A vet friend of mine recently attempted to castrate a Buck who was 8 years old; he died in three days in pain. His witty reasoning was to eat buck meat without any buck odor! He did not castrate him early, because he used him as a stud buck for several years. Then the buck died in agony after all his service! This is how humane people can be, including industry sponsored vets.

If we look at Old Spanish cattle history, Spanish had no neutering practices and they bred the Long Horn that formed the basis of American cattle industry for about 100 years. No castration was practiced on the black fighting Bulls and they were the basis of the Long Horn Cattle. Steers exhibit a different horn growth compared to Bulls. J.F. Dobie, in his book the Longhorns noted “Bull horns were generally thick and stubby, though some grew rather long, and many were very sharp. Stag males castrated late in life, develop horns more like those of a bull than those of a steer.” Neutering pets is another modern practice like cattle or dog shows or pedigree keeping.

Both growing an ASD to its full potential and neutering it at the same time are not possible. Should neutering happen before the dog is 9 months old or before it starts marking its territory by raising his leg he will end up with an incomplete growth. The ASDs enlarge their bulk after about 9 months old and that is when their heads become larger and this process continues all the way up to 20 months. The humane approach would be to shoot the dog that needs to be neutered. For some the process of cutting that is neutering must be required to make the dog complete! The alternative humane approach is neutering the dog when it is about a week old, like a castrated child, when it bleeds less and feels less pain.

Neutering a dog when it is 24 months old would give its owner a larger dog only. However the neutered dogs cannot secrete the same hormones that the intact ones can. Therefore they cannot excel at their protective duties. The trauma that the dogs go through is not humane (I have a different understanding of being humane), considering the age of the dog.

Castration specialists do not consider the effect of the hormones on the mental and physical health of the dog into consideration. All the hormones produced by the brain have purposes. They are regulators, triggers and even neutralizers.

Some ASD owners advocate neutering the dogs so that they would not wander for mating purposes. ASDs are roamers and the negative aspect of roaming is offset by their territoriality. Roaming is also an extending patrolling. An ASD whose instinct has not been removed via surgery will evaluate its territory differently than the neutered one. For such a dog, the distance it can see is its territory. Today roaming may not be acceptable for farm conditions, but then a mastiff and a Ridgeback or a GSD could do the same job. Why do we need an ASD? I know roamer dogs that come back with foxes and wolves and wild boar piglets. On the other hand I know a female ASD in Turkey that the shepherd initially thought was a cowardly dog, but then he realized that she loves sheep. If she were neutered when she was very young, the shepherd could not possibly know how good a shepherd dog she was. She could not have reached the stage of being selected as a good breeding dog.  She was a white dog and it was impossible to tell that there was a dog in the flock. She was very quiet. She would just stick her head among the sheep and watch. Some males do the same thing. They are never castrated. Let’s keep in mind that what an ASD means, not what it is that we envision. It is now time to admit that “neuter” is a safe, soft and dishonest word which we exchange for “castration”.

Above is a clue for cattle ranchers in the USA who are concerned about wolf attacks on the cattle. Cattle protection requires roaming. People discussed this before and concluded that ASDs are not good for cattle protection, however there are Turkish cattle dogs that protect cattle that I have seen in Kayseri in central Anatolia and Rize in northwest Anatolia. Most Turkish dogs roam because of the historical and traditional animal husbandry in Anatolia.  

The question that needs to be posed to the pro-castration folks is: What makes the dog roam or what goes on in the mind of the dog that makes it roam?”

I have different approaches of reasoning against the castration, but I also believe that the owner should make the final decision and should not be judged or prosecuted by the clubs or animal rights hobbyists.

The animal rightists as a political power needs to be approached carefully when castration in discussed. I met a few of them. According to them “it is OK to crop the tail of a hunting dog, but it is not OK to crop a tail of a GSD or crop the ears of an ASD, yet the dewclaws must go! Castration is healthy. It is about animal welfare. It is OK to make double holes on the both ears of a cow to tag her, but it is not OK shoot a fox, and again it is acceptable to kill badgers suspected having TB”. If it exists, I cannot follow their divisive logic. People can be so hypocritical. They respect more the rights of a dog, but they do not respect the animals that they eat. The same mentality secretes beliefs like “A horse is a noble animal, but a cow is dumb.” I can extend this infected mentality right into the politics but it is not necessary. I have visited a cattle market and watched cattle cry with large tears in their eyes as their horns are cut of with saws as their faces covered with blood. Yet a group of people in the USA is putting all their efforts into stopping Greyhound races!

There is a very simple description of a neutralized animal: testicle-less, ovum-less animal. But it is not the same with ear-less or dew-claw-less, because it is about a future without any reproductive possibility. 

This is not about animal rights. It is about communistic repression. A dog without ears can still pass its genes, but it is not possible without the reproductive organs. Those two surgeries cannot be compared.

The vets might say “well it is good for the animal’s health, if it is not going to be bred”. What if he or she needs to be bred late in their lives? I know a few bitches that they have not been bred until they were 6 years olds and then they gave birth to healthy puppies from promising males. Apart from that I really believe that we need to ask another question which is “what happens when we castrate?” Take at a look at the bull’s case; it becomes more docile, when it becomes a steer/bullock. Bulls are not suitable for draft purposes but only oxen. A horse is converted into a gelding because the rider needs a calmer and more manageable horse. It is the same with the dogs. Docility is the opposite of aggression and protection requires aggression without violence. If one does not need protection then he does not need a protection dog like ASD. Yet some recent research about the behavior change in dogs after the surgery found that castrated dogs could become more aggressive than their intact siblings. This kind of aggression is one that is caused by the lack of balancing hormones that they are supposed to be part of the general mechanism of the dog. The appointed experts are like children who like to fix things even when they are not broken. No wonder they end up with comics instead of real characters. Striping the organs and qualities of animals and plants in order to optimize or rather maximize their production is simply modern Frankesteinism. I wonder why modern Frankesteins build new domestic life forms by combining various organic parts of animals and plants. Perhaps they work on this subject in cooperation with GM voodooists.

Again, agreeing with the castration practice in general is one thing; managing and oppressing the owner of the animal is another. The owner should have the final word about what part of the animal needs to be chopped off, not the institutions of technocracy or irresponsible but authorized, power hungry midgets of bureaucracy.  I find it hard to listen to the so-called “animal lovers” when they repeat the memorized slogans about animal welfare. The impression they make is if you are not like them, then you must not be an animal lover. Does it sound familiar to you? “He that is not with me is against me”. This dilemma is so false that it can only generate fallacy.

Sep 03, 2006  Previously appeared in Choban Chatter in Spring 2008

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DWINDLING FLOCKSS and VANISHING COBAN KOPEGI