Spay vs Neuter – What Is the Difference?

spay vs neuter

Many people are pet lovers, and despite having busy schedules, people always manage to take care of their beloved pets. Of course, it depends on personal choice who wants to pet which animal, but we see that most people go for petting cats and dogs. Though cats are beautiful, dogs seem to be more playful and joyful.

If you have got a cat or dog to take care of, you must know about the spaying and neutering of them. However, there is a possibility that the people who start to own a pet recently are not familiar with the terms and procedures. Besides, many of you might not know the importance of spaying and neutering a pet regarding their physical and mental health.

In this article, you will learn about the basic difference between spaying and neutering, benefits of the two mentioned procedures, and their importance. So, without any further delay, let’s get started!

Difference Between Spay and Neuter

What is Spaying?

Let us simplify the term for you to understand and grab it quickly. Spaying is for female dogs, and it is a sterilizing procedure to make female cats infertile so that they cannot reproduce. The female cat is usually under general anesthesia to avoid the perception of the pain of her ovaries and uterus being removed after an incision on her abdomen.

You will learn about neutering later in this guide, and you will see that spaying is much more painful than neutering. The female cat who has undergone spaying requires two to four weeks to recover and different activities restrictions like no swimming, jumping, playing around, etc.

Check out our article where we have explained when you should spay your pet and the best time to spay a dog.

What is Neutering?

As you know that spaying is the surgical process of removing a female cat’s ovaries and uterus to make her infertile; similarly, neutering is the operation performed by a vet on your male dog to sterilize him. Neutering of a male dog involves an incision on the scrotum and removal of the testes. You can also refer to neutering as castration.

Neutering operation gets done within a few minutes, and you can take your male dog back home on the same day, unlike spaying. In addition, the surgical procedure of neutering is not as painful as spaying a female dog. However, there are slight limitations on male dog’s activities after the operation: no jumping, running vigorously, playing around, etc.

Now lets find out the benefits of neutering a dog and the best age to neuter a dog.

Why is it important to spay or neuter my pet?

Understandably, if you are very affectionate towards your dog pets, you might consider not getting them spayed or neutered due to the surgical trauma they would have to go through. But, well, you must also understand how much spaying and neutering your dog pets is important, not only for your pet but also for the people around and other pets of the same species.

Different researches on spaying and neutering dog pets suggest that if you are having your female dog spayed, the chances of breast cancer in your pet declines to a very low level. Besides, the occurrence of uterine diseases decreases as well. Similarly, neutering your male dog will reduce the chances of testicular and prostate-related infections and cancers.

Moreover, these medical procedures are also significant to control the outrageous behavioral patterns in your male and female dogs, owing to the high sex hormones levels. Once the removal of reproductive organs occurs, the unwanted irrational behaviors of dogs subside, and they become more affectionate towards you, which creates a happy and peaceful environment.

Benefits of spaying/neutering a dog

Spaying or neutering your dogs is not about only a single benefit –removing their reproductive organs, which leads to less outrage in them, but many benefits regarding their overall health. Let’s have a look at the advantages of spaying or neutering your dog;

1. Declining numbers of abandoned dogs

Let’s say you have started to own a cute little puppy recently. It is all good and fun when the dog is small, but as soon as your pet hits puberty, you realize changing behaviors that are definitely due to increasing sex needs. If you do not take your dog for neutering, you will soon witness many newborn puppies.

Mostly, the pet owners who do not care about neutering their male dogs or spaying their female dogs leave the newborn puppies abandoned on the streets, resulting in high numbers of homeless puppies and dogs. However, if you get your dog pet sterilized on time, you will indirectly help the community have fewer homeless dogs.

2. Maintenance of your dog’s health

We cannot emphasize the importance of spaying and neutering your dog enough. It might hurt your pet for a while when the operation is going on, but it holds an important place in the long run. Neutering protects your male dog from testicular infections and cancers, while spaying protects your female dog from ovarian, uterine, and breast infections and cancers.

Moreover, sexual desire leads to roaming around the streets to search for a mate. However, after neutering and spaying, the urge to move around declines. They will not get involved in fights with other dogs since the source of rage is not present anymore.

3. Betterment of your dog’s behavioral health

If you do not get your dog pets spayed or neutered on time, you will have to deal with their frequent urination and other sexual discharges that are understandably gross to clean up all the time. Getting your dogs spayed or neutered will save your energy doing useless chores for them, and you will also observe less rage in them.

As mentioned earlier, your dog pets will not roam around searching for a mate once they get spayed and neutered. Besides, the incidence of human-dog bites and dog fights also reduce with spaying and neutering.

When to spay or neuter a dog?

Till now, you might have learned the differences between spaying and neuter, and their benefits are. Well, you must also know when do you have to take your dog for spaying or neutering. According to different studies, some vets recommend that you should get your dog spayed or neutered as soon as possible so that your dog grows up having a higher survival rate.

Two months is the minimum age at which you can get your dog spayed or neutered. However, four to five months is the maximum age. If you exceed the given age range, your dog will surely develop the sexual desire, and you will observe aggressive and related behavioral changes, like excessive urination, blood spots, etc.

What is the cost of spaying and neutering?

It is not possible to tell you the exact cost of spaying and neutering since the expenses vary from pet to pet based on age, country to country, city to city, and above all, from vet to vet. In addition, different vets charge different amounts for both procedures. However, it would help if you kept in mind that spaying is usually heavy on the pocket than neutering, owing to the complexity of the operation.

Besides, you must have a range of 100$-400$ or more to spend on spaying and neutering, seems expensive, no? Well, it is way better to spend your money on making your pet infertile rather than on taking care of their pregnancy expenses (in the case of female dogs) and their newborn babies.

To find the cost of Spaying and neutering checkout our below articles

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In conclusion

Without any doubt, spaying and neutering are essential for your dog’s health, not only reproductive health but overall. In addition, these procedures help them to have a healthier lifestyle than those who have not undergone the operation. Undeniably, the procