February Is National Spay Or Neuter Your Pet Month

Whether you’ve recently adopted or are considering it, one of the most important health decisions you will make is to spay or neuter them.  Spaying and neutering your pets offer lifelong benefits, improves your pets behavior and keeps them close to home.  So in keeping with this theme, I am offering my top ten reasons to spay or neuter your pet.

1. Spaying your pet saves lives.  An unspayed female cat and her mate will produce 2 litters per year with 2.8 kittens surviving per litter.  After 2 years, that pair could be responsible for 67 offspring.  Likewise an unspayed dog, her mate and puppies could produce about 128 puppies in 2 years.
2. Your female pet will live a longer, healthier life.  Spaying helps prevent uterine infections and breast cancer.  Those female dogs that are spayed prior to their first heat cycle can have an incidence of .05% for breast cancer.  If they are spayed after their first heat cycle, that incidence increases to 18% and after the second heat cycle, the incidence is increased to 26%.
3. Neutering provides major health benefits for your male.  Besides preventing unwanted litters, neutering your male companion prevents testicular cancer, if done before six months of age.
4. By spaying your female, your pet won’t go into heat.  By not going into heat, you won’t need to experience the yowling, frequent urination, and abnormal behavioral pattern in your cat.  Your dog won’t have that unwanted discharge for a period of an average of 3 weeks.
5. Your male dog will be less likely to roam.  A male dog will do almost anything to find a mate.  That includes digging his way under the fence and making like Houdini to escape from the house.  And once he is free to roam, he risks injury in traffic and fights with other dogs.
6. Altered males and females will be better behaved and less aggressive. The dogs will be more affectionate and focus their attention more on their human families.  On the other hand, unneutered dogs and cats may mark their territory by spraying strong-smelling urine all over the house.
7. Spaying and neutering your pet will not make them fat.  Pets get fat because of lack of exercise and overfeeding.  Your pet will remain fit and trim as long as you continue to provide exercise and monitor food intake.
8. By spaying and neutering your pets, you create a safer neighborhood. Strays cause problems in the community by preying on wildlife, cause traffic accidents and scare children.  It will also help reduce the number of animals on the streets.
9. There are NO benefits to letting your pet have a litter.  Many pet owners think that their dog is special and unique.  The fact is that the shelters are full of special and unique pets.  By allowing your children to witness your pet birth, you are teaching your children to be irresponsible.
10. Just because you have a purebred doesn’t mean it should be bred. In fact, 25% of the dogs in the shelters are purebred, not including those in the rescue groups.

Extra tip!

1. If you get or are getting a new addition to the family, I highly recommend that you consider spaying and neutering your pet because of the previous reasons.  The cost is a lot less than having and caring for a litter.  It also beats the costs of treatments from cat and dog fights that might be necessary due to them being still intact. 

For more information on spaying and neutering, don’t hesitate to contact our office today!