Scared I'll regret neuter!
I have a nearly 3 year old male dog who's scheduled to be neutered in less than 2 days... But I'm terrified I'm making a bad choice and don't know if I should go through with it or not. Please share your experience with clients having more nervous dogs after adult neuter (or without change)?
My dog is generally pretty confident, but with a few exceptions...He is progressively more nervous of going to the vet after elbow dysplasia surgery (which thankfully went perfectly, otherwise), he's nervous of some weird surfaces, and he gets easily intimidated by dogs acting aggressively toward him. He's currently all flight, no fight.
I'm primarily wanting to get him neutered so that I can worry less about intact females, and because he started being obsessed with sniffing some neutered dogs' genitals around the age of 2 and it interferes with my ability to continue dog sitting with him or have him in places he otherwise really enjoys. I'm a dog trainer, so I'm generally around a lot of dogs in my life. I'm hoping neutering will make this sniffing obsession less intense and allow us to more easily work through it.
But, I REALLY love that my dog is generally confident and friendly. It was one of the most important things to me when searching for a dog this time around. But today he had a bad reaction to trazadone given for anxiety for his pre-surgical bloodwork and he growled at me when I tried to pet him. This has sent my brain into even more of a spiral than it was before, worrying that he will become more fearful or even worse, begin turning to "fight" instead of "flight" if a little dog gets barky walking past him or something.
Please give me all of your stories or thoughts on this! Of course, I'm someone people go to when their dog has issues, and don't necessarily know when a dog is getting neutered if it doesn't cause behavioral fallout. So, I may be way off base with this assumption that his personality or temperament will change that way.
Side note: I REALLY WISH chemical castration were an option, but I'm in the USA. If money were endless, I'd drive up to Canada and try that first.