Covering everything from mouthing to spaying and neutering, the ASPCA can help shed light on some basic behavioral bloopers.

CNN: Site-Seer: Fetching an obedient dog from the Web

Spicier pitches may also have had a hand in the unpredictable tournament results, by neutering the power-packed batting attacks of some of the bigger teams.

WSJ: IPL Is Serving Up a Spicy Menu

But by preventing the rise of an able successor, while neutering the new democratic institutions, he has left Guinea in a condition almost as precarious as his own health.

ECONOMIST: Ramshackle Guinea

However, there is speculation that, in the event of a deadlocked result, Mario Monti's centre bloc could end up lending support to the centre-left, thereby neutering the threat posed by Mr Berlusconi and his allies.

BBC: Q&A: Italian election

But, fearful of driving banks and investors away and so neutering the effort, he and Larry Summers, Mr Obama's White House economic adviser, have consistently resisted imposing conditions as strict as some in Congress would like.

ECONOMIST: The treasury secretary is torn between politics and policy

Unless the procedure is changed to one where appeals are possible only on specific legal grounds, there is a risk that, as today, anyone with the means could file for an almost limitless number of amparos, says Mr Hernandez, effectively neutering the state system.

ECONOMIST: The long path towards justice