Personal Benefits
Kittens and puppies are a lot of work!
They need at least 8 weeks with their mother and littermates to be healthy and well socialized.
Avoid the work and maintain healthy relationships with your friends, family, and coworkers by not begging them to take one of your pet's offspring home.
Behavior Benefits
- Spaying and neutering makes dogs and cats calmer, more affectionate companions. They can relax and enjoy being part of the family.
- Many unwanted behaviors caused by the urge to mate diminish after spay/neuter surgery including:
- Roaming or running away.
- Spraying to mark territory.
- Fighting with other animals.
- Howling or caterwauling.
- "Mounting" legs.
- Spay surgery eliminates the heat cycle and the scent that attracts all your neighbors' males to your yard.
- Spaying also eliminates the bloody discharge of female dogs in heat.
Community Benefits
Spaying and neutering is good for your community because it helps prevent the animal suffering and public health concerns of unwanted stray and free-roaming animals. Direct benefits include:
- A safer, cleaner community resulting from a lower population of free-roaming unvaccinated homeless dogs and cats.
- Less taxpayer money required to administer animal control programs as the number of homeless animals decrease.
- The burden on animal shelters lessened as the number of surplus animals diminishes.
Health Benefits
- Spayed and neutered animals live longer, healthier lives.
- Sterilization reduces the chance of cancer in reproductive organs.
- Neutering eliminates testicular cancer and decreases the incidence of prostate disease.
- Spaying a female before her first heat protects her from risks of uterine, ovarian, and breast cancers.
- Spaying eliminates the chance of developing a serious and potentially fatal infection of the uterus called pyometra.
- Having puppies and kittens is stressful and sometimes dangerous for animals. Spaying and neutering eliminates the problems and potential risks involved in giving birth.
- Animals freed from the need to breed stay home instead of roaming for mates.
Animals that stay home are protected from:
- Injuries sustained while fighting with other animals.
- Infectious diseases transmitted by other animals.
- Vehicle related accidents.
- Acts of cruelty.