physical development

Question
I have a 5 month old male Lab. I plan to neuter him, but have been told that if I do it at 6 months, he will not develop the large head I was hoping he'd have. Is this true?

Answer
While there is some validity to giving the dogs more time to develop before spay/neutering, the head shape is largely genetic and dogs with small, pointy heads at 5 months, will have small, pointy heads as adults, intact or not.  The dog guide school we have raised puppies for since 1991 waits until after the dogs are a year old to select breeding stock and doesn't spay/neuter any of them before then.  I have followed many dogs to a year old, and a few of their breeding stock from the night they were born until they retired as breeding stock at 6-8 years.  

Lab puppies all start out with big, square heads.  As they develop, many of them have small, pointy heads by 5 months.  At a year, or in some cases later, the head size and shape are little different in intact dogs.  So putting off neutering may or may not help some other problems, but won't correct a small head.