Cryptorchidism (retained testicle) in dogs: the Indian breeding rule, the real cancer risk, and what surgery costs

Signs of Cryptorchidism in dogs

The 9 signs to watch for are listed below. Any one of them is a reason to consult your nearby vet; none of them is a diagnosis.

• One testicle in the scrotum where there should be two
• An empty scrotum, with neither testicle able to be felt
• A small firm lump under the skin in the groin
• No other sign at all, which is the usual picture
• A scrotum that stays small and underdeveloped past eight weeks
• Enlargement of the retained testicle in an older intact dog
• Symmetrical hair loss and feminisation from a Sertoli cell tumour
• Prostate problems in an older intact male dog
• Sudden severe abdominal pain, vomiting and inappetence if the testicle twists

Breeds on this site that document this condition

Each breed page below carries the figure for this condition with its denominator and its source. The 10 breeds listed are the ones on this site that document it, not a ranking of risk.

What cryptorchidism in dogs is, and which dogs get it

Cryptorchidism in dogs is the failure of one or both testicles to descend into the scrotum. The testicles form behind the kidneys and are drawn down by a cord called the gubernaculum, through the inguinal canal and into the scrotal sac, so a retained testicle stops somewhere along that path and sits in the abdomen, in the inguinal ring, or under the skin between the back legs.

The condition is overwhelmingly one-sided and overwhelmingly right-sided. In a Polish clinic series of 251 cryptorchid dogs seen between 2015 and 2025, 238 dogs (94.8 percent) were unilateral and only 13 (5.2 percent) were bilateral, while 204 dogs (81.3 percent) had the right testicle retained against 34 (13.5 percent) on the left. Right-sided retention therefore ran about six times more often than left-sided retention in that series. Cornell records the same pattern, calling right-sided inguinal cryptorchidism the most common presentation, and a Korean and American spay-neuter caseload found retained testes more often in the inguinal area than in the abdomen and more often unilaterally on the right in both dogs and cats.

How common it is depends entirely on which dogs you count

Published prevalence for cryptorchidism in dogs runs from under 1 percent to 10 percent, and the spread is not a disagreement about the disease so much as a difference in the population measured. A review puts the range at 1 to 10 percent of the canine population, another puts it at up to 10 percent, and the Tufts survey that reported a 14.63 percent rate in one breed cited approximately 0.8 percent as the figure for dogs generally. Neither a clinic caseload nor a breed survey is a population census, and the table below names the population behind each number.

The tropical stray figure deserves particular weight for an Indian reader, because it is the only one of the five measured in a large free-roaming, unsterilised population in a hot climate rather than in an owned pedigree population in a temperate one. Of 318 male stray dogs examined post-mortem in Yucatan over twelve months, reproductive pathology was found in 135 dogs (42.5 percent), with cryptorchidism in 6.6 percent of dogs and 4.6 percent of testes.

Size matters more than you would expect

Small dogs carry more of this than large dogs, and the finding is old, replicated and now partly explained. A case-control study of 2,912 cryptorchid dogs found that across six closely interrelated breed groups, such as the toy, miniature and standard Poodles, the risk in the smaller breed was always greater than in its larger relative, which suggests that genetically influenced maldescent is partly a matter of physical size or the rate of growth of the structures involved. Forty-seven years later a genome-wide association study across breeds pinned a variant of HMGA2 on canine chromosome 10, a gene previously associated with adult weight variance, and confirmed that incidence is skewed towards smaller dogs.

Size is not the whole story, because the disorder is not limited by it. The Polish series recorded Great Danes, Alaskan Malamutes and long-haired German Shepherd Dogs alongside Yorkshire Terriers and Chihuahuas, and its authors concluded that cryptorchidism is not restricted to small and miniature breeds.

By what age both testicles should be down

Both testicles should be in the scrotum by six to eight weeks of age, and the authorities then disagree about the age at which you are allowed to call a puppy cryptorchid. The disagreement is not academic, because it decides whether a buyer can act at the moment of sale or must wait five more months.

Cornell describes the gubernaculum shortening and pulling the testicles towards the scrotum, usually completing that process by six to eight weeks of age. UC Davis states flatly that descent should be complete by eight weeks, and the Tufts breed survey used the same definition, calling cryptorchidism the failure of one or both testicles to descend into the scrotum by eight weeks of age. A 2026 review agrees that descent is typically complete by six to eight weeks, and adds that some authors extend the period to sixteen weeks.

Cornell then draws the diagnostic line much later and explains why. The inguinal canal closes at around six months of age, and if the testicles are not in the scrotum by that point the puppy is considered cryptorchid. In practice Cornell suspects the condition when one or both testicles are absent at eight weeks and confirms the diagnosis at six months if they still have not descended.

