A Lesbian Talks Vasectomies

Jax:  Intact and Uncensored
 (until last Tuesday)

We got our two Australian Shepherd pups last May from a breeder, Megan, a twenty-something from the Ohio countryside close to nowhere, who learned about breeding from having a dog in 4H.  She also milks cows and raises heifers, is married, no kids yet, her family lives "far away" (which meant 25 minutes up the road) and as far as I know has never been outside of Ohio.  She is a unique combination of shy and knowledgeable, a young woman of few words, so much so that I plan in advance questions to keep her talking.  So I was surprised when she said, I recommend you don't neuter the male pup (who turned out to be Jax) before he's a year at least, since the hormones are needed to help his bones and muscles grow properly, and don't spay the female (who turned out to be Bleu), until she's had a heat cycle, for the same reasons.

As a research maven, yet also a typical American who'd always spayed and neutered without a second thought, I went online and found out hormones are good for dogs, and also, that when/whether to spay/neuter is an incredible point of controversy right now in an American dog world in which early spay/neuter is taken for granted as saving millions of unwanted dogs from shelters and euthanasia.  I know. I know.  Check out Ted Kerasote, Pukka's Promise: The Quest for Longer-Lived Dogs for more.  Even the ASPCA, surely the number one advocate of spay/neuter in the country, gives a long list of problems with it--but make sure you read till end of web page, and take the minimizing rhetoric with a grain of salt.  Suffice to say the arguments in favor of hormones are--unsurprisingly once you analogize to human beings--strong.  So I delayed the Bleu issue but started moving ahead on Jax.

There's just something fishy about a lesbian calling all over creation trying to find someone to give her dog a vasectomy.  I felt overly knowledgeable about anatomy I'd previously had absolutely no investment in.  Well, other than needing sperm to help us conceive our kids. But even that was a long-distance relationship, so to speak.

It turns out almost no one will give a dog a vasectomy, because it's not taught in vet school, even though it's the simpler procedure.  Our long-time practice of three very sweet female vets said "We've never done it" in the kindest way, and left it at that, demurring to call me crazy but completely unwilling to do the vasectomy or a tubal ligation for Bleu, or it seemed, even read the literature I'd brought.

QUICK DEFINITIONS of types of sterilization (with help from Wikipedia):

MALES:
vasectomy:  cutting/sealing off tubes "vas deferens" that connect testicles with urethra
neutering (aka castration, as in a gelded horse):  the removal of the testes (which produce sperm and 99% of testosterone)
FEMALES:
Tubal ligation:  cutting/sealing off fallopian tubes (super rare procedure in dogs)
Ovariectomy: removing the ovaries and not the uterus (rare procedure in dogs)
Typical "spay" is ovariohysterectomy: ovaries, fallopian tubes, and uterus are all removed

Megan didn't know anyone.  I called every "surgical specialty" vet hospital in Cincinnati.  No dice, though I did get several people who stumbled over the word, or who made me repeat the word, as if they did not hear it often.  I checked out the Ohio State Veterinary Medical Center in Columbus. I even called the office of Dr Karen Becker, over in Illinois, because she recommends the procedure on her web site at Mercola.  But turns out she doesn't perform it herself.  I called the two likeliest candidates up around Chicago because we'd be there over Christmas.  No.  Further dedicated online searching came up short.  Luckily a friend recommended a Cincinnati vet who does conventional but also holistic and complementary medicine.  He'd done it once before, four years earlier, on a German shepherd, and was willing to do it again.  And the owner of that skimpy record was who we went with.

Talking to friends about it is weird.  Especially friends whose husbands have recently had a vasectomy.  It somehow gets personal, even though it isn't.  What do I know about cutting off balls?  What kind of ball-busting dyke am I?  Confession:  I am the kind who has only fingered balls about twice in my life.  It's embarrassing to realize that it 1) took till I'm 52 to actually own a male dog, and 2)  took till four days ago till I first compared a dog with balls cut off with my own dog's balls--wow, really makes all those "you've got no balls/you're sure ballsy" metaphors much more vivid.

Or, even weirder--what do I know about not cutting them off?  Why do I presumably have more love for testes than straight friends whose dogs are neutered?  It's kind of unnatural.

A sad part of all this is my old sweet cocker spaniel, Moosli, who died two years ago, and was of course spayed at a young age without a second thought on my part, had urinary incontinence, weight gain, and two (!) CCL injuries, the second of which directly led to my having to put her to sleep.  As ASPCA says, "Dogs spayed prior to five months of age may be slightly more likely to develop ... cranial cruciate ligament (CCL) rupture"--and urinary incontinence, and weight gain.

So last Tuesday I to to the vet's to pick Jax up after his surgery.  He's just fine, at my feet, though still is acting pretty drunk with hindquarters not moving properly, and I'd been nervous because it was still surgery after all so I'm a little extra exuberant, perhaps.  The vet is male, kind, helpful, sincere, and by all clues heterosexual.  I've got a lot of new-found web-based knowledge about male dog anatomy, but I'm still not sure of everything, so in the course of conversation, naturally I think, I ask the expert:  "So if the tubes are cut, then where does the sperm that's still being produced in the testicle go?"

He looks embarrassed, I remember it's a waiting room and there's someone and their dog waiting, and the woman at the front desk is sitting close to us as we stand.  But I am eager, I am learning, and my dog's fine, really fine, after surgery!  "...Oh, well it must be reabsorbed, sperm would have to be if it's not ejaculated, even if the tubes weren't cut" I continue, following my own line of thought and realizing I'm pretty sure Jax has never ejaculated, and he's fine.

Though he is a tall man, the vet's head now tilts down, and his face is redder than before.  "I don't know," he says, "I don't know what happens to the sperm."  He does a sort of half-shrug and looks away, seemingly despite himself and his desire to answer all a client's questions.

He doesn't know? Seriously?

It occurs to me that perhaps this very nice man before me has had a vasectomy.  And I am a dyke treading on possibly thin ice, in alien waters, surely loving my dog, but perhaps overly enthusiastic, a neophyte about these things that straight people, and their pets, apparently work out more silently. Jax and I cut our losses and head happily for the car, both with infertility issues, both with hormones intact. Though I have to carry all 40-some pounds of him because he wouldn't walk, just kept falling down and licking his balls.