I don’t know how long to wait and need some energy changes before he yanks one of our arms off or out of socket. Anybody have good results from neutering after 1 year old?

Try not to beat yourself up over having had your dog castrated. The issue of potential long-term effects on health appears to be very complex with outcomes seemingly differing between breeds and being influenced by the age of neutering. For example, age of neutering was *not* considered in the 2013 study that was based on a data for 40,000 dogs. It is also important to differentiate between correlation and evidenced causality. If you are interested, check out this link to a 2014 article that compares the long-term health effects of neutering on Golden Retrievers and Labrador Retrievers: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4096726/

One thing to bear in mind is that neutering reduces a dog’s metabolic energy requirement, therefore quite a few dogs gain weight following their neuter. Your vet may have given you a rule of thumb figure by which to reduce your dog’s daily ration. In my opinion it is a good idea to observe your dog’s body condition closely anyway and even more closely in the months following his neuter (particularly if he is at an age at which he may still need more energy to grow or fill out). If you make a point of checking his body condition weekly, it is easy to adjust his ration slightly downwards or upwards as needed.

Not sounding nasty but by letting him drag you to the park and then you letting him off the lead your actually praising him for bad behaviour. I had same problem with my now 15 month old lab constantly pulling so now with a lot of further training and a halti he now walks brilliantly. His recall is still ridiculous so I’m still training him on a lunge lead until I’m confident he won’t run off. I don’t want to castrate him as his pedigree is top notch so would like to carry the line on. Hope this helps a little

Hi Parm, I can’t add a great deal to what is in the article. You might want to read this one too though:https://www.thelabradorsite.com/should-i-have-my-labrador-neutered-the-latest-evidence/ You may find the marking ‘every bush’ is reduced with castration, but the ‘not listening’ is a training issue. Training a rescue dog to ‘come’ can be quite a big project depending on his history, but not responding to your recall command has nothing to do with testosterone, so castration won’t help with that. Here is some help with the running off Why Dogs Run away and How To Stop them

Just adopted from a local shelter the sweetest male black Lab ever. He’s about 4 yrs old was found abandoned/lost in a remote area, so don’t know anything about his past history. He’s all there downstairs but have an appointment with a vet for the procedure. Having a lot of second thoughts about it. He is a constant marker of every bush or post in sight. Worried to let him off his leash because on the couple of occasions I have he loves to run and he runs far and fast and won’t listen then. It’s obviously dangerous around where I live because of regular traffic in the area so need to avoid that at all costs. The workers at the SPCA kept telling me he’s aggressive and what not, haven’t seen that side of him yet but have been very wary of him around other dogs. Mainly because he gets so excited to meet all humans and animals alike. Just really concerned to think he’s not going to be producing testosterone anymore and what kind of long term health effects that might derive from this decision. I know if I ask him he’s probably going to say he wants to keep them, but I figure I have to decide. Some advice would be great.