Hi all,

I may well be adding a bitch to the household in the near future :-) I'd always planned to ship bitch or my entire boy off to my mum's during a season to keep stress to a minimum (we stay there often anyway, so not like going somewhere strange and scary). Anyway, I have no plans to breed from my boy although I don't want to neuter him because I do show him and may, possibly, change my mind about offering him at stud in the future....never say never and all that... So a breeder friend has just suggested chemical castration and it sounds quite sensible.

Has anyone shown a chemically castrated dog? Do their testicles shrink too much? Do other dogs react ok to them? I've tried showing my neutered boy and find that other 'stud' dogs are abnormally interested in him and it was very stressful for everyone :-( don't want chemical castration to cause that!

Thanks,

Clare

Shown 2 dogs after using Suprelorin, only had one judge penalise him but w did tuck his balls right up and the judge couldn't find them, only the once but always been fine. No adverse reaction from other dogs either. I'd still be careful regarding them on it and in season birches as accidents can still happen.
How many males do you have and do you have provision to split them up in case they take ymbridge with each other during certain times when having a bitch..

What do you mean by chemical castration?

Tardak is fine in my experience started him on it before a season was due and showed no problems.

Superlorin on the other hand was a disaster and emotionally too traumatic for my male, he became agrophobic to the point of digging at doors as soon as he'd been to the toilet to get back into his cage!  His boys shrunk far too much for showing and it took 2 1/2 yrs for them to grow back and show any activity in the sperm area, he never sired any pups again.

Thanks! Did their testicles shrink severely? I have 2 males - one neutered, one entire. I definitely wouldn't leave a bitch with either of them when in season, but I thought this might be an option to allow them to stay together relatively harmoniously when I'm in. I could separate males temporarily if it became a problem, I wasn't expecting it to be since one is neutered but I suppose there are no guarantees...  

Thanks for sharing your experience. I've only just started looking into it, so wasn't sure about which kind to go for.

I think suprelorin is the more 'modern' one? Do know if it can be removed if things go wrong?

I would always go with Suprelorin over Tardak - they work in totally different ways and Suprelorin very very closely mimics what would happen if you actually neutered the dog. Tardak doesn't.

You CANNOT remove suprelorin after the first couple of days, and it won't kick in for a week or two. How much testicles shrink by does vary from dog to dog - my Tibbie boy still had quite obvious balls but definitely a lot smaller than they had been. Having erm, not felt anyone elses Tibbies balls though I can't say if they were markedly smaller than normal!

I too would go for Suprelorin above Tardak any time, but I would not use it on a dog I wanted to show. It takes a while for the testicles to shrink but they can shrink a LOT. My Malinois's testicles shrunk to about a quarter of their normal size. Also it can affect the coat where the implant is done. I didn't actually realise until last week that my dog's coat has never grown back properly where he had the implant -there is long fur above it that covers it, but lift it and the fur is very, very short beneath so it's like a bald patch there which is darker in colour. He had his implant January 2011 and was castrated June 2011.