Why I Can’t Castrate Gonzo
“Is he yours?” I get this a lot when I’m walking @Gonzobulldog. “Well…” I hesitate – can you really own a living being?, “…we live together if that’s what you mean?”
Because of that – and a whole host of other reasons I’ll get to – I just can’t do it…
I also can’t call it “neutering”. I’ll call it what it is – cutting the dog’s damn balls off.
And here’s why I won’t get Gonzo’s balls cut off…
It’s not just that I have a hard time reconciling myself with the idea of cutting an animals nuts off against it’s will…
And don’t give me any ‘you don’t know a dog’s will’ crap – were we capable of understanding their voiced opinion, I’d bet my life on the fact that every male dog on the planet would unanimously vote to keep their nuts intact.
On some level, I genuinely suspect that mine might be the next to go…
I’ve had nightmares where he and I wake up arm in arm in an operating theatre – our nuts in two separate jars sitting on a stainless steel counter…
I don’t care that it will make him more docile and more manageable – I kind of like that he’s unmanageable and, at just 25 pounds, not docile, that he doesn’t like most dogs, kids, or people (I don’t either). That line of reasoning echoes a little too damn close to the argument for adding fluoride to Soviet Prison Systems – and our own public water supplies.
Did you know that forced sterilization of humans was still a legal event in the US as late as the ’70’s? The ’70’s!
In these terms, strapping a dog down to a table, anesthetizing it and cutting its nuts off sounds more than a little creepy, and goes against my integrity.
I mean, isn’t there a gentler alternative?
Can’t we just feed him a bunch of conventional food cooked in a microwave, raise him under power lines, and hope that it naturally makes him sterile like the rest of us? If there’s enough lingering contraceptive particulates in public water to give our teenagers the lowest testosterone ratings in recent findings, then can’t I just water him heavily from the tap and hope it has the same effect?
While we’re at it, have you ever seen a male dog that once had nuts and has now been neutered? His poor, empty sack just dangles there flapping side to side with each stride like a pathetically empty, little coin purse…
People say he’ll be less aggressive around other dogs about his food…I respond that, ‘I too object to inferior males inexplicably invading my food space’. If and when someone is damn dumb enough to reach their hand across my plate to take some food that’s mine, I react swiftly and viciously and if they’re stupid enough to do it a second time I can’t possibly be the one to blame when there’s blood…
So why should The Gonz be held so brutally accountable for the same kind of behavior?
Sure it’s an inconvenience and not just for me – you should see him hump a stuffed animal to completion some time…his massive pink thing hangs past his knee and throbs painfully while he looks at me shamefully, his eyes asking, “What now?”
Don’t tell me it prevents prostate cancer, Bridget! A recent study actually showed that a dog’s prostate cancer is not related to testosterone and that neutering actually increased large breed dog’s incidence of contracting bone and spleen cancer by 4x!
Sure they live longer if neutered but only because they then live neutered. They roam less, fight less, and generally engage in less risk-heavy behaviors – something we would wish for all our teenagers…but we wouldn’t consider cutting their nuts off would we?
Or would we…?
—
But, hey that’s just how I’m feelin’ today…so before we go and do something drastic, check in with yourself and maybe me, next time we see the sun it’s likely to be totally different…the other day I saw a fortune-teller…she told me to, “spend more time channeling as a writer”. I said, “get out of my head, witch!”
[1] https://www.denverpost.com/2013/11/15/to-neuter-your-dog-or-not-new-studies-change-answer-for-some/