My vet also recommends the procedure before the first “heat” (The cancer thing) and I believe it is better that the animal never have the experience.
I will say that I would be concerned about doing the surgery during the “socialization” period, generally considered 8-12 weeks. That period of time is so critical to the dogs development that I just wouldn’t intorduce something like a surgery that can so easily be postponed to 16 weeks.
We got our second dog when she was around 1.5yo, and she hadn’t been neutered. After the operation, she acted very strange for a while. She went around gathering up my younger sister’s stuffed animals, then put them in a pile and slept next to them. She became very hostile towards our first dog, to the point that they couldn’t be in the same room together. Finally, dog #1, evidently sick of being forced out of any room that dog #2 entered, just started barking at dog #2. She barked for about 5 minutes straight, with dog #2 hiding behind my dad, and afterwards they were friends again. It was really weird.
Without going into the specific hormonal changes responsible, I would just say this is not uncommon. At certain times in a dogs estrous cycle, removing the ovaries can lead to a self limiting pseudocyesis (false pregnancy).
Most of the under 12 week surgery I do is in shelter animals. They are away from “home” for about 3 hours. The fact that the surgery is done allows them to be adopted earlier than the way things used to be done. It also helps the shelter as far as paperwork. In Pennsylvania shelters are required to either spay/neuter prior to adoption, or to collect a deposit toward the surgery then do follow up phone calls/etc.
In Memphis, TN they charge $50 for unspayed animals and you can get the money back after having the surgery performed at one of their volunteer vet offices.
In Fort Worth, Texas, they charge an adoption fee for all animals, and as a general rule, all animals are spayed or neutered before the new owner takes the animal home. Since the animals get their shots, are tested for various things, have been treated for fleas, and desexed, the adoption fee is really a bargain. I THINK that the fee I paid for Sapphire was about $60, but I got her antibiotics for free (of course they would have used the antibiotics on her anyway, I just saved them the trouble of quarantining her and nursing her back to health), the shots, and they tested her for feline leukemia. I know that I paid the fee and stuffed money into the donations jar to take the total up to $100. I received a discount for her spay procedure, too.
When you consider that a year earlier we had adopted an orphan feral kitten that was wandering around my sister-in-law’s field and spent about $200 in various supplies and vet bills, paying the shelter adoption fee was a real bargain.
In 1995 I picked up a puppy that had been separated from a pack of wild dogs here in Memphis. That puppy taught me a lot, including that there are 2 types of mange - the type that only dogs have and the type (scratch, scratch) that can be transmitted to humans. Adoptions fees are cheap.
Welllllll …
With the caveat that PecanSandy make sure the vet she uses is reasonably experienced at earlier spays, it sounds fine to me. However, the old stockbreeder/exhibitor in me rises up to worry about personality changes that don’t take place.
BTW, vetbridge, how safe are the newer anesthetics on gazehounds?? (For the uninitiated, greyhounds, Irish Wolfhounds, Scottish Deerhounds, Borzoi, whippets, Salukis, Afghan hounds, Ibizan hounds, Pharaoh hounds {I think that’s all the AKC recognized ones - except Italian greyhounds {Toy Group} Danes, of course, which are in the Working Group by a travesty, and probably Rhodesian Ridgebacks, which {like the Irish Wolfhound} owe a significant proportion of their ancestry to the Dane) Gazehound mixes? Not that there are very many, other than <alas> Dane mixes. 
(I do not object to the obligatory early spay/neuter plans of shelters, as, for the animal, it’s a choice of life or death. And we do NOT need more unwanted animals. As one who always held her dogs (popped the vein) when one had to go down, I can tell you that it is painful for the people who participate. I was the only one who cried, but it wasn’t hard to notice that the vets and assistants didn’t enjoy the moment either, and it wasn’t just sympathy for me. And that makes it easy for me to understand the fast burnout in shelter employees who actually do euthanasias. Any sensitive/loving/etc. person would, I think.)
Mind you, I’ve no objection whatever to the majority of neotenous traits that both dogs and humans exhibit; playing is fun. However, I wouldn’t want to have a pet bitch I owned spayed prior to six months or so (especially of a large breed) because of the participation of gonads in both physical and psychological development.
