Got a dog secondhand. We’re firm believers in spay/neuter, so we had the little boy’s boys nipped off. Pomeranian (as far as we can tell), about 6 pounds, maybe 5 years old (we’re not really sure, like I said, he came secondhand), otherwise appears to be in good health.
What does a neuter cost in your neck of the woods? We live in Maryland, Montgomery County.
I suspect we both got castrated by the vet, just want to ask around. The complete package (neuter, anesthesia, pre-anesthesia blood panel, torbuterol/rimadyl injection, 3 days rimadyl to take home, overnight stay at the clinic) cost me $242. (Specifically, the blood panel was $41, everything else was included in the price of the neuter, which was $201.)
Also, the vet told me he used dissolving sutures inside and skin glue outside. What the heck am I missing here? Why did he go inside the dog? I thought a spay was typically a complete hysterectomy, which is indeed invasive abdominal surgery. But… I thought a neuter was a far less involved procedure: snip, a suture or two to tie things up, and that’s that. For that reason, I thought a spay generally cost significantly more than a neuter. We had a 10 pound cat spayed at this same vet and I think it cost about $180 (which struck me as pricey as well, I was expecting $130-$150).
This was at a full-service vet practice (6(?) doctors), not the “low cost spay/neuter clinic” sponsored by the local humane society.
Can’t help with the cost estimates, since I have Big Dogs and besides that my last one came Without Nuts, but offering a possibility of why “inside”:
Might he have had an undescended testicle? I’ve heard (again, can’t verify since I have Big Dogs) that it’s sometimes tough to tell with small dogs if both have descended.
Just a thought - and if the vet had to…um…“go fish” for the second testicle, that could account for some higher-than-usual costs.
I’d ask the vet, if you’ve got problems with the bill. Remember: you are the customer.
I am intimately familiar with this question. No, not THAT intimately, you freak.
Local veterinarians charge $100 and up, and offer no price breaks except in very unusual circumstances. That’s because we’ve got one of the nation’s leading low-cost spay/neuter clinics in town, the Humane Alliance. They charge $55 to neuter (or spay) a dog, no matter the size, age, etc. Vaccinations are a little bit extra. Cats are $35 for males, $50 for females.
If you can’t afford that, and you live in our county, we (the humane society) administer two different programs. Folks who are on qualifying public assistance (Food Stamps, Medicaid, and a handful of other programs) can receive vouchers that cover the entire cost of the surgery. Everyone else can receive a voucher that covers the part of the surgery they can’t afford – usually half the cost, but if someone is in dire straits and can only afford to pay $5 or even nothing toward the surgery, we’ll write them as big a voucher as they need to get the surgery done.
The first program is run through the state; the second one is paid for through a private foundation that funds similar programs across the country.
In short, neutering a dog in Buncombe County costs only as much as you can afford, or frequently less.
Usually neuters are cheaper than spays, since less stuff comes out. It’s also more expensive to schnip off “the boy bits” of a hound if the dog is large.
Basically, your fee breaks down like so:
a) The surgery - a flat fee (will increase if a bitch is in heat, or if the animal is older and there are more risks involved - i.e. more time needed)
b) The anasthetic - a fee scaled on the size of the animal
c) Pre-post surgical care - flat fee
d) An e-collar - fee scaled on size
e) Painkillers - scaled as well, and optional (but I’d take 'em!)
f) Bloodwork pre surgery - usually you can ask to skip that. What it does is check kidney/liver functions to make sure your pet is safe to be put out cold.
g) a pre-surgery exam - usually to the tune of 35-40 bucks. They wanna make sure your pet is healthy enough to schnip.
I’m getting my 2 y.o. aussie bitch spayed next week. She’s also having her hips x-rayed for OFA (http://www.offa.org) certification since she’s a working dog. All told, it will be just under $300. That includes everything. Pre-exam, surgery, painkillers, and hip x-ray, AND she’s a mature bitch. We’ve decided not to keep her in the breeder’s breeding program (a sibling is, though), and since ASCA (http://www.asca.org) has kept its “altered conformation” program, I can live up to my promise to the breeder to put a Championship on her without her being intact! Rock on!
Your vet just sounds thorough in what he’s doing - painkillers, good care… mind you, you’re paying about as much as I will for a 2 y.o. intact bitch being spayed.
As for “going in there”, yeah, they do. They have to schnip off some stuff internally, too, but it’s CERTAINLY less invasive than a spay.
I’m not looking forward to Zap’s spaying… it makes me nervous, though I know she will be just fine in the end…
Keep in mind, a neuter is quite a bit more complicated than a vasectomy, which seems to be what you’re picturing. You incise through the scrotum, usually right down the middle, and squeeze the testicles out. You follow the spermatic cord up a fair ways, then ligate that in two places and cut between the ligatures. Repeat ligation and cutting of a couple of blood vessels. Ditto for the second testicle. Then you close the subcutaneous layer of fascia, usually with a running pattern of absorbable suture, and close the cutaneous layer. On big dogs, you have to suture the skin, but on smaller dogs and cats you can often get by with skin glue and save them the trouble of coming back for suture removal. (Some vets charge you $10 for a suture removal.)
The vets I’ve worked for have usually charged around a hundred bucks for a small dog neuter–the surgery itself, the anesthesia, and an antibiotic injection. Depending on the animal’s age and health, we might let you get by without doing bloodwork, but you might need a full chem panel, CBC, and electrolytes (around $110). We usually didn’t do pain meds for routine spays and neuters, nor do we keep them overnight. (Well, there was the occasional animal who wasn’t waking up well who stayed, and that one crazy woman who insisted we spay her dog late in the afternoon because it had gone into heat, but normally, they left at the end of the day.)
Let’s see, $30 for overnight hospitalization, $35 for post-op pain injection (per injection, your dog probably got two), $10 for Rimadyl to go home. No, that seems pretty in-line with what it would have cost at my old practice to do all that. You got the absolute gold standard of care, and you paid a fair price for that standard of care. If you’re uncomfortable spending that kind of money, you need to shop around for a vet who’s not quite so thorough.