When to spay my puppy or how to deal with a female in heat?

[simba]

GentleLake- yes, I had completely flipped that in my head (ovary sparing vs removing only the ovaries). Brain dead moment. I was going to edit in a 'correction' line at the end of the post but I didn't want to be That Person who retroactively edits the stupid out of their posts.

 

Thank you for pointing it out, by the way. It was a total goof on my part. There is no 'chagrined' smiley, but there should be.

[GentleLake]

 

I didn't want to be That Person who retroactively edits the stupid out of their posts.

 

LOL I've done it a couple of times.

[RemsMom]

Thank you for all your replies. I have a large (35'x35') dog run off the back of the house so it will be really easy to supervise Nattie when she needs to go out and thankfully, the only other dog in the house in my GSD and he is neutered. My other worry is my husband who won't take me allowing Nattie to go into heat well (I guess I can tell him I forgot she needed to be spayed ).

[gcv-border]

My other worry is my husband who won't take me allowing Nattie to go into heat well (I guess I can tell him I forgot she needed to be spayed ).

Or you could appeal to the financial side and tell him that if he can suck it up for 3 weeks while she goes through a heat (or maybe two), her bones & joints would be 'stronger' and thus less likely to injure in the future. And educate him that some injuries can cost several thousand dollars to repair.

[Liz P]

A lot of the studies fail to take into account breed, but breed of dog impacts which health problems are of more concern. For example, mammary cancer is actually more common in spaniel breeds than others. I have certainly seen this to hold true in practice. Sure, I see it in every breed, but spaniels are way over represented.

 

Osteosarcoma is more common in giant breed dogs or dogs that do high impact activity (especially Greyhounds).

 

Hemangiosarcoma can also be seen in any breed of dog, though I have personally never seen it in a dog less than about 35 lbs. German Shepherds and Golden Retrievers are the poster children of hemangio. Labs are another breed that gets it frequently. It seems quite common in Border Collies too. I lost two in a row to this type of cancer.

 

Most of the cruciate ligament injuries I see are in bully breed dogs (structure) and Labs (structure, play style?).

 

A disproportionate number of the pyometra cases I see are Chihuahuas and Rotties.

 

You can see how things would get complicated if your study didn't take breed into account or did not have a fair cross section of breeds.

[RemsMom]

I did discuss this issue with my vet. She knows we want to do agility with Nattie and my vet used to do agility before switching to fly ball. My vet told me if I had a cute little lap dog she would recommend I get her spayed at six months but with a sport dog I needed to wait until at least a year if not longer.

 

I wanted to add that over the weekend I attended an agility seminar and the presenter said he had a dog that was still competing at a very high level at 14 years old and he knew many "double digit" dogs that were still competing. I would love Nattie to be one of those dogs.

[GentleLake]

Here are a couple more articles addressing the issues:

 

http://www.dogsnaturallymagazine.com/three-reasons-to-reconsider-spayneuter/?utm_campaign=coschedule&utm_source=facebook_page&utm_medium=Dogs%20Naturally%20Magazine&utm_content=Three%20Reasons%20To%20Reconsider%20Spay/Neuter

 

http://healthypets.mercola.com/sites/healthypets/archive/2013/09/23/modified-spay-procedure.aspx