Temperament – Gender Profiling in Canines?

Temperament in Canines

I often have people ask if they should buy a male or female lab…again, we choose for temperament in all colors, all litters, which carries through to all SEXES…and some people will give me the same statement, “well, I heard all male labs are calmer” (or the opposite!) Therefore, based on experience alone, they choose sex, OR, they just have a preference one way or the other, which is to be expected. Some people assume because they had a male one time, and a female the next, and the female was “different than the male and was so and so…” that this was a sex issue, when it could have been merely a “personality” issue (different than temperament!), and may have found two different females, under the same experience scenario, to have shown a difference in personality. Each dog is soooo individual, just like people.

ALERT: opposed to the “wives tale”, males are not the only ones to “hump” someones leg, or mark their territory.  A female that is not spayed will also hump, AND mark their territory (only it makes a much bigger pee spot on your floor), AND wander off when she comes into heat… These are BEHAVIORAL things that come with the onset of hormones, or the presence of other canines. (pack sortment by “dominant” or “submissive”)

I have had both males and females for 23 years, and see no difference. I love them all. Each dog has its own personality, though, and I think people associate a personality with a dog they have owned or known and categorize it as a result of the “sex” of the dog, which is not scientific, only experiential…I can only say that because I’ve had so much experience with so many dogs over the years….

 

Since hormones are taken out of the mix after you spay or neuter a dog, and they don’t suddenly change their temperament and personality afterwards, this may further explain why it may be wrong to assume it was a”sex”(hormone) thing attributing to that dog’s personality and temperament, but rather, as I have found, it is more of a personality/temperament thing.

 

Dogs are not culturally “nurtured” into a gender as humans are (such as Americans…women to nurture, you know the stereotypes), and even this has been tested by anthropologists who study gender/culture in other societies, which I’ve done (having been an anthropologist, psychologist, and sociologist in my earlier training). There is no “norm” to behavior unless it is hormone related, and even that is not a very good indicator of temperament or personality.