wanted to keep him, no mention of him being thin or parasitized…had a collar and broken lead so we do not know the circumstances under which he escaped.
If you are basing your condemnation of his owners upon his being intact…well if we were in Scandanavia, if he were neutered, you might be questioning the ethics of his owners. ( There is no dog overpopulation in Scandinavia, yet spaying and neutering is done only if medically necessary, as with humans). There is now increasing information that neutering a dog, especially at only a year or two of age, might actually be detrimental to his health, in terms of increased risk of osteosarcoma and hypothyroidism. Surely he would not be rampantly siring litters in the week he has been missing, unless the bitches’ owners have been so irresponsible as to allow them to be at large…and it sounds like his genes are not the worst to be perpetuated.
I just think we should not be so quick to judge with so little information.
[QUOTE=Bacardi1;6086761]
<snip> What sad, sad uninformed negligent owners.[/QUOTE]
There are both benefits & deficits to neutering animals - only in America is pediatric neutering overwhelmingly popular …
Long-Term Health Risks and Benefits Associated with Spay / Neuter in Dogs
(this paper was presented at a peer seminar, it was not part of any anti-speuter agenda - I mention this as there is often confusion about the intent of the article)
[QUOTE=alto;6087214]
There are both benefits & deficits to neutering animals - only in America is pediatric neutering overwhelmingly popular …
Long-Term Health Risks and Benefits Associated with Spay / Neuter in Dogs
(this paper was presented at a peer seminar, it was not part of any anti-speuter agenda - I mention this as there is often confusion about the intent of the article)[/QUOTE]
I wonder if some of these higher cancer risks have as much to do with the inbreeding of purebred dogs and the fact that dogs in general live longer than they did before spay/neuter became “common”. When I was a kid a 10 year old dog was surely about to keel over any minute.
At any rate it is odd that I have had several dogs die from hemangiosarcoma and osteosarcomas but as they were all rescues ALL of them were spayed or neutered later like from 2-5 years. the ones with early spay/neuter have lived forever (well 16-19 years) with only arthritis and 2 cases of hyperthyroidism (common in cats anyway). Just wondering…
[QUOTE=summerhorse;6089411]
I wonder if some of these higher cancer risks have as much to do with the inbreeding of purebred dogs and the fact that dogs in general live longer than they did before spay/neuter became “common”. When I was a kid a 10 year old dog was surely about to keel over any minute.
At any rate it is odd that I have had several dogs die from hemangiosarcoma and osteosarcomas but as they were all rescues ALL of them were spayed or neutered later like from 2-5 years. the ones with early spay/neuter have lived forever (well 16-19 years) with only arthritis and 2 cases of hyperthyroidism (common in cats anyway). Just wondering…[/QUOTE]
The higher rates of testicular and mammarian cancer are due to nutrition (what we had been feeding the animals) not because spaying and neutering has any effect on that. That is a myth that the veterinary community claims they have to use to get people to neuter and spay. Complete nonsense. Otherwise, all of use would have ovarian or testicular cancers. Silly stuff that people believe, one among many millions of silly things.
Look at all the poor obese looking dogs with all of these fat tumors on them who can hardly move around as a result of arthritis and all of the dogs with blown out knees. Some of it due to poor breeding, the majority due to poor nutrition and lack of exercise.
To get back ON TOPIC (ahem), OP, I am so glad you found his owners. I am heartsick about poor Andy the Corgi who is still lost in Connecticut, and was apparently “picked up” by someone in a car, who has made NO attempt to find his owner. She has been on television, posters are plastered everywhere in Connecticut practically, all police stations, vets and animal shelters have been notified, and she’s taken out ads in every newspaper. Yet, whoever picked him up is not contacting her. It breaks my heart.
You did a good thing!
