Dr. Stefano Romagnoli

Photo courtesy of Dr. Stefano Romagnoli

Dr. Stefano Romagnoli, shown with a client's dog, Truffles, led a team that put together new pet desexing guidelines.

Amid ongoing debate over how, when and even whether dogs and cats should be desexed, sweeping new reproduction control guidelines have been released. And, not surprisingly, they're raising some hackles.

Three years in the making, the World Small Animal Veterinary Association's guidelines were published May 28 in the Journal of Small Animal Practice.

The 136-page document informs veterinarians about the choices now available to them, ranging from traditional gonad removal to emerging nonsurgical neutering techniques. It also advises that doing nothing can be appropriate for some dogs, challenging the notion that neutering should always be the go-to option.

For generations, many societies have encouraged the widespread desexing of dogs and cats to prevent increases in stray and unwanted animals. It is also widely believed that neutering can reduce pet aggression, an impulse to roam and unwanted sexual behavior. Further, removing the ovaries and testes can confer health benefits to the animal, including reduced risk of mammary and reproductive-organ cancers.

But a growing body of research suggests that desexing, especially when animals are prepubertal, might pose health risks, too. Research led by veterinarians at the University of California, Davis, published in April, for instance, found that four dog breeds — German shorthaired pointers, mastiffs, Newfoundlands, and Rhodesian ridgebacks — were more vulnerable to joint disorders or cancer if they'd been neutered early in life. Research published in 2013 showed golden retrievers face similar hazards.

Taking the emerging science into account, the new WSAVA guidelines advise that "no intervention" is "recommended in most cases" for female dogs and among several favored options for male dogs — so long as they have "responsible" owners. Vasectomy also is "recommended in most cases" for male dogs with responsible owners, while castration is advised as "acceptable" in specific circumstances.

For cats, the guidelines are more in keeping with long-held norms. Doing nothing, for instance, is "generally not recommended" for both male and female cats, even with responsible owners, in part because cats are more likely to roam than dogs.

The WSAVA's membership comprises 116 veterinary associations from around the globe, representing more than 200,000 practitioners combined. The committee that produced the guidelines comprised six veterinarians on four continents led by Dr. Stefano Romagnoli, an animal reproduction specialist and professor at the University of Padua in Italy.

In an interview with the VIN News Service, Romagnoli responded to some concerns that have been raised about the guidelines and their implications for jurisdictions considering mandatory desexing laws.

Some of his responses have been lightly edited for brevity and clarity.

This is the first time the WSAVA has produced guidelines for reproduction control. Why now?

I'd been paying attention to the increasing number of publications describing side effects of gonadectomy in pets, thinking that a thorough review of this topic was necessary — although it was a demanding task.

I've been attending WSAVA meetings for a long time, and over the years, different committees have produced guidelines of many different kinds. At one of the meetings in 2017, they were launching dental guidelines, and I realized a reproduction committee within the WSAVA could take on the task. And so I told them, "Listen, I think this is a vacuum that we should fill."

You've advised that "no intervention" is most often the best option for female dogs and among the best options for male dogs with responsible owners. Doesn't this challenge tradition?

Yes. I think it does. But it should be clarified that we, by no means, require this as a gold standard. We're receiving complaints from shelter veterinarians, and an article in [British journal] Vet Record documented concerns in the shelter community. But we're not being prescriptive at all. In fact, we state clearly that in shelters, things can just go on as usual, because people need to be encouraged to adopt spayed and neutered pets. There's no question about that.

But if a client comes into a practice with a little pup asking the veterinarian whether it is best to spay or neuter and what is the best time, the veterinarian can no longer say that we should do it as soon as possible and that nothing bad can possibly happen. That's the bottom line.

There are still many, many cases — influenced by factors like breed and the pet's living conditions — in which the dog can still be spayed or neutered. But it has to be an informed decision.

Speaking of bad things possibly happening, let's talk about the health risks for pets that are spayed or castrated.

Problems that can occur include neoplastic diseases [such as cancer] and also metabolic diseases, obesity and orthopedic diseases. Now, most of these diseases are rare, with a prevalence of about 1% to 2% in the intact canine population. So we must not scare our clients. But that's not a good reason to hide the situation from our clients. I mean, it's as simple as that. Clients must know.

Take golden retrievers. There is so much literature about the risk of both males and females developing neoplastic disease and orthopedic conditions, especially if neutered prior to puberty. I mean, if you own a golden retriever, I think you should really think twice about doing surgical gonadectomy. But then again, you can still do it. We still do gonadectomy in golden retrievers that will become guide dogs for the blind. But the client must know the risks.

Do risks include the development of behavioral problems?