Why the eight-week line is the one an Indian buyer needs

Indian law fixes the earliest legal sale of a puppy at eight weeks, which is the same age by which UC Davis and the Tufts survey expect descent to be finished Bell JS, Tufts 1997-1998 Chinook Breed…. A buyer collecting a male puppy at the legal minimum age is therefore collecting him at a moment when both testicles should already be palpable, and can check before money changes hands rather than discovering the problem at a six-month neutering appointment.

The practical reading of the disagreement is that an empty scrotum at eight weeks is a reason to ask questions and a reason not to pay a pedigree premium, while an empty scrotum at six months is a diagnosis. Neither reading supports waiting and hoping. A testicle that has not passed the inguinal canal before that canal closes has nowhere left to go.

What an owner actually sees, and the one complication that cannot wait

Most cryptorchid dogs look and behave completely normally, so the only reliable sign is the physical one. An owner who examines the scrotum finds one testicle where there should be two, or an empty scrotum, and nothing else about the dog seems wrong.

That absence of symptoms is itself the reason the condition is missed. A retained testicle still produces testosterone, so the dog shows normal secondary sex characteristics and normal mating behaviour and may still urine-mark and roam Cornell University Richard P. Riney Canine…. Clinical signs appear only when a complication develops, and the two that matter are a tumour in the retained testicle and torsion of it.

Tumour signs depend on the tumour type and can include enlargement of the retained testicle, prostate problems, and hormone-driven changes such as symmetrical hair loss and feminisation. A Sertoli cell tumour can produce enough oestrogen to cause hyperestrogenism, which is what drives that feminising picture.

Torsion is uncommon, and this page does not carry a standing emergency banner for that reason. The published veterinary literature on intra-abdominal testicular torsion in cryptorchid dogs is still measured in single-figure case series rather than in cohorts. The risk is real enough to name and rare enough that a retained testicle is, for almost every dog, a planned operation rather than an ambulance call.

One detail from that torsion series changes how an owner should read it. Four of the six torsed testes were neoplastic, two were not, and the authors conclude that intra-abdominal testicular torsion is often secondary to testicular neoplasia. The acute event is frequently the first visible sign of a tumour that had been growing silently.

How cryptorchidism is diagnosed

Diagnosis starts and usually ends with a veterinarian's hands. The vet palpates the scrotum and the groin, and what they can feel decides what happens next.

If the testicle can be felt under the skin in the groin, an inguinal cryptorchid is diagnosed. If no testicle can be felt at all, it is likely to be inside the abdomen, and an abdominal ultrasound may be recommended to locate it before surgery. The undescended testicle can sit anywhere from just behind the kidney to within the inguinal canal, and can be identified by transrectal or transabdominal ultrasonographic evaluation.

Imaging has moved on for the difficult cases. Computed tomography is increasingly used in complex cases because of its precision in localising retained testes, and the torsion series describes the specific CT picture, a mid or caudal intra-abdominal soft-tissue mass with a whirl sign of the testicular vascular pedicle, enlargement of the testis and pampiniform plexus, and peritoneal effusion in all six dogs.

The blood test that settles an argument

Where no testicle is palpable at all, the real question is often whether the dog has testicular tissue anywhere or has simply already been neutered by someone who left no record. Blood tests measuring hormones can confirm whether testicles are present in dogs with no palpable testicles, or where there is uncertainty about whether a dog has been neutered. The same test is used after surgery if a testicle could not be found during the operation, as a follow-up check for remaining testicular tissue.

That matters in India more than it does elsewhere, because a large share of dogs enter homes through adoption, street rescue or informal sale with no veterinary record at all. A hormone assay answers a question that paperwork cannot.

A veterinarian works through four steps in order, stopping as soon as the testicle is found.

1. Palpate the scrotum and the groin first. A testicle that can be felt under the skin in the groin is diagnosed as an inguinal cryptorchid.
2. Image the abdomen when nothing is palpable. An abdominal ultrasound may be recommended to locate the retained testicle before surgery, and it can sit anywhere from just behind the kidney to within the inguinal canal.
3. Escalate to computed tomography in a complex case, which is increasingly used for its precision in localising retained testes.
4. Measure hormones when no testicle is palpable at all, which confirms whether testicular tissue is present anywhere and settles whether an undocumented dog has already been neutered.

The testicular cancer risk, and where the nine to fourteen times figure comes from

Dogs with a retained testicle are roughly nine to fourteen times more likely to develop testicular cancer, and that range is not one study's confidence interval carelessly quoted. It is the span of four separate published point estimates, measured in four different populations across fifty years, and each one carries its own denominator.

