Dogs Balls – The Conclusion

A snippet from my Spats section:

Dogs Balls
– Repeated
Since Bailey turned six months old Xander and I have had an ongoing argument about his balls. I want to get him fixed, Xander doesn’t. Now I understand it’s just male instinct to want to preserve all testicles on the planet, but there must be limits. Where I come from it’s just expected that you get your pet fixed when it reaches a certain age unless the dog is meant for breeding or showing. Where he comes from it’s unnecessary and inhumane. The thing is the dog humps ME not him, not to mention his balls are just UGLY and every time he rolls onto his back and spreads his legs looking for a belly rubbed, it’s a traumatic experience for me. They’ve gotta go.

I was right. Honestly, that’s all anyone should need to know, but I’ll explain regardless.

A few weeks ago I noticed it was taking Bailey absolute ages to pee. I mean like standing twiddling your thumbs for 10 mins while he stands with his leg cocked up against a tree. Then I noticed it was only coming out in small drips… this was a problem.

Xander came home early that day and took him to the vet. After a number of intrusive moves by the vet they said that he had a bladder infection. So for about a week we had to give him antibiotics and pain killers. Bailey loved this of course because it meant tons of folded up cheese.

After he was finished with his medication he still wasn’t better and this really began to worry me. So on Wednesday Xander was working from home and took Bailey by the vet again. Poor Bailey was violated once again and the vet deduced that he is oversexed. His prostrate is enlarged, they found sperm in his urine and his doggy version of blue balls was causing him to not be able to pee properly.

The solution was chemical castration. Doesn’t that sound doubly cruel? He was given an injection that slows down sperm production, shrinks his prostrate and calms him down some as well.

HMMMM… wouldn’t actual castration do the same?

I was fit to be tied when I found out that the dog was going through all this for no reason. See, when Bailey was about 6 months old I fought with Xander enough to get him to at least go to the vet to discuss the possibility of castration. Little did I know how useless that vet was (she’s not even a vet anymore, she does dog massage now? Wtf… ?)

She basically ganged up on me with Xander, claiming that it was absolutely inhumane to castrate a dog without any good reason.

HEY, how about prostrate problems making them unable to pee?

Oh, wait no even better… how about reducing the risk of testicular cancer to pretty much nothing.

I know, what about being a responsible dog owner and making sure your dog doesn’t get loose and knock up the neighbourhood poodle, bringing even more unwanted animals into the world.

Yeah… I was pissed, but I was outnumbered. Now we are paying the price for it, or Bailey is, rather.

Not much we can really do about it now, it’s been 5 years and only now is Xander realizing that I might have actually had a point back then. He has agreed to have the dog castrated (better late than never I guess, but I’m sure Bailey would disagree), but we are going to wait until after our holidays. The vet says the chemical castration will keep his hormones under control for about six weeks so that gives us some time.

Now the spat is Xander telling me to quit harping on about how we wouldn’t have this problem if we’d had him fixed when he was young, and me saying that after 5 years of pleading my case just to end up with the dog getting sick because of it, I’ve earned the right to bitch about it some.

At least now we are on the same page… and it better stay that way or I’ll be asking the vet if I can get a 2 for 1 deal!