Pet Care from the Veterinarians of Cherokee Animal Hospital in Canton, Georgia

The most common pet surgeries veterinarians do in animals are spaying and neutering.  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 are just not enough homes for all the animals that are out there.

But there are other health benefits as well. For 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.

For males, the most significant health reason is that we decrease the risk of prostate infections later in life, and then there are significant behavior changes that we can address in the males by having them neutered early on.

Ask a veterinarian in Canton about spaying and neutering.