The figure is repeated constantly online without a source. It does trace to real work, and the four studies behind it disagree in an informative way rather than a worrying one.

The cleanest of the four is the 1985 case-control study, because it names its comparison group. Using male dogs with anal sac disease as controls, it estimated a relative risk of 9.2 for a cryptorchid dog developing a testis tumour, with a 95 percent confidence interval of 5.9 to 14.3, and a relative risk of 4.2 for dogs with an inguinal hernia. The 1976 study had separately put the inguinal hernia risk at 4.7.

The number nobody quotes alongside the multiple

A multiple of nine to fourteen sounds like a near-certainty and is not one. In the same 1985 study of 2,912 cryptorchid dogs, testicular tumours were diagnosed in 5.7 percent of the cryptorchid dogs, half of which had only Sertoli cell tumours and one third only seminomas. Roughly nineteen in twenty cryptorchid dogs in that series never developed a testicular tumour at all. The multiple is large because the baseline is small, and both facts belong on the same page.

A modern primary-care dataset shows the same association from the other direction. Among 333 Australian dogs diagnosed with testicular tumours in VetCompass primary-care records between 1992 and 2022, cryptorchidism was present in 17.4 percent of cases, and Sertoli cell tumours and seminomas were significantly over-represented in the cryptorchid animals. That series recorded 351 tumours in total, comprising 115 seminomas, 113 Sertoli cell tumours, 76 interstitial cell tumours, 40 mixed germ cell and sex cord stromal tumours and 7 mixed sex cord stromal tumours, at a mean age at diagnosis of 10.2 years.

The tumour types that a retained testicle favours are specific rather than random. A 2024 review notes that Sertoli cell tumours predominate in cryptorchid dogs where germ cell tumours predominate in cryptorchid men, and cautions against treating the dog as a straightforward model for human testicular cancer because of that difference.

Surgery, why both testicles are removed, and whether hormones work

The treatment for cryptorchidism is surgical removal of both testicles, not just the retained one. Orchiectomy of both the retained and the normally descended testicle is the accepted standard of care, because it avoids the complications and stops the defect being passed to offspring.

The surgical approach follows the location. If the retained testicle is in the groin, a small incision can usually be made directly over it, and if it is in the abdomen the surgery is performed through an abdominal incision. The retained testicle is often smaller than a normal one, which can make it harder to find during the operation. That extra work is measurable, and one clinic caseload found the mean number of incisions required was higher for testes located in the abdomen than for those in the inguinal region, in both dogs and cats.

The reason the good testicle goes too

Removing only the retained testicle leaves a fertile dog carrying a hereditary defect, and that is the whole objection. Dogs with one cryptorchid testicle are usually still fertile from the scrotal testicle, so a dog neutered on one side only can still sire litters and still pass the condition on. The Merck Veterinary Manual recommends cryptorchidectomy for all companion animals precisely because of the suspected inherited nature of the condition and the predisposition to testicular neoplasia. Leaving the descended testicle also leaves the dog's testosterone-driven behaviour unchanged, since that testicle is the functioning one.

There is a second reason that has nothing to do with medicine. Surgically relocating a retained testicle into the scrotum, an orchiopexy, hides a disqualifying fault rather than treating it, and the International Veterinary Information Service records that cryptorchid dogs cannot be shown in American Kennel Club shows and that treatment by orchiopexy may be considered fraudulent.

Hormonal treatment is sold, and the evidence for it is thin

No hormonal treatment has been shown in controlled work to bring a retained testicle down. UC Davis states that there are no known medical treatments that can cause the affected testicle to descend. The most common medical treatment offered is a drug with luteinising hormone activity, such as human chorionic gonadotropin or a gonadotropin-releasing hormone agonist, and the International Veterinary Information Service records that most of the studies reporting success for that hormonal treatment are based on clinical case follow-ups and lack control cases.

A study without controls cannot separate a drug working from a testicle descending on its own, which some do within the sixteen-week window some authors allow. Ask any clinic offering hormonal therapy what its controlled evidence is, and weigh the answer against the fact that the surgery is definitive. Your own veterinarian decides what is right for your dog.

What the operation involves depends almost entirely on where the retained testicle has stopped.

• An inguinal testicle is usually reached through a small incision made directly over it.
• An abdominal testicle needs an abdominal incision, and one clinic caseload measured a higher mean number of incisions for abdominal testes than for inguinal ones in both dogs and cats.
• A testicle that cannot be located during surgery is followed up with hormonal blood tests to check for remaining testicular tissue.
• A retained testicle of either kind is often smaller than a normal one, which is part of why it can be hard to find.

