The most common pet surgeries veterinarians do in animals are spays and neuters.  That’s the one that most owners are familiar with.  They are certainly the most necessary surgeries for a lot of different reasons.  One, it decreases the animal’s desire to roam, you know, to run away and get themselves into trouble.

And then, of course, it helps decrease the pet population, we’re all aware there’s just not enough homes for all the animals that are out there.

But there’s other health benefits as well. For the females;  We can drastically decrease the risk of breast cancer if we spay them before their first heat cycle.  We can decrease their chances of that disease by upwards of 95 percent.

If veterinarians spay them before their second heat, then we still decrease their chances by 80 percent or so.  Once we are passed that second heat, then we’ve lost our ability to really affect breast cancer.  So it’s important to have those, you know, spayed early.

Males, the biggest health reason is that we decrease the risk of prostate infections later in life and then there’s big behavior changes that we can address in the males by having them neutered early on.