Rheinhart Kennels - Page 2

We happen to have a female that will be turning 12 yrs old in April, she is the product of a

German import that had a low sperm count, her litters were between 7-13 pups, she is still

intact and just went through her heat cycle without being mated, she looks great you would not 

know she's turning 12.

We have now put a clause in our puppy contract, if you spay or neuter your pup before the age of two 

years then the three year health guarantee is null and void.

We are not asking people to breed their dogs but are asking to wait for the pup to be fully

grown before being spayed or neutered.

If you are selling an intact male that just means you are getting a whole dog, even if his sperm 

count is low at least he still has his hormones protecting him from torn ligaments and weird 

auto-immune diseases 

I completely agree with you mirasmom. Thats a great clause in your contract!

So, mirasmom, if a female pup that's purchased from you were to develop pyometra on her second estrus, and the vet recommended spaying her at that time since she was not intended for breeding and it's safer and more reliable cure for the condition, your buyer will have to decide between the gold standard-of-practice medical recommendation to treat the ailment or voiding the health warranty you gave them when they purchased the pup?

Or the buyer of a male pup with one or more retained testes whose pup presents at the vet as an emergency and is found to be suffering as a result of torsion of the retained gonad[s] when he's under two years of age, does that person also have to choose between sound medical advice to remove the retained organs and thus eliminate the condition, since the dog was not going to be used for breeding anyway, or void the warranty that was part of the purchase agreement for the pup?

Do situations like this happen frequently? Of course not...but I do hope that you at least include an exception for those few instances when a health issues that unequivocably threatens the animal's IMMEDIATE well-being arise and the owner sensibly authorizes the vet to perform the necessary surgical intervention, so your buyers aren't faced with having to make such decisions.

I'm no fan of early spay/neuter, but it doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that discouraging the general public from having the procedures done before the animals are two years of age is in part the reason why so many lovely but unintentionally created mixed-breed puppies show up at the shelters or on Craig's list every year, and why so many still lovely but still unintentionally-created mixed-breed adult dogs are or, if they're lucky, sit warehoused in no-kill shelters waiting for someone to chose them instead of the cute mixed breed puppies in the nursery room of those facilities, or are euthanized when the high-volume shelters run out of room. It also impacts how many lovely, PUREBRED young adult dogs are surrendered to rescues or shelters---many of them well-bred and from good breeders--because the people who bought those dogs both work full-time jobs and have to run the kids to soccer practice after work and don't have enough time to spend with the dog to really get them exercised and work with them on basic behavior. It impacts these dogs because the dog day-care facilities, by and large, do not allow intact dogs of any age to enroll in their sessions. So instead of the dog being able to go to the day-care facility every day while the parents are at work, and spending those 8 hours playing, being taught pet dog manners and acceptable pet dog behaviors, the dog is left at home in its crate, or relegated to an outdoor kennel, for that time period. Then, when the dog's pent-up energy and hormone-fueled behaviors present too much of a problem for the adults in the household to cope with, or the dog that's stashed out in the kennel every day is barking at every leaf that the wind blows by or figures out how to escape the kennel and starts roaming the neighborhood, and the animal control complaints start coming in.... Well, THEN, that lovely, well-bred INTACT young adult dog gets turned over to the local no-kill shelter, or the nearest breed rescue group that has room for another dog, and waits for a new home AFTER they've been spayed or neutered.

Yes, surgical sterilization prior to the dog's physical maturity CAN lead to serious, life-shortening issues in the dog's later years, but in the hands of the average pet owner, waiting until the dog is a full two years of age CAN lead to a serious, life-ENDING issue far sooner than that.

Instead of campaigning AGAINST early sterilization, we should be campaigning FOR the procedures that spare the hormone-producing organs while still preventing the animal from reproducing.

Of course, if everyone who bought a puppy actually KEPT that puppy for it's entire natural lifetime, there might be fewer homes with room for next litters, hmm?

I guess mirasmom thought about these "special cases". She doesn´t seem to be indifferent about her pups...

Hexe, we need to change people´s mind instead of spaying/neutering healthy dogs. People need to care, people who don´t have time to care for their own dogs shouldn´t use "day care facilities" , but recognize they are not the perfect dog owners before they are going to buy a dog, people who are not willing to walk their dog shouldn´t let the dog roam free but think about the responsibility of dog ownership, and people who aren´t interested in their dog any longer, shouldn´t buy the "cute" puppy at all.

The problem always are the humans, not the animals.

Absolutely Susie, we need to change peoples' minds about having dogs they really haven't

got time for;  but how to do that ?   I have been saying what you wrote, in print and to anyone

who will listen, for years now, as have many others -  but it seems to only get WORSE.

More & more people in our commercially biased world believe they have a right to own

dogs & other animals, no matter what.  And do not want to be persuaded out of it by having

their lack of time / knowledge / facilities pointed out to them.  Until some kind of collective

conscience develops, where more people than not care more about the animals 'rights' to a

truly healthy & happy life, than they do about owning dogs as toys or status symbols like their

other possessions,  I think we'll continue to see both sides of the neutering debate raging on.

So many people don't bother to educate themselves and are shocked when their female comes into season at 9 months of age, and gets pregnant, because they know NOTHING about the reproductive cycle of dogs. Is it any wonder the vets push for early spay/neuter?  

Countless numbers of pet dogs and cats have been and are being sterilized via the traditional ovariohysterectomy and basic castration before they've reach two years of age, and trust me--we do NOT have so much as even a suspicion-arousing number of these animals dying from diseases or conditions related to those procedures without there being other factors playing a role in the development of the diseases, nor are they spilling out of practice waiting rooms to be treated for a plethora of ailments that can be attributed to nothing else but that these procedures had been done on the animals.

I repeat, I am NOT a fan of early spaying & castration, and if they aren't going to be bred, I typically still don't spay my females until they've reached two to three years of age; haven't had males in years until recently, and he came to me already neutered at 7 yrs old, it having been done when he was a year old. That male, BTW is so NOT 'tall and gangly', either, nor is he feminine in apperance--truth is, he's built like a freakin' tank, and it feels like that's what's on top of my bare foot when he steps on it, too--and his head is massive. Health-wise, he's got discoid lupus, but he'd have that regardless--in fact, it's possible it would be harder to keep it under control [in the second picture below, which was about a month after I got him, you can see the healing lesion on the bridge of his nose] if he was having spikes and drops in his testosterone levels, and autoimmune conditions often flare up when such shifts occur. He's not as fat as he is in these pictures, either; he weighed 116# then, when he should have been around 100#, and that's where I keep him at for the benefit of his health and my bare feet. He's not being starved now, he was simply being fed too much and not exercised enough before he came here--because spaying or castration doesn't MAKE dogs get fat and lazy...it does seem to make a lot of dog OWNERS lazy, though, and so their dogs get fat.

    

As long as people here in the US don't need to meet any requirements in order to breed and sell dogs, either as a 'hobby' [often to be read as 'only source of income'] or a full time business, I will still be more comfortable with Arthur Average and his family being urged to have their pet dogs rendered incapable of breeding sooner rather than later; the sole exception in this for me is in the instance of young females with vulvas that aren't sufficiently developed to prevent urine scalding of the area before their first heat. Those females, even when just pets, are better served to be permitted to go through the first heat cycle, and then be spayed, as it's unkind to put a dog through a lifetime of pain and potential skin infections that could have been avoided by waiting a few more months and letting the hormones do their job in reversing the inversion of the vulva caused by the slow development.  Maybe someday the people in this country will wise up and become responsible dog owners, but I'll not be holding my breath waiting for that to happen. Til then, there are still more fools who will only do right by their dog if it's spayed or castrated early in life, than there are people who understand that having a completely intact dog is a responsibility that needs to be managed with common sense and some basic intellect.

As owner of a Twelve Today !  [Happy birthday, Tazzy] male who has never been castrated,

and has never fathered any little accidents ,  I can agree with that too.  The problem isn't

confined to the US, it has also been the case for a long time in the UK.  And now we have

vets and animal charities advocating very early neutering ...

I have lived with neutered dogs:  my previous pet Vida was spayed just before I took her over,

at the breeder's expense & insistence.  She had radiographically poor hips, so should not be

bred from.  If  her breeder hadn't had it done, I would have.  She was 3 @ that time;  too old maybe

for health benefits except pyo.  But fortunately she never got mammary cancers anyway.

And all the males plus most of the females where I used to work were 'done' - with such a large

kennel of dogs it made sense as while accidents would have been prevented, the xtra work

and angst in preventing them would not have been !   Neuterings happened at the  full range

of ages;  home bred pups were done at 8 / 9 months (after bitches 1st season), when most of

their growing up had been done.  I cannot say I ever saw vast and consistent differences in

size, temperament etc, as compared to my 'control' population of intact S/L  GSDs @ my

mentor's kennel back in London.

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Do you realize the multitude of reasons a dog can be either temporarily or permanently sterile? Unless you asked for a sperm count before you bought him, how do you know he was sterile then and hasn't contracted some infection or other condition that could be treatable? 

Just playing devil's advocate..........