My partner and I adopted a 4 year old male french bulldog back in December and he has 100% been the best boy.
He wasn’t in the best of shape when we got him, he had an infection in his bits, we had no idea whether he was up to date with vaccinations and he had problems with diarrhoea due to being fed a poor diet. We’ve dealt with the above and he’s now healthy.
2 weeks ago we had him neutered as we’ve had a number of situations where he would just randomly ejaculate EVERYWHERE (you may have seen my previous post). During recovery he was absolutely fine, just less active.
Since having the cone of shame off he has been a completely different dog. I’ve heard that neutering can cause aggression, hyperactivity in puppies but haven’t been able to find much on the affects it has on older dogs.
For the last 4 months he has been very reluctant to play with his toys, maybe he would reach for them once a day for 5 minutes max. He’s now reaching for them multiple times a day and isn’t really settling. We considered that the increase in energy may have been because he was previously used to longer walks of around 1hr30 a day, during recover he would get around 30mins. We’re now back to pre-op exercise levels, but we still have a much more active dog.
The part that is worrying me is the sudden aggression. We have always been very hands on when playing with him, but suddenly he snarls and snaps when we reach for the toys (to throw it for him). He’s mouthing a lot more as well, for instance when he’s ready for dinner he’s put my hand in his mouth and nipped me.
All of this is completely new behaviour which started when we removed the cone.
Has anyone experienced anything similar? Any tips for curbing the aggression? We have simply said “no” and then completely ignored him when he acts this way.
Or Is this something I should consult the vet over?