CBARQ Desexing Data

These data underpin an original article that reports strong associations between castration and undesirable behaviour in domestic dogs. This is of importance because it indicates that denial of puberty has many long-term undesirable behavioral consequences. This finding runs counter to current veterinary advice and could have transformational consequences for veterinary medicine. Furthermore, it is of societal importance because behavioural problems are the most common cause of euthanasia in dogs under three years of age and are the main reason for dogs being surrendered to shelters. Drawing on data from 6,235 male dogs desexed before ten years of age for reasons other than behavioral management, the report introduces a novel index: percentage lifetime exposure to gonadal hormones and shows how this reveals more detail than other metrics such as age at desexing. The current study focused on the reported behavior of 6,235 male dogs castrated before 520 weeks of life for reasons other than behavioral management, and calculated their percentage lifetime exposure to gonadal hormones (PLGH) as a proportion of their age at the time of being reported to the online Canine Behavioral Assessment and Research Questionnaire (C-BARQ). Forty behaviors differed between entire and castrated dogs, of which 25 were associated with PLGH and 14 with age-at-castration (AAC).