Archie's Naughty Bits

Yep, this is exactly what you think it is.

I was fully committed to leaving Archie intact until and unless problems arose. Problems arose so the decision was made: Archie’s naughty bits had to go.

I gave Archie a decent interval of time in which to sort out the signals that his naughty bits were sending to his brain. But he started marking in the house, a behavior that is extremely difficult to stop once it starts. And his obsession with girl dogs was interfering with his ability to play agility. I tried bribes, baby gates to block his access to favorite marking spots, crating when I wasn’t able to watch him, but none of these things were able to compete with his hormonal urges.

Basically, Archie turned into a 12-year-old boy who has seen real tits for the first time.

He is now 14 months of age so he has reached his adult height and the growth plates in his long bones are closed (this would not likely be the case for a larger breed of dog; the growth plates could remain active until well after 18 months of age). Even though it has not been definitively proven that early neutering affects growth, I think it is moot for Archie at this age. But neutering him now will certainly alter his behavior.

My friend Kathryn, the CVT who I worked with a couple of summers ago in the emergency clinic, arranged for me and my classmate McKenna to bring Archie in to the clinic on Monday night. That is usually a very slow night in the clinic and the doctor on duty graciously agreed to let us scrub in and help. 

A routine surgery that would have taken less time to complete than it took to prepare Archie for it stretched out to nearly half an hour as the doc walked McKenna and me through the minutiae of every step. She and I each got to tie some suture knots around the spermatic cords and we each snipped a testicle once the tying off was complete. It was, not surprisingly, a fumble-fest as we tried to sort out the unfamiliar tools and maintain a sterile field.

Most animals given the induction and anesthetic drugs that Archie received take anywhere from a few to 20 minutes to wake up once the inhalant anesthetic gas is turned off. Archie was trying to get off the surgery table in less than two minutes! It was a surprised rush to get his breathing tube out. I was telling a friend in class about this, and she said, “Well, he doesn’t have an ounce of fat on him.” I laughed and said, “Yeah, Archie’s volume of distribution is Archie!” Then I paused and said, “Sadly, I think I just made a pharmacology joke.” We both laughed sadly.

(The volume of distribution is a calculated value describing the theoretical distribution of a drug in an animal. It is usually a much larger volume than the animal itself. My joke played off her comment about Archie having no fat. It’s a really funny joke if you are a second-year vet student taking pharmacology. It’s not funny at all to anyone else on the planet.)

Archie was sent home with some nice drugs and I kept him sedated for two days. He spent the first 24 hours sleeping it off but starting Tuesday night, he started trying to get Azza to wrestle and trying desperately to get me to play fetch. I finally relented and played some toy games Wednesday morning and he was very happy at the return to our normal routine. I figured he didn’t need any more drugs by then. Today (Saturday), he was high as a kite but naturally so, full of life and joy, zooming laps around the living room without touching the floor.

Archie also proved to be fairly sensible for a fox terrier. The cone that he would have had to wear to prevent that long nose from reaching his incision was enormous and it stressed him a lot to have it on. So I decided: no cone. He’s not bothered his incision site other than a few tentative sniffs and licks.

Even though it might take a couple of weeks for his system to completely recalibrate to his new testicle-less state, I’ve already seen some subtle changes in his behavior. And not one marking incident since Monday.