Reasons to Spay or Neuter Your Pet

Reasons to Spay or Neuter your Pet

1. Your pet will live a longer, healthier life
2. Your pet will be better behaved and overall happier
3. It helps prevent pet overpopulation

#1 Your pet will live a longer, healthier life

This is on top of everyone's list, right? Anything we can do to help our pets live a longer and healthier life should be prioritized.

When it comes to your female pet, spaying helps prevent uterine infections and breast tumors. These can show up malignant or cancerous in around 50% of dogs and 90% of cats.

Tip: Spaying your pet before she goes into her first heat offers the best protection from these diseases.

Neutering your male pets prevents testicular cancer as well as some prostate problems.*

For those who like to see the numbers, a study was done by Banfield Pet Hospitals. Included in this study were 2.2 million dogs and 460,000 cats. The findings were pretty impressive.

It concluded that neutered male dogs lived 18% longer and spayed female dogs lived 23% longer. Spayed female cats in the study lived 39% longer and neutered male cats lived 62% longer.**

Clearly, you can see, the numbers don’t lie.

#2 Your pet will be better behaved and overall happier

Once your dog or cat has been spayed or neutered, they are less likely to behave aggressively and focus their attention on their human family members…meaning YOU!

Below is a quick list of behavioral problems that may be alleviated by spaying or neutering your pet:

• Some types of aggression
• Roaming, especially when females are in heat or males want to find a mate
• Excessive barking and mounting activity
• As well as in-heat behaviors like yowling or vocalizing

Remember, it is important to understand that while spaying or neutering your pet may be helpful in resolving certain behavior problems, it’s not a cure-all for every misbehavior. You may have to come up with other solutions if your pet’s behavior continues to be a problem.***

Also, it is important to note, that while having your pets spayed or neutered will most likely help with certain undesirable behaviors, it will not change their fundamental cute personalities that makes them unique. Overall, your pet will live a much happier life.

#3 It helps prevent pet overpopulation

Every year, millions of dogs and cats end up in shelters. Sometimes they are adopted, while some are unfortunate and are euthanized (killed). If those dogs or cats don’t make it to a shelter, they are left to wander the streets as strays. Some shelters do not euthanize dogs or cats, but they also don’t have enough room or resources to take care of them all, which sadly leads to many dogs and cats being turned away.

Getting your pet spayed or neutered will help prevent accidental breeding by free-roaming. To put it in perspective, dogs reproduce 15 times as fast as humans and cats reproduce 45 times as fast as humans.****

However, all of this can be prevented if we take the time to spay or neuter our pets. By spaying or neutering your pet, you’ll help control the pet homelessness crisis.

If you do happen to be getting a new puppy or kitten this year, besides making sure they are spayed or neutered, be sure to be prepared! To help you out, we put together a special puppy and kitten collection just for your new family member.

Check out the collection here!