# Why would my recently neutered dog suddenly become dog aggressive?



## Germanshepherdlova

My dog has always got along well with other dogs. While out on a walk, if another dog would bark at him, he would just ignore them. He would greet other dogs nicely, but all that has changed since he got neutered a month ago. Now while out on a walk he barks at other dogs. He tried to charge at a bull dog the other day! This is so unlike him- I am baffled by this, as I was always told that after being neutered a dog would be less aggressive. This makes no sense to me, has anyone heard of this happening before?


----------



## lisgje

No, but he has just been through a major surgery and may need time to recover a bit more. He may feel not up to snuff and is reacting. Just a thought. I would give him some more time recover mentally from the surgery, make sure the area around the stiches is completely healed and slowly reintroduce him to dogs that he is familiar with. Surgery is always traumatic and he may need some more down time with you. it probably would not hurt to have the vet check him over and make sure all is healing well. Also, how old is your dog, could be an age issue if he is still a young dog, ie. under a year old.


----------



## Jax08

He was neutered a month ago? My first thought was a reaction to the anestetic but that would be to long ago. It does take a while for the hormones to leave their body. He may be reacting to an "imbalance" of hormones? He also might just be going through a stage. The important part is to deal with it and fix his reactions.

Step up the NILIF and start working on treating him when he's not reacting. There are several threads on dog aggression that you'll find helpful. Just do a search for them.


----------



## PupperLove

I have heard of this happening. I don't have any sites to link to you, but when reading about the pros/cons of neutering I have certainly read more than once that some dogs can actually become more agressive.


----------



## Germanshepherdlova

He is two years old. Hormonal imbalance could definitely be causing this. Also, true is that maybe he does need more time to heal from the traumatic experience that he had. He had a bad reaction to the neutering, and so two weeks ago, he had to undergo a scrotal ablation. His scrotum had swelled to the size of a grape fruit two weeks after the neutering. So he actually underwent 2 surgeries in a months time. Could he be experiencing affects from the anesthetic 2 weeks later?


----------



## Zoeys mom

You took away his love muffins and quickly zapped him of some very important hormones....he's adjusting but it can turn into a learned behavior so jump on making some changes now. Hormones help regulate many of our bodily functions especially our emotions...we actually need them but can adjust


----------



## gsdraven

Germanshepherdlova said:


> This makes no sense to me, has anyone heard of this happening before?


Yes. I had a foster that was okay with other dogs before he was neutered. He tested fine with other dogs during eval and met Raven with no problem at all. Shortly after he was neutered, he was now dog aggressive. He would lunge and try to bite dogs that got within 2 feet of him. He is still dog aggressive and is in a home that understands this and can handle it. He was okay with dogs as long as they didn't get in his space.

I know this sounds weird but I used an animal communicator to ask him why he was suddenly aggressive and he said that he hadn't felt well since the surgery and didn't want any other dogs near him but he was ok with Raven still. I did as much as I could training wise and got him some Reiki before being adopted.

Find a good trainer that understands aggression and can help you with him without using harsh corrections.


----------



## Mrs.K

happened to my bitch too...


----------



## Germanshepherdlova

My dog also still gets along with my other dog, it is other dogs outside of the "pack" that he is aggressive towards. He is also doing another strange thing since he was neutered, he is ok with my 2 cats while he is inside the house, but when we are outside in the yard, and he see's one of our cats sitting inside the house on the window ledge, he barks viciously and runs over to the window, like if he wants to attack them! So much for, "neutering your dog will decrease aggression." How about that, and from your answers I see that he is not the first that this happened to. I researched the pros and cons of neutering before Brutus had the surgery and it said that it would be very rare for a dog to become more aggressive after being neutered, they also said that complications arising from the neutering are rare, and I even had him neutered through laser surgery, which was supposed to practically eliminate the slight chance of bad swelling. I guess we were just the unlucky ones in all this.


----------



## Castlemaid

Zoeys mom said:


> You took away his love muffins


Okay, I think I'm going to puke . . . :rolleyes2:


----------



## DJEtzel

Same thing happened to my dog after his neuter. He is now much more dominant with younger male dogs. He's not reactive, but if he's playing with one at the park, he sets himself up for a dog fight with certain dogs by being dominant. So I keep a list of the younger male dogs he doesn't really care for and if they're there at the same time I just keep Frag by me, or only allow a quick sniff, and they we go our seperate ways- they aren't just allowed to play because it'd get bad.

Point is, he was the biggest baby and ran away from any confronation or fight before he was neutered at 1.5yrs, now that he's neutered he's more apt to stand his ground. I dunno why, but since I hated neutering him it kind of upsets me anyhow.


----------



## JeanKBBMMMAAN

It's an age/maturity/alpha peaking thing. Why people who have dogs like Malamutes can have them together while the dog is younger, but when they hit a certain age, they can become same sex dog aggressive.


----------



## William Markham

*It happened to us too*

My dog was neutered about 10 days ago, and we have been going to the park for off-leash runs the last 4 days, just was we did before he was neutered. Before he was neutered, he was aggressive towards another dog only once -- a dog who came into our home and tried to eat food on the counter. He was never aggressive but only playful towards other dogs, but he would ignore my come to commands to the point where it was a problem. Since he was neutered he has become OBVIOUSLY MORE AGGRESSIVE. In four days he has attacked or picked on four different dogs. There has been no biting, but today was the worst: He had a female dog by the throat and would not let go until two of us pulled him off!  He never did this before. I need to establish more leadership and train him much, much better, but this has happened to us too, and I am very, very concerned. He is a Lab, 8 months old. What happened to the other fellow's dog who became more aggressive?


