There are numerous reasons why spaying and neutering a cat is so important. With our females, the concern is always unplanned pregnancies and some medical conditions like uterine infection, which can be life-threatening. In our males, again, unplanned pregnancies, but also some of the hormonal influence leading to urine marking, trying to find the females when they're in heat, and that general tomcat smell.

I think the biggest misconception is the expectations around what happens after. So there's a lot of concern that animals will get fat, they'll get lazy, and that it may stop behavioral concerns. We have to watch and make sure that they don't gain weight just because they're maturing animals, so it's kind of like us in our thirties. The metabolism's slowing down anyway. That tends to be the bigger issue. That tends to be the bigger issue than the spay or neuter itself. We find that many dogs do not run into that issue, and personalities don't change. They don't get lazy, but sometimes it doesn't fix the behavioral issue we're looking at.

Can the neuter surgery help, especially the aggression after a certain amount of time, once testosterone gets out of there? Sometimes it depends on what the issue is. The more significant thing for males is it can cut down on urine marking, especially if that's an issue in the house. It can also cut down on wandering and trying to find a female in heat which always tends to be a big issue. So not having those hormones at play can help calm down some of those issues, but it does take a little bit of time. You don't have a neuter surgery, and then all of a sudden, they're not gonna roam anymore. It takes time for that testosterone to get out of there.

A neuter is a quick procedure, especially since you don't go into the abdomen unless you have to find a testicle that doesn't come down. But for the most part, a routine one is probably about 10 or 15 minutes. Depending on the size of the dog, a spay is anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour, depending on how big the abdomen is.

There can be. The biggest complication that we look for in our pets is excessive bleeding. When we remove the tissue, we cut off the blood supply to that tissue so that they don't keep bleeding. The concern is always if that isn't done appropriately or the dog has an issue with clotting, there could be a complication, but we triple-check everything to make sure that we are minimizing any risk of complications.

It is surgery, and it is an incision, so there can be a little bit of discomfort. But we give pain medication before, during, and after the surgery, including some pain medication to go home for you to give your pet, to keep them comfortable. We find that our animals do really well and seem comfortable pretty quickly after the procedure.

Neuters are a little bit less invasive. We move the testicles out of the scrotum so we can get to them a little more easily, remove the testicle and some of the spermatic cord and then close up the incision. That's in a nutshell.

We make an incision into the abdomen and remove the ovaries, all of the uterus down to the cervix, and then close back up the abdomen. So it's a little bit more invasive than neutering since you are going into the abdomen, but those are the tissue that we're removing.

They can. We know that intact males, because of the hormones, can smell females up to miles away and try chasing after them. We know that that can be risky, especially out in the country when cars don't know a dog is coming. That can be a dangerous situation. So, neutering an intact male can reduce that behavior.

No, it shouldn't. Things you might see would be a decrease in hormonal behaviors. For example, our intact males can roam more if they smell a female in heat. They might not feel the need to do that. Other things like marking their territory; they might not feel the need to do that with reduced hormones. But it doesn't usually change personality.