Don’t Spay or Neuter your Pets too Young

March 8, 2015

by Natalie Secretan

I’ve been going back and forth about when to spay my dog, Layla. She’s a beagle/springer spaniel cross – a speagle. When I first took her to the vet, they suggested booking her spay for around the time she turned six months. The pace of it caught me off guard, and I’ll admit I left the clinic feeling rushed. Looking back, that urgency wasn’t a sales pitch – six months is simply the traditional timing many clinics recommend, and there are good reasons behind it – but in the moment I wished I understood the “why” better before saying yes.

So I put it off and added my name to a waiting list with the OSPCA, thinking it would be months and months before they got back to me. Eight weeks later, they contacted me and said they had a spot at the end of March. Layla will be nine months at the end of March. That uneasy feeling came back, so this time I did what I probably should have done in the first place: I brought my questions back to the vet and asked them to walk me through the timing question properly.

What the Research on Spay/Neuter Timing Actually Says

It turns out that spay/neuter timing is a genuine, evidence-based conversation in veterinary medicine – but it’s a much narrower and more careful one than the scary lists you’ll find online. Breed-specific studies (including well-known research out of UC Davis) have found that in some large and giant dog breeds, neutering before the growth plates close is associated with higher rates of certain joint problems, such as hip dysplasia and cruciate ligament tears, and in a few specific breeds, with changes in the risk of certain cancers. The key words are “some breeds”: the findings vary a great deal by breed, by sex, and by study, and they do not add up to a blanket rule that early spaying or neutering is harmful for all dogs – and cats are a different conversation again. When your vet thinks about timing for your pet, they’re weighing things like:

• Breed and expected adult size – large and giant breeds are where delaying is most often discussed
• Sex, since the risks and benefits differ for males and females
• Health benefits of spaying and neutering, which are real and well established
• Your household and lifestyle – including how confident you are that an intact pet won’t produce an accidental litter

And those benefits deserve a fair hearing, because the original push for spaying and neutering was never just about shelter overcrowding – though preventing unwanted litters still matters enormously. Spaying a female dog eliminates the risk of pyometra, a life-threatening uterine infection, and spaying before the first heat is associated with a much lower risk of mammary tumours. Neutering removes the risk of testicular cancer and can reduce roaming and some unwanted behaviours. For most small and medium dogs, and for cats, the general veterinary consensus is that the traditional timing remains a sound choice.

Veterinarians aren’t hiding any of this – they’re the ones doing the research, and a good vet is happy to talk through what it means for your particular animal. Dogs mature at very different rates: a small dog may be done growing before a giant breed is even halfway there, which is exactly why a one-size-fits-all answer – in either direction – doesn’t work.

As for Layla: she’s a medium-sized mix, and after talking it through with our vet, I felt a lot better about the whole decision than I did after an evening of internet research. If you’re unsure about when to spay or neuter your pet, don’t let a search engine make the call. Bring your questions to your veterinarian, ask about your pet’s breed and size specifically, and settle on the timing together. That conversation is the one I’d urge every pet parent to have – it’s the part I almost skipped.