When should I get my puppy spayed or neutered?

Generally, we try to neuter males... depends on the size of the dog now and what your goals are. A lot of times, if you got a giant breed dog or pure bred dog, sometimes they want to develop their male characteristics. So like for example, a St. Bernard male, they might want to fix them at two years old, but generally, if we want to avoid some behavioral complications, other things, six months is probably the earliest we'd do it. In females, we try to fix them between 6 to 12 months old, just before that first heat. So on average, about eight months, but definitely want to consult your veterinarian by about four to six months to discuss that.

It really depends on the breed and size of your puppies, especially large breed puppies. We're starting to recommend maybe waiting to spay and neuter your dog later because there's a medical benefit from it, but again, it really depends on the size and the breed of your puppy. So of course, please ask us a question about when would be the best time to neuter or spay your puppy.

We recommend having most puppies spayed or neutered right around six months. For some of the larger breeds of dogs, we recommend that we wait until later on because of their bone development, so with the large breed dogs, we'll discuss whether to wait. There are even a few breeds that we find that there may be a reduction in cancers say if we wait a little bit longer, such as with golden retrievers. That being said, some large breed dogs do have some behavioral issues that come up, and we want to stay on top of that. We don't want to see any signs of aggression in an eight-month-old dog. We may want to consider neutering them earlier in those cases. It’s essential that you stay in close contact, and that six-month visit is so crucial for this reason.

That varies based on the veterinarian that you're working with. It also varies based on how big your puppy is and what the breed is because, for some of them, we want to wait until later on to spay or neuter them for their overall joint health.

Cal here is a Dane, and so we usually wait until a little bit later down the road to get him neutered just because, as you can see, he's only a little over a year old. He's a big boy, so he's going to grow much more than what your Chihuahua would. And so, we want to make sure that we are offsetting that and making sure they have plenty of hormones in there to help with that growth.

Usually, the earliest we will spay or neuter is six months, but that's very variable. And that's why it's great to have a one-on-one relationship with your veterinarian to talk about your puppy. And that way, you can time it and see what's healthiest for your puppy.

Generally, we recommend having puppies spayed or neutered at around six months of age. However, recent research suggests that it might be better for certain breeds, especially male dogs, to delay neutering until they're about a year to a year and a half old. This delay could potentially prevent certain cancers in the future and contribute to healthier bone growth. Regardless, the standard recommendation is to have them spayed or neutered at around six months.