----------



## msvette2u

At 10 days he should just be getting off taking it easy, perhaps even crate rest, not running in the park since 6 days post neuter.
At 8mos. of age a lot of change is going on anyway, physically and psychologically, neuter or not.
Remember your dog (in a fight) is only 1/2 the equation. The other dog is the other half.


----------



## Lucy Dog

William Markham said:


> My dog was neutered about 10 days ago, and we have been going to the park for off-leash runs the last 4 days, just was we did before he was neutered. Before he was neutered, he was aggressive towards another dog only once -- a dog who came into our home and tried to eat food on the counter. He was never aggressive but only playful towards other dogs, but he would ignore my come to commands to the point where it was a problem. Since he was neutered he has become OBVIOUSLY MORE AGGRESSIVE. In four days he has attacked or picked on four different dogs. There has been no biting, but today was the worst: He had a female dog by the throat and would not let go until two of us pulled him off!  He never did this before. I need to establish more leadership and train him much, much better, but this has happened to us too, and I am very, very concerned. He is a Lab, 8 months old. What happened to the other fellow's dog who became more aggressive?


Start a new thread. You'll get more responses to your specific questions.


----------



## pfitzpa1

gsdraven said:


> I know this sounds weird but I used an animal communicator to ask him why he was suddenly aggressive and he said ......


Not to derail the OT but yes, It does a little, can you explain what is an animal communicator and what the process is?


----------



## William Markham

The same thing has happened to my 8 and 1/2 month old Lab puppy. Today he again attacked a weaker female dog in the park. He doesn't bite, but he puts them down, and it looks bad. I put him on the leash, and he, his sister (who was spayed at the same time) and I are back home. He seemed much better the past 3 days, but today he did it again -- 5 times in about 8 days (two fights, and three aggressive confrontations that I had to stop). What do I do???


----------



## chelle

William Markham said:


> The same thing has happened to my 8 and 1/2 month old Lab puppy. Today he again attacked a weaker female dog in the park. He doesn't bite, but he puts them down, and it looks bad. I put him on the leash, and he, his sister (who was spayed at the same time) and I are back home. He seemed much better the past 3 days, but today he did it again -- 5 times in about 8 days (two fights, and three aggressive confrontations that I had to stop). What do I do???


As was suggested, you should start another post.

However, you immediately need to quit putting him in the position to be able to attack.

Don't be the jerk at the dog park that everyone dislikes.

5 times in 8 days? That's four times too many.


----------



## bocron

Our most common call for training/aggression issues is for neutered male dogs. Most of the time, they ask the vet first and the advice they get is to neuter the dog. Generally this will have almost no real effect on the issue. They wait about 6 months to see if it changes anything and then start calling trainers. Of course the vet says that it must be a training problem now (once they can't fix it with a snip, sometimes they will try Prozac or something LOL).
A 2yo male dog is just becoming himself. At that age we tell most people that they will get the full deal when the dog is around 3yo. Not that he will turn into a big nightmare or something, just that what they are dealing with is a maturing dog. 
Remove the hormones at this point and you will probably get some new behaviors.


----------



## William Markham

chelle said:


> As was suggested, you should start another post.
> 
> However, you immediately need to quit putting him in the position to be able to attack.
> 
> Don't be the jerk at the dog park that everyone dislikes.
> 
> 5 times in 8 days? That's four times too many.


He does not bite (bite inhibition is good), but he has become aggressive to other dogs, and I am very very concerned for all three of us. Because he does not bite, I kept hoping to nip the problem at the outset. I have a special trainger who deals with behavioral problems coming to our home today at 3:30 p.m. He is a good boy. I don't understand what could have happened during his neutering or otherwise, but I see from other posts on the internet that we are not the first ones to whom this has happened. I have taken him and his sister to the beach EVERY MORNING since they were four months old and to the beach or the park EVERY AFTERNOON, rain or shine. It will be very hard to have them only on leash and harder still to separate them. This is really hard, but I am trying to be responsible to everyone concerned. Ian Dunbar says that if your male adolescent picks fights but does not bite, he is likely insecure and needs training and more socialization. But he really can be totally aggressive, unprovoked, and he wasn't before his surgery. It happened the first day after he got to return to the park after his surgery. This is a major crisis for all of us because I want him and his sister to have healthy, wonderful lives, and I do not want anything bad to happen to anyone else or to him. He needs me right now, and I will do what I can for him.


----------



## msvette2u

Quite possibly you answered your own question. He's growing up and likely would have been dog aggressive, neutered or not.


----------



## Draugr

Most people have their dogs neutered around the time their adult temperaments are beginning to settle in. I really doubt that REMOVING testosterone would _increase_ aggression. There's a correlation between neutering and increased FEAR aggression but I am honestly beginning to wonder if that's not some form of statistical bias coming into play. From what I know of testosterone's effects on behavior it doesn't make much sense, that a dog would become more aggressive with less testosterone.

Any immediate increase in aggression I would be more likely to attribute to pain from a healing surgical incision. I know I am a lot more cranky than usual if I am in pain (though I've never been neutered before so I can't say for sure :tongue: ).


----------