However, PecanSandy’s pup IS six months old. No mention was made of breed, mix or whatever. However, if she comes from (a) breed(s) that normally has/have very active pups & adolescents, spaying-as-behavior-modification is unlikely to make a whole heckuva difference. My recommendation is for obedience classes. Good for pup and person. They really, truly are. First, you’ll understand each other better. Second, she will have learned to sit, lie down and stay. If you keep up the training, you’ll soon have a dog you can be very, very proud of. I have a friend who acquired an English Springer Spaniel several years ago, as only the second dog of her lifetime. I had serious misgivings about it. However, I just kept plugging obedience, and they did it. Izzee now has three obedience titles (AKC, UKC and CKC), and is training to pursue her CDX (not that I’m trying to persuade you that you need to continue classes after the first one; just keep up the training at home, if you prefer). Izzee’s four now, and is as well-behaved an example of a dog of a breed that naturally has enough energy for ten people that you could possibly hope to see; your average untrained 4YO ESS is still pretty hyper. It takes work, but you get to do that work in the company of your very best friend. 
hijack
I was working on this at 3:30am CDT Saturday when the board froze. I’ve noticed this before, and can’t help wondering: Is it for maintenance, or what?
/hijack
Very.
Gazehounds (I’ve always heard them termed sighthounds) have very little fat. Historically, there was a time when anesthesia mortality was a concern due to the redistribution of drug that takes place. That has not been a concern for at least a decade, although some veterinarians cling to old drugs/techniques.
That is not to say that anesthetic fatalities do not occur. However I have never seen one in a sighthound.
Actually, the role the gonads play in physical and psychological development is poorly understood. In the early 90s many people stayed away from prepubertal gonadectomy due to fears about slowing growth.
When this was actually studied, it was shown that long bone growth actually is slightly enhanced when the gonads are absent. I have spayed/neutered many giant breeds (St Bernards, Great Danes, Wolfhounds, etc) at 8 to 12 weeks with no negative consequences.
The economics are a big deal also. I charge around $75.00 to spay an eight week old Great Dane. Wait until that dog is 9 months of age and the surgery runs around $210.00.
Well, see, that’s a problem… for me, anyway. I’ve got a sixteen week old pup, and I’m debating over whether or not to, or when to neuter him. Testosterone is essential for the closing of the growth plates, so males neutered prior to nine or ten months (I think… don’t put money on that) will be a bit taller and leggier than their intact counterparts.
That’s good news for the physiological side, except I think there are consequences, as mentioned by MixieArmadillo. In some breeds, you don’t want that leggy adolescent look, even if it’s not a show dog (which, of course, it can’t be, once altered, in conformation). There are many people who preferentially own a particular breed, solely as companion animals, who still want a “typey” look in their pet. Additionally, I’ve noted psychological differences in early-alter dogs. For some owners, the changes would be considered positive, as in the lower degree of possessiveness in a male dog owned by a woman and the opposite combination. OTOH, (relative) sexual maturity also seems behaviorally linked to protective behaviors. If I were acquiring a dog I wanted to be very protective of my children (though the next stop for me, personally, is g’grandparenthood, as my only child’s children are teenagers), I’d want a dog that was either unaltered, or altered at or slightly past sexual maturity. Of course, I’d also want that dog thoroughly obedience-trained, so that there were no “unintended consequences”. :smack:
That’s certainly understandable. There are a lot more “consumables” (more anesthetic, etc.) involved. But I don’t think I’d want to wait until 9 months, even with a Dane. Seven to 8 months is usually more than sufficient. Bitches are getting very close to mature enough for a first heat (even if they don’t actually ovulate, and I think many Dane bitches don’t, in a season that early), and dogs of that age are certainly able to perform at stud (though I’d never permit a pup to do it). IOW, they are psychologically mature WRT sexual identity, which is all I’d really want.
However, if I’m ever able to have a dog again, much as I love Danes, I think I’d want a retired racing greyhound. Reasons? 1. Too many are being put down. 2. Temperament and personalities do somewhat resemble Danes. 3. They’re elegant. And besides, I might get lucky and get one with stripes! Most of my Danes were brindles (striped), which is the closest you can get to a tiger w/o having to feed and control 300+ pounds of feline. 
Our vet wouldn’t spay the Pyrenean bitch we had as kids, he was concerned that she wouldn’t come out of the anaesthesia because of her size (she was fully-grown Labrador sized at 8 weeks).
She had to be put down at 8 years old because of uterine cancer.
I’m all for spaying the doggies.
I’ve always wanted another big dog, and would prefer a bitch (I like girl dogs, boy cats), but have always been worried that the same thing would happen again.
Glad to know they’re happy doing the bigger breeds now.