There is a limited amount of information on a few breeds. But in some cases, research has shown that dogs — particularly bitches but also males, depending on the breed — with behavioral issues at a young age may get worse after gonadectomy. So I think, again, unless there's a burning need for gonadectomy for whatever reason, it would be advisable to at least wait until after puberty. And whenever there is even a suspicion of a behavioral issue, the pet should be checked by a behavioral expert.

Some of your advice applies only to pets with "responsible" owners. How can veterinarians make that distinction?

Well, there is no golden rule for that, either. There is no way you can definitely, clearly and straightforwardly say what a responsible pet owner is.

We thought a lot about this issue, because we knew it was going to be controversial. But if you look at the other side of the coin, why should we not try to identify responsible pet owners?

I think that a veterinarian must take at least some of this responsibility because we all deal with different owners and, with time, we develop a sensitivity for discriminating who can be a responsible person capable of taking care of his or her pet.

So I think we need to make an effort, and then if the veterinarian is not confident about whether or not a client is a responsible pet owner, she or he can just assume that this client is not and give advice accordingly.

For male dogs, when might vasectomy make more sense than castration?

Vasectomy just prevents fertility. If preventing fertility is the reason for intervening, then vasectomy, I think, is the perfect approach.

Vasectomy obviously leaves the dog's hormonal milieu intact and, therefore, if the dog has a lot of libido, a lot of energy, is difficult to contain and train, then these types of dogs are frequently taken to the veterinarian with a request for castration. That is another example of a situation where a behavioral expert can step in and check whether there is a behavioral issue separate from hormones. Research shows that in many cases, the behavioral issue would remain if you castrate. It's a delicate situation.

Couldn't vasectomy act as a trial run, of sorts, for castration?

Yes. Vasectomy will leave everything else intact.

Say, for example, you have a large-sized dog. These dogs shouldn't be castrated prior to puberty because they're very commonly going to develop orthopedic problems. So you could just vasectomize the guy, and then later on, if he, for whatever reason, needs to be castrated, you can still do that.

This is what we think should be done, for example, with cryptorchid dogs [dogs with undescended testicles]. If one, rightly, doesn't want the genetics of these dogs to spread, they can be vasectomized. Why should we remove their scrotal testicle? Gonads play an important role for the quality of life in all mammals. They are not there just for reproduction purposes.

What are the implications for these guidelines for governments considering mandatory dog neutering laws?

Well, mandatory spaying and neutering of dogs is something that really worries us as a committee.

We have nothing against mandatory sterilization. But there is really no reason why gonads should be removed. I think you're unnecessarily harming a lot of pets.

A good third of our document shows lots of reasons why gonads are important not just for reproduction, so I think it's really a shame for those countries that are passing such laws, because there is no science behind it.

There are many different ways you can sterilize nowadays without removing the gonads.

You also explore nontraditional neutering techniques like deslorelin-releasing chips, which deliver a drug that temporarily suppresses fertility. Are these always a good option?

Deslorelin is a viable and interesting approach. I'm not sure it can be a complete alternative — it depends on the situation.

I mean, if each implant lasts one year and we look at the average lifespan of a dog, let's say 10 years, and you use an implant from puberty onward, you'd be looking at using at least eight implants. So the cost would be very, very high — much higher than a castration or a vasectomy.

Nevertheless, it's a particularly interesting alternative if you have a dog with a behavioral issue. You can put the implant in and see if that helps, and if it does, then that's maybe a good reason to go ahead and do surgery.

Interestingly, with cats, deslorelin has a much longer effect. We've done studies showing that implants may be effective for as long as two to three years. The lifespan of feral cats is not much longer than that. Again, there's a financial issue, and I don't think that most municipalities would be willing to pay that price. But it is an option for dealing with stray populations.

Your guidelines are sponsored by Virbac, a company that sells a nonsurgical neutering product. Did they influence your work?

WSAVA sponsored us and we were lucky enough to find an outside sponsor, a private sponsor, in Virbac. They provided us with a three-year grant and, quite honestly and appropriately, Virbac has never had a say in what we were doing. They never even asked what the framework of our work was. They never tried to influence the outcome.

Anything else you'd like to add?

I guess my only hope is that people look at our guidance in context. We've included two recommendation tables at the end of the paper to give a concise summary of what we think. But what we're seeing is that people look at the table and draw conclusions that are absolutely not supported by the text. We only wish that people could go beyond titles of sections and tables. It's a lot of text, but there was no way we could detail the intricacies of such a delicate issue in just a few pages.

We have published a 12-page executive summary on the WSAVA website that is helpful. Also I've just, about six weeks ago, submitted another paper, five pages long, to the Journal of Small Animal Practice entitled "When and whether or not we should spay and neuter pet dogs," which will hopefully clarify many doubts.