Yes, dogs can get testicular torsion. It’s the same condition that affects humans: the testicle rotates on its axis, twisting the spermatic cord and cutting off blood flow. While relatively rare in dogs compared to humans, it’s a veterinary emergency. Tissue death can begin in as little as three hours, making quick recognition and treatment critical.
How Testicular Torsion Happens in Dogs
The spermatic cord is the structure that supplies blood to the testicle. When the testicle rotates around its own axis, the cord twists, squeezing the blood vessels inside it. Blood can no longer flow in or out of the testicle properly. The resulting loss of oxygen triggers a chain of damage: swelling, tissue breakdown, and eventually necrosis if the torsion isn’t resolved.
The twist can be partial or complete. A partial torsion reduces blood flow but doesn’t eliminate it entirely. A complete torsion cuts off circulation altogether, accelerating the damage. Either way, the condition is extremely painful and requires urgent care.
Cryptorchidism Is the Biggest Risk Factor
The single most important risk factor for testicular torsion in dogs is cryptorchidism, a condition where one or both testicles fail to descend into the scrotum during development. Instead, the testicle remains inside the abdomen or gets stuck in the inguinal canal. Cornell University’s College of Veterinary Medicine notes that dogs with a retained testicle have a significantly higher risk of both testicular torsion and testicular cancer.
A retained testicle sits in a space where it has more room to move and rotate than it would in the scrotum, which normally holds the testicle relatively snug. That extra mobility makes twisting far more likely. Torsion of a retained abdominal testicle is particularly dangerous because the signs are harder to spot from the outside. There’s no visible scrotal swelling to alert you, just a dog in sudden, unexplained pain.
Dogs with normally descended testicles can still develop torsion, but it’s much less common. When it does happen in a scrotal testicle, it tends to be associated with testicular tumors or other masses that change the weight and shape of the testicle, making it more prone to rotating.
Signs to Watch For
Testicular torsion causes sudden, severe pain. In dogs, this often looks like acute abdominal distress: restlessness, panting, reluctance to move, a hunched posture, or crying out when touched around the belly or groin. Vomiting and loss of appetite are common because the pain can be intense enough to cause nausea.
If the affected testicle is in the scrotum, you may notice obvious swelling on one side, warmth, and a testicle that looks higher than usual or sits at an odd angle. The dog will likely resist any attempt to touch the area. If the torsion involves a retained abdominal testicle, the external signs are less specific. You’ll see a dog that seems to be in serious pain, possibly with a tense or distended abdomen, but no visible scrotal changes. This can look similar to other abdominal emergencies, which is one reason the condition sometimes takes longer to diagnose in cryptorchid dogs.
Fever and lethargy develop as the condition progresses, especially if tissue has already started to die.
How Veterinarians Diagnose It
Ultrasound is the primary diagnostic tool. A standard ultrasound can reveal an enlarged testicle with an abnormal shape and changes in tissue texture. But the most telling technique is Doppler ultrasound, which maps blood flow in real time. In a torsed testicle, Doppler shows reduced or completely absent blood flow, confirming the diagnosis. One experimental study in dogs found that affected testicles displayed progressive enlargement, increasingly uneven tissue, and no detectable blood flow on Doppler imaging.
In some cases, especially when the testicle is deep in the abdomen, standard ultrasound findings can be ambiguous. CT imaging has been used in those situations to get a clearer picture. The key distinction veterinarians need to make is between torsion and other conditions that cause testicular pain and swelling, particularly infections of the testicle or epididymis. Both can cause pain and enlargement, but infections typically develop more gradually and don’t show the sudden loss of blood flow that defines torsion. Doppler ultrasound is the tool that reliably separates the two.
Treatment Is Always Surgical
There is no conservative treatment for testicular torsion in dogs. The affected testicle needs to be surgically removed. Unlike in human medicine, where surgeons sometimes attempt to untwist and save the testicle, the standard approach in veterinary medicine is orchiectomy (removal of the testicle). This is partly because most cases in dogs involve retained testicles that were already at risk for cancer, and partly because the window for saving viable tissue is extremely narrow.
For abdominal testicles, the surgery can sometimes be performed laparoscopically through small incisions, which typically means a faster recovery. In one reported case of a puppy with a torsed abdominal testicle, laparoscopic removal led to an uneventful recovery, and the dog was doing well six months later. For scrotal testicles, the procedure is more straightforward.
Recovery from surgery is generally good once the torsed testicle is removed. Most dogs bounce back within a week or two. The prognosis worsens significantly if the torsion has been present for a long time before surgery, because prolonged tissue death can lead to infection or toxin release into the bloodstream.
The Three-Hour Window
Research on experimentally induced torsion shows that irreversible tissue damage can begin after just three hours. That doesn’t mean every dog loses the testicle at the three-hour mark, since the degree of twisting matters. A partial torsion with some remaining blood flow buys more time than a complete one. But as a general rule, the faster a dog gets to surgery, the better the outcome and the lower the risk of complications like widespread infection.
If your dog is cryptorchid and suddenly shows signs of severe abdominal pain, torsion should be high on the list of possibilities. Even in dogs with descended testicles, sudden scrotal swelling with intense pain warrants an immediate vet visit rather than a wait-and-see approach.
Prevention Through Neutering
The most effective way to prevent testicular torsion in dogs is neutering. This is especially important for cryptorchid dogs, who face elevated risks of both torsion and cancer for as long as the retained testicle remains. Cornell recommends surgical removal of retained testicles regardless of whether the dog is being used for breeding, since cryptorchidism is hereditary and affected dogs shouldn’t pass the trait along.
For dogs with normally descended testicles, torsion risk is low but not zero. Neutering eliminates the possibility entirely, along with other testicular conditions. If you choose not to neuter, being aware of the signs of torsion and knowing it requires emergency care is the next best thing.