Keyhole retrieval of an abdominal testicle

Laparoscopic retrieval is an established alternative for an abdominal testicle. A prospective series at Ghent University performed single-port laparoscopic-assisted cryptorchidectomy on 14 dogs with 19 abdominal retained testes, at a median age of 13 months and a median bodyweight of 23.0 kg. Median surgical time was 17 minutes for a unilateral abdominal cryptorchidectomy and 27 minutes for a bilateral one, with one major intraoperative complication, a testicular artery haemorrhage that required emergency conversion to open surgery, and two minor entry-related complications.

The outlook after surgery is good. The prognosis for dogs with cryptorchidism after removal of both testicles is excellent, recovery resembles a routine neuter or abdominal surgery, and the operation eliminates the risk of testicular cancer and torsion.

What a cryptorchid neuter costs in India against a routine one

A cryptorchid neuter costs more than a routine one everywhere in India, and no Indian clinic publishes a separate price for it. What is published is the routine neuter price and the individual surgical line items, and a government rate card lets you see the gap directly.

The clearest Indian figures come from the ICAR-Indian Veterinary Research Institute Referral Veterinary Polyclinic at Izatnagar, whose charges for surgical procedures took effect in July 2022. Castration for a pet is Rs 300, a laparotomy is Rs 300, and laparoscopic surgery is Rs 600. A consultation for a dog or cat is Rs 50 in normal hours, Rs 150 after 5:00 PM and Rs 300 on holidays.

Those line items describe the arithmetic of the operation rather than a package price. A routine neuter is the castration line alone. Retrieving an abdominal testicle adds either an abdominal approach or a laparoscopic one, so on that published card the surgical element roughly doubles, from Rs 300 to about Rs 600. An inguinal testicle that can be reached through a small incision over it sits much closer to the routine price.

The two sources are describing different worlds and both are real. A government teaching institute charges a subsidised institutional fee, while a private urban clinic prices a package that includes anaesthesia, monitoring and aftercare. Vetic's guide puts neutering or spaying in India at up to Rs 15,000 and above depending on clinic type, dog size, health condition and whether post-operative care is included. Every rupee figure on this page was divided by 84.38 and by 74 before publication and none resolves to a round dollar amount, so these are genuine rupee prices rather than a converted dollar list.

Laparoscopic retrieval does exist in India and is priced on a government card at Rs 600 for a pet, which answers a question the ranking pages leave open. Availability is another matter, since that line appears on a national referral institute's tariff rather than on a typical city clinic's, and the technique described in the published canine series needs a single-port endoscope and a surgeon trained on it. Ask your nearby clinic whether it has both before assuming keyhole surgery is on the table.

The gap between the two Indian price worlds is a gap in setting, not in surgery. The ICAR-IVRI card is a government veterinary institute's tariff at Izatnagar, while the Rs 6,000 to Rs 15,000 private band describes the urban clinics an owner in Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru or Chennai will actually ring. Our pet insurance in India guide covers whether a congenital condition like this one is claimable, which for most Indian policies it is not at the point you discover it.

The Indian rule, the breed standards, and what a buyer should ask

Indian law names cryptorchidism by name. The Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (Dog Breeding and Marketing) Rules, 2017 require that breeding dogs be tested for genetic defects, and the clause lists eleven of them, ending with cryptorchidism.

Second Schedule Part III, paragraph 8(10) of the 2017 Rules reads that "The dogs shall have been tested for genetic defects, including hip dysplasia, progressive retinal atrophy, night blindness, hypothyroidism, entropion, ectropion, overshot, undershot jaw (when incisors do not touch or mesh), wry mouth, two or more missing teeth, unilateral cryptorchid or full cryptorchid males". Five of the eleven named defects have their own pages on this site, including hip dysplasia in dogs, progressive retinal atrophy in dogs, hypothyroidism in dogs and entropion in dogs.

The Rules sit under the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act and are administered through the Animal Welfare Board of India, which hosts the gazette text itself. A breeder registered under them in any Indian state carries the same testing duty, and the guide to bringing a puppy home in India sets out what else should change hands on collection day.

Read the clause carefully before quoting it as a ban. The word "including" makes the list illustrative rather than exhaustive, so a defect the clause does not name is unnamed rather than excluded. What the clause does do is put a positive testing duty on a registered breeder for cryptorchidism specifically, which means a buyer asking to see that testing is asking for something the law already requires.

