Not long ago, I wrote a post in my veterinary medicine series about why you should neuter your dog, so tonight I thought I’d share a story about one man overcoming his fears of neutering his dog. Mr. Gregson had been a client at the practice where I worked for quite awhile, and over the years, we had gotten to know each other pretty well. He was a nice man, who was totally devoted to his dog, a Chesapeake Bay retriever named Nick, and took excellent care of him. He was also a well educated man. A college professor, actually. His job required him to travel from time to time, and whenever he did, Nick would board with us, so we knew Nick pretty well, too.

Mr. Gregson had also been a good client because he was awesome at following our suggestions for taking care of Nick. Everything except neutering him. At first, he had considered breeding the dog since he was papered and came from good bloodlines, but over time the timing had never seemed right, and after awhile, Mr. Gregson gave up on that idea. Even then, he was unwilling to neuter Nick, and one day I asked him why. His reply was that he was afraid it would change him. Several of my colleagues also discussed neutering Nick with Mr. Gregson, and his response was always the same.

When Nick was about eleven years old he began to have difficulties urinating and kept developing urinary tract infections. One of the things we did as part of his work up was to check his prostate. It was very enlarged, and an ultrasound guided biopsy showed that it was precancerous. Mr. Gregson reluctantly scheduled an appointment to get Nick neutered. The morning of his appointment, when he dropped Nick off, he again expressed his concerns that the procedure would change his dog, and several of us assured him that it would be okay.

Nick’s surgery went well and his recovery was unremarkable, so when Mr. Gregson came to pick him up that afternoon, he was ready to go. It just so happened that the day of Nick’s surgery, I had brought one of my goats in for issues with mastitis, so we decided to play o joke on Mr. Gregson (he did have a good sense of humor or we wouldn’t have done it!). I brought him into an exam room and went over discharge and post-op instructions and once again assured him that Nick was unchanged. Then I called for a technician to bring up Nick. Instead she brought up my white and black, female goat. As she led the goat into the exam room I said, “See, completely unchanged!” We all enjoyed a good laugh, but I think Mr. Gregson was relieved when we brought him the real Nick. Two weeks later when they came back for Nick’s suture removal, Mr. Gregson pulled me aside and thanked me for helping him get over his fears about neutering Nick. He was very pleased to have discovered that his dog’s personality was indeed the same, and that now he would be able to live a much longer life without prostate cancer.