Dear Mark: Health Effects of Neutering, Grain-Free Dog Diets, Ideal Dog Diet
For today’s edition of Dear Mark , I’m answering three questions from last week’s Weekly Link Love comment section . They’re all about dogs. First, are their negative health effects of neutering or spaying? Second, do grain-free dog diets give dogs dilated cardiomyopathy, a kind of heart disease? What’s the alternative? And third, what is in my opinion the ideal dog diet—and should everyone be feeding it to their dogs? Let’s go: Mark, wouldn’t neutering dogs cause some long term negative health effects in them, as I assume it would in humans? As you might expect, removing a dog’s testicles or ovaries—major reproductive and endocrine organs—can have negative effects. That’s just common sense, and we have observational studies paired with physiological mechanisms to make the case. The best-studied complications are cancer and joint disorders. Among German shepherds , 7% of intact males were diagnosed with a joint disorder. 21% of males who’d been neutered before age 1 had a joint