The Great Canine Debate: Comparing Male and Female Dogs
Considerations When Choosing Your First Or Next Puppy
By Taylor Young, DVM
It’s easy to get decision-fatigue when it comes time to pick your next pup. What breed? What breeder? What do I want to hunt with it? What food should I feed? Amongst all these questions, invariably will come the time to decide: male or female? There are some strong feelings and opinions out there in answer to this question. Some of these opinions are backed up by real and practical considerations. Others are formed by personal experience, both good and bad. Is there any data to back up these claims? Are there certain situations where one might be preferred over the other? We’ll look at several aspects of this debate, including health considerations, research-backed data, and yes, some personal experiences and opinions as well.
Personal Experiences and Expectations
There is a lot of subjectivity when it comes to picking between the two. Your own personal experiences with your own dogs or others have likely already biased you in one direction or another. Some claim to truly have no preference, but in many conversations I’ve had, there is usually a strong and conscious preference for one or the other.
As a young teenager, I read—and still have on my shelf—“Rabbit Hunting: Secrets of a Master Cottontail Hunter”, a great book on rabbit hunting and beagles by Dave Fisher, who dedicated an entire chapter to the subject. His preference, for multiple reasons, was for females. Though I ended up going with a cur dog instead (rabbits were hard to come by in the mountains around me, but squirrels and coons were more readily available), I followed his advice and made a female my first hunting dog. Since then, due to availability or other factors, four out of five dogs I’ve raised for hunting have been males. Frankly, I have never bonded as well, or liked as well, any of my males as I have my females, and my next pup will be a female if I have the choice. Some of the reasons I can put a finger on; some are intangible. Thankfully, there are some objective realities and data to help guide our decisions as well.
Physical and Health Considerations
First are some of the most obvious and easy to consider problems: The practicalities of the physical differences. Females, if left intact, will go through heat cycles (read: Can You Hunt A Pregnant Dog? from the Fall 2025 issue). If you want to keep them intact, you will have to deal with some mess, behavioral changes, and interest from males during their heat (estrus) cycle. If you plan on competing with your dog, many competition rules will prohibit you from entering a dog who is in heat. In fact, I was once scratched from a squirrel hunt cast for another dog who wouldn’t leave my female alone even though she was weeks out of heat (interestingly, the dogs she hunted with in the night cast showed no interest…). Just when you think you’re clear, Murphy’s Law states they will come into heat right when your next competition is scheduled! If you decide to breed your female, you’re looking at an even longer interval where your hunting will be affected, whether you compete or not. Of course, you can avoid all these issues by having your female spayed, but this decision is not as simple as it used to be (for more information, see the Summer 2025 article on when—or if—you should spay or neuter your hunting dog).
Males, on the other hand, never go into heat and never get pregnant. That doesn’t mean they are problem-free. Urine marking can be a real aggravation with some dogs. Testosterone-fueled behavior, such as checking females, aggression with other males, and others are commonly blamed on leaving a male intact. In my observation and experience, all these problems can be selected against with breeding to some degree, and there are many males running around that never act like they’re intact. Training and proper socialization can be utilized to mitigate many of these behaviors, too. As with females who are spayed, males can be neutered. If neutered later in life as many owners now do, some of these behaviors may not go away with removal of the sex hormones if they are a habit, however, many owners report being satisfied with their decision to do so when trying to address unwanted male behaviors.
Cost Considerations
Cost might also cross your mind when it comes to picking the sex of your next puppy prospect. If pups are priced based on sex in a litter, I typically see the females priced higher. When it comes to physical costs, as a rule, males will be bigger than females from the same litter. Over a dog’s lifetime, this will equal an increased cost of food and potentially medications that are dosed by weight (such as oral flea and tick meds) depending on the dose ranges for the drug. In most instances, a spay will be more expensive than a neuter due to the more serious nature of the surgery and the increased time and effort to complete the surgery. If you leave both dogs intact, dealing with sex-specific health issues will also usually be more expensive for the female. Emergency surgery for a pyometra (infected uterus) or a Caesarean section will be easily hundreds, and commonly more than a thousand dollars depending on the timing and your geographic location. Conversely, male-specific health issues (testicular cancer, prostatic enlargement, etc.) are usually resolved by neutering, and uncommonly done on an emergent basis.
Longevity
How about longevity? Of course, simply being alive does not mean that they are still productive hunting companions, but for many of us, our dog is more than just their hunting ability. In humans and in many animal species, females live longer than males. A large study of dogs found this to be true. The study of veterinary records comprising over 70,000 dogs found that, on average, females lived longer, but that being intact versus neutered/spayed played a much larger role; spayed females lived the longest, followed by neutered males, intact males, and lastly intact females. However, the authors of the 2018 study published in The Journals of Gerontology also concluded that the differences were minor and were only part of the causal effect of longevity in dogs.
Behavior
The differences in behavior between the sexes carry many stereotypes. In my experience and observation, males are more often described as being hardheaded, stubborn, independent, or less willing to take direction. Females, on the other hand, are more likely to be described as soft, sensitive, or in-tune with their handler. Are these stereotypes true?
Published in Animals in 2018, a large review of scientific reports on studies focused on dog sex differences did find numerous things: Males were more likely to express boldness and courage with fewer fear-related problems, while females were more likely to seek help from humans to solve problems; male dogs were quicker to switch to independent thinking to solve problems than females; and females gave more attention to visual cues than males and were less distractible.
A question-based survey of 244 search dog handlers (using dogs to find drugs, explosives, human remains, etc.) published in 2004 in Applied Animal Behaviour Science, found that, by and large, there were minimal differences. Although males were more commonly utilized by the handlers, there was no difference in handler satisfaction. They did find, however, that handlers identified females as showing less dog-to-dog aggression than males.
In 2015, a Norwegian survey of 5,257 dogs showed females were at 1.3 times higher odds of being sensitive to noise than males, while spayed/neutered dogs of either sex were 1.73 times higher odds of noise sensitivity than intact dogs.
Performance
If you’re a hardcore competitor, you might also wonder if either sex gives you a performance advantage. A quick look through United Kennel Club (UKC) records shows some interesting data. Out of the last ten UKC Coonhound World Championships, seven of the winners were female. For the last ten UKC Hunting Beagle World Championships, seven were male. In the current American Field Purina Dog of the Year Standings, nine of the top ten dogs are male. For the first ten dogs listed as recently earning their Grand Hunting Retriever Champion title, five were male and five were female. Of course, these numbers don’t take into account several important key details, like how many males versus females were entered, but it does go to show that, overall, both sexes produce winners.
Conclusion
As you can see, the choice is not entirely clear. There are, of course, exceptions to every rule, so no need to come at me with your pitchforks with a letter about how your dog breaks these stereotypes. Looking at the data, however, if you value independence, boldness, and a dog that’s always ready to go (no heat cycles here!), you might pick a male. If you would rather have a dog that is more focused, more in-tune with you, and will live a little longer, you might pick a female. I would argue that there are many more important considerations, such as the breed, the breeder, and even individual mate pairings that will impact your hunting to a larger degree than sex will. Still, you have to pick, and hopefully these insights will help you do so.
