December 19, 2023
There are a number of reasons why sterilization of your pet is appropriate, in fact, more so than leaving them in an unaltered “natural” state. Some reasons are for the benefit of society, some for the benefit of your animal. Over 1.5 MILLION unwanted dogs and cats are euthanized in the US every year. Breeding more animals adds to this toll, either directly by the animal you breed ending up in the unwanted population or indirectly by creating a cute puppy or kitten that is kept over one already waiting for a home. Any dog or cat lover should take this data seriously as it represents great suffering by our loved creatures.
Leaving a male dog or cat intact encourages roaming. A male cat can smell a female in heat for about a mile and a dog can smell a female in heat for up to 3 miles, depending on the weather conditions. These pets who are roaming that distance is subject to injury and stands a real chance of becoming lost. Pets who roam outdoors also cause considerable damage. Beyond upset neighbors whose female dog tied with your male or whose chicken’s coop was raided by your pet, or who lost sleep listening to cats yowl all night, pet cats in the US kill 1.3 BILLION songbirds each year. This is considerably more than any other cause of death of songbirds.
Our veterinarians recommend that sterilization occurs in first year of life. For cats and small dogs, 6 months is an ideal age. For large dogs, 7-8 months and for giant dog breeds 1 year are suggested to allow for mature bone growth before sterilization. There is no medical reason to wait for a dog or cat to undergo their first heat cycle prior to neutering; that just increases the nuisance factor for you and runs the risk that unplanned breeding occurs.
There are compelling reasons why sterilization protects the health of your animal. The most serious is that intact female dogs, in their later years, sometimes develop an infection in the uterus called a pyometra. Because this infection is hidden inside of them, and because dogs are stoic and don’t necessarily let you know that they are becoming ill, pyometra frequently is not discovered until the dog becomes septic. At this point the dog is very, very ill and may have developed kidney failure. The only solution is to spay them, but because they are already so ill, their chances of dying from this are quite high.
From a behavior standpoint neutering a male dog does help somewhat with the dog developing dog to dog aggression; this is sometimes also true for female dogs. Most people are concerned with their animal gaining weight after sterilization While there may be some hormonal changes behind weight gain, the largest factor is that sterilization is done at the time that most growth slow down. The young animal then doesn’t need as many calories to thrive, so extra food causes weight gain, often wrongly blamed on sterilization.