Dog Health Care - Spaying & neutering your dog or puppy

Hi my name is Sarah and my name is Haley and we are two of the technicians here at Extra Care Animal Hospital and on behalf of Expert Village.com, we are going to speak with you today a little bit about the care of your dog. Right now what I am going to talk about is spaying and neutering your dog. It is one of the things you want to do early to help prevent health problems when they get older. With females, you want to spay or what is commonly known as fix your dog before she goes into her first heat cycle. Once she has gone into her first heat cycle, her risk of getting mammary gland tumors or otherwise breast cancer goes up by 30 percent. If your female dog is spayed before she goes into her first heat, the risk of getting breast cancer is about .05 percent which otherwise compared to once they go into their first heat cycle can go up dramatically to a 30 percent chance or risk of getting breast cancer. There is also a risk of uterine cancer. They do have some sanitary needs to where they will have to wear a diaper for probably twice a year for about a week or so and once a female is in heat, you know they are very uncomfortable so we like to prevent that. We like to prevent the breast cancer, the uterine infection, the bleeding that you have to take care of sanitary wise and it is just overall better for your dog. With males we do what is called neutering and as I said you may assume it as being fixed. We neuter the males; take out their testicles and the reason why we do that is because it prevents testicular cancer and prostate problems. They can get an enlarged prostate. Non-neutered males are the number one dog to get by a car. They also tend to mount whether it is a stuff animal, another dog trying to breed which can be both annoying and irritating at the same time. It is crucial that you want to get your male neutered when he is younger because if you neuter him around 6 or 7 months before he goes through puberty, he is not going to develop that dominance, or that aggression or testosterone build up. The sooner you neuter him it’s a little bit better because you don’t have to worry about the aggression. If you neuter your dog the aggression risk is much lower. What I recommend is 6 or 7 months for both ages for both spaying and neutering. Health wise it is the number one thing. Pretty much the only con to getting them fixed is that they cannot have puppies but there are so many puppies right now, breeding may or may not be the right choice for you. At the animal hospital, we definitely recommend spaying females and neutering males. That is about it for the spaying and neutering. If you are interested in getting more information about our animal hospital, you can visit our website at www.extracareanimalhospital.net.