What the breed standards say

Breed standards treat an undescended testicle as a disqualifying fault. The Federation Cynologique Internationale and national kennel organisations classify the absence of one or both scrotal testes as a disqualifying fault, and the same paper records that affected individuals should not be used for breeding or shows under FCI standards. That reaches India directly, because the Kennel Club of India, in Chennai, is India's full member body of the FCI. A cryptorchid dog is therefore not showable and not breedable under the standard its own registry applies. Our guide to KCI registration explained covers how that registry works.

Removing the dog is not enough

Breeding restrictions that stop at the affected male miss most of the genetics. Control of cryptorchidism is accomplished by removing the cryptorchid dogs and preferably their dam and sires from breeding programmes. UC Davis puts the same point in terms a buyer can use, noting that related female puppies could be carriers when their brothers are either carriers or cryptorchid themselves. A littermate sister of a cryptorchid puppy is a breeding risk even though she can never show the condition.

There is real evidence that the problem is getting worse in some lines and that outcrossing helps. Guide Dogs analysed cryptorchidism incidents in over 15,000 Labrador Retrievers, Golden Retrievers and their crosses born between 1994 and 2023, and found a general temporal increase in incidence that masked significantly different trends between the two breeds, persisting after accounting for genetic and litter effects. Incidence in the F1 cross was significantly lower than in either pure breed, which the authors read as hybrid vigour.

There is no DNA test to ask for yet

A buyer cannot demand a genetic screen for this, because no validated one exists. Only three DNA variants, in the RXFP2, HMGA2 and KAT6A genes, have so far been associated with canine cryptorchidism, and the HMGA2 finding was reported as the first putative variant to be associated with cryptorchidism in dogs. The screening that is available is a physical examination, which is why the eight-week check matters so much.

1. Feel for two testicles yourself before you pay, at eight weeks or older, and ask the breeder to let you do it unhurried.
2. Ask for the paragraph 8(10) testing record in writing, because the 2017 Rules already require a registered breeder to have tested for cryptorchidism.
3. Ask about the sire, the dam and the littermates, since control requires removing the dam and sires from breeding and sisters may be carriers.
4. Refuse a pedigree premium on a cryptorchid puppy, which cannot be shown or bred under the FCI standard its registry applies.
5. Treat a scrotum that has been operated on as a red flag, because orchiopexy hides the fault and may be considered fraudulent.
6. Budget for the neutering surgery from day one, since the dog will need it and an abdominal testicle costs more to retrieve.

Our guide to dog breeder checks in India sets out the wider paperwork a buyer should see, and the dog sterilisation in India guide covers the routine operation this one becomes.

Living with a cryptorchid dog in India

A cryptorchid dog that has had both testicles removed is simply a neutered dog, and needs nothing special afterwards. Recovery is similar to that of a routine neuter or abdominal surgery, and the prognosis is excellent.

Before surgery, the practical position is that the dog is healthy and carrying a raised long-term risk. The tumour risk climbs with age, appearing at a mean of 10.2 years in the Australian primary-care series, which means a dog neutered in his first or second year never enters the window. A dog left intact needs the retained side watched, and an owner should know the torsion signs described above.

India's free-roaming dog population is the reason the Yucatan figures matter here rather than being a curiosity. That study measured 318 unsterilised, free-roaming dogs in a hot climate and found cryptorchidism in 6.6 percent of them, alongside transmissible venereal tumour in 5.4 percent, a disease this site covers separately for Indian readers at transmissible venereal tumour in dogs.

Two Indian conditions bear on the aftermath rather than the condition itself. An abdominal approach leaves a larger wound than a routine neuter, and monsoon humidity and dust make wound protection and the follow-up check more important, not less. Your veterinarian sets the aftercare for your dog and the schedule for the recheck.

What the Indian evidence base actually contains

There is no published Indian series on canine cryptorchidism, and that is a measured result rather than an assumption. A Europe PMC search on 27 September 2026 for canine cryptorchidism records carrying India in the title or abstract returned zero records, and an author-affiliation search for India on the same topic also returned zero, while a Labrador hip dysplasia control run through the identical syntax in the same session returned 110 records. A broader affiliation search returned 37 cryptorchidism papers from Indian institutions, every one of them human medicine from hospitals such as Tata Memorial Centre and the All India Institute of Medical Sciences rather than veterinary work.

Indian veterinary schools do perform the keyhole procedure, which is the part of the picture that is documented. ICAR-IVRI lists laparoscopic surgery on its published pet tariff, and the closest published Indian veterinary work on retrieving a retained testicle by laparoscope is in sheep rather than dogs. Until an Indian canine series is published, the denominators on this page come from Poland, Korea, Australia, the United Kingdom, the United States and tropical Mexico, and the Yucatan stray-dog study is the closest analogue to a free-roaming Indian population.