Weird Health News: Doggy Testicular Implants are the Balls!

If you are concerned about your neutered dog's ability to hold his head up high around his buddies at the local fire hydrant each night, help may be at hand.

For the canine Casanova who has been left feeling "less than" since his neutering procedure, there is a product available that may put the swagger back in his step. That's right, folks, you can purchase testicular implants for your insecure pooch, and cosmetically eradicate any evidence of his neutering.

And if you're the one who just cannot handle the aesthetic or psychological fallout from the neutering, the squeamishness you experience when you try to look your emasculated Rottweiler in the eye can soon become a thing of the past. These non-gel silicone implants will restore the look and feel of natural testicles to your canine companion, or so say the manufacturers.

I have to admit it, I have contemplated neither the look, nor the feel, of my pups' pouches, but apparently I may have been missing something. Smart people have weighed in on the product.

Neuticles, the doggy testicle implants, were awarded the 2005 Ig Nobel Prize for Medicine. The Ig Nobel is curious award, yet, none-the-less, researchers and scientists throughout the world vie for the honor of being dubbed an Ig Nobel Prize winner.

Handed out annually, by the organization Improbable Research, the Ig Nobel Prize honors researchers who make solid, ethically sound contributions to work in the same categories recognized by the Nobel Prize committee. The awards are bestowed each October at a ceremony held at Harvard College's Saunders Theater, and are followed up by informal lectures by recipients at both Harvard and MIT.

Unlike the more pristine Nobel, he Ig Nobel Prize Awards honor some of the more "eyebrow raising" contributions to research, science, and humanities.

Other recipients of the 2005 Ig Nobel (a play on the word "ignoble") Prize include an impressive collection of scientists and academics that have added much to the more "huh?" side of research.

The 2005 Ig Nobel Prize for Physics was awarded to a group of scientists who monitored tar dropping through a funnel at a rate of one drop per every nine years, beginning in 1927. The inventor of an alarm clock that runs away and hides from a would-be snooze button smacker took the Ig Noble 2005 Prize for Economics, and a team from the U.K. that monitored the brain patterns of locusts while viewing "Star Wars" was awarded the coveted Ig Nobel 2005 Peace Prize.

And so, the 2005 recipient of the Ig Nobel Prize for Medicine was awarded to none other that Gregg A. Miller, inventor of Neuticles, the testicular implants for dogs.

You can purchase these little beauties in a variety of sizes and firmness. You can have your veterinarian order them for you, or you can procure them yourself and swing by the office to have them installed (disclaimer: this is a surgical procedure, and is least invasively accomplished at the time of the initial neutering).

So, you may find that you are once again able to look your neutered dog straight in the eye, without fear of guilt or reproach. And, really, isn't that what it's all about?

Settle down, Fido, we'll fetch those balls for you!