Today is Spay Day. Please spay or neuter your pets. It’s good for them, and may also help stop unwanted behavior like urine spraying and aggression that may be a problem for you. Unneutered male dogs are responsible for more than 70% of dog bites, and more than 90% of fatal dog attacks, in the US. It will also help stop literally millions of dogs and cats from having to be euthanized.
My 3 girls are already spayed, and my boy is a show dog so has to keep his manly bits. But really… does THIS:
look like he’s ready to become a statistic for biting dogs?? 
Here’s a little forum avatar I made once, people can download it and use it any way they like.
We’re all spayed/neutered here except the pet birds, and we’d do them too if the operation weren’t so hazardous for them; Buddie’s a veteran egg-layer. We had her on Lupron shots for a while to discourage her from laying, but she kept right at it despite the hormones.
Here’s a shot of Simone’s stitches from April 2007.
I’m happy to report that the shelter I work for opened a Spay/Neuter clinic last May, and has spayed and neutered over 2,000 cats and dogs since then!!!
Our goal is 5,000 per year, which we haven’t gotten that fast yet, but we’re getting there.
And it’s Spay/Neuter Month in Chicago - Participating vets and shelters are giving a $40 rebate to all Spay/Neuter surgeries in February.
And what Anne Neville said!
When I got my cats, my Luna’s tummy was still shaved from being spayed. The no-kill shelter where we got them spayed or neutered all animals before offering them for adoption, which I think is a really good idea.
Both my cats are spayed. Judging from the amount of purring they do, they seem happy.
My son told me this morning that today is Dog Biscuit Appreciation Day and proceeded to celebrate by giving the dog several dog biscuits.
So Happy Dog Biscuit Appreciation Day!!!
P.S. Our dog and both cats are fixed and happy as clams
If you think you can’t afford to spay or neuter your pet, ask your vet or some local animal rescue organizations. They may know of someone who does free or low-cost spaying and neutering.
Our male dog is happily neutered. Our female dog, though, is a Guide Dog breeder, and her job is to have puppies. 4 working guides and 2 breeders already. She should be going into season any minute now, and have another litter. After she retires from breeding, then she gets zapped.
My baby girl is still recovering from being spayed yesterday. Poor thing- she’s on pain meds and her pupils are so dilated, she looks like a creepy anime version of herself. This morning she was lying right in the doorway to my bedroom, and I accidentally kicked and/or stepped on her tummy- I am officially the worst mommy on Earth.
By the way, I got some kind of deal because of the neighborhood I live in- the cost of the spay was billed to something called Petfix. My cost was $20- 15 for the pain meds, optional but I looove my baby, and 5 because she was in heat.
No, I am, for putting my Luna on a diet after she broke 16 pounds. She’s a Siamese mix, so I hear a good deal about it, every day. She also said I was a bad mommy because I bought a rotisserie chicken last week and didn’t share with her (they use onions and garlic to flavor them, and those aren’t good for cats). She can make a sound like a baby crying, as well as many other pathetic sounds, when she wants to.
Good for you for getting your baby spayed, and hope she is feeling better soon.
There was a dog at the clinic yesterday that was determined to be too fat to fix- how much would it suck to go down there at 7 am, wait an hour, and be told that? Good luck to dieting kitties and doggies.
Here is my Lucinda as of a few minutes ago, pink shaved belly sticking out. She seems to have learned to stick to under the bed for her recovery- a good thing considering my mile-long feet.
What breed is your boy? A nosehound?
I don’t think show dogs and guide dogs are contributing hugely to the problem of animal overpopulation. You’re presumably not breeding your dogs indiscriminately and as early and often as possible. Nor do I think you’re letting the puppies go to anybody who can come up with the money for one. I don’t think it’s show dogs and guide dogs that are the unneutered dogs that are biting all those people, either. Some people think all dog breeders are part of the problem, but I don’t.
Awwwww! Pretty kitty!
We got Sadie spayed at about four months. That might have been early, but she was humping my leg and the sofa pillow. Precocious! The cats were fixed at about six months.
Before I understood that dogs could get pregnant at a fairly young age, I had two dogs who had litters – a lab who had 11 puppies and then got in a fight with another dog and spent a week at the vet, and a lab-poodle mix who had five puppies (and we didn’t even know she was pregnant). The lab was spayed while she was at the vet and the lab-poodle was spayed shortly after her litter. We were able to find homes for all the puppies. These were dogs from the shelter, but it didn’t do much good for us to home them and then let them breed. We know better now.
One of the kids brought home a pregnant calico cat. She had three gorgeous kittens and we almost hated to spay her, but we did.
(This was about 40 years ago.)
Pain meds are optional for a pet who’s had surgery???
They are in some places, and I can see them being labelled as optional in a low-cost setting. After all, in many places, animals still do not get the pre-operative workups that humans get, why expect the post-op work to be different in that sense?
And I do remember working at vet clinics were they didn’t send the animals home with painkillers routinely. That was about ten years ago, I think the clinic has since updated some of its protocols, but that wasn’t uncommon at the time.
My own dog didn’t get pain meds after her spay, and that was about 5 and a half years ago. Actually, she recovered very well, she was back to “bouncing puppy” mode the morning after (she had surgery that day, I picked her that afternoon from the vet, a couple hours after spay).
Ooh, a Siamese mix on a diet? shudder I hope I never have to do that to my Sapphire. I’d never hear the end of it!
She came home from the shelter spayed and microchipped, so no worries here about unfixed beasties. Now if I could get my hands on the quack vet who declawed her (bad enough) but on all four feet (horrible)…fortunately I have no idea who her previous people were, let alone her previous vets.
That’s not particularly early for spaying or neutering these days. It’s now done as early as 6 weeks. One big advantage of early spaying and neutering is that it means shelters can adopt out already spayed or neutered kittens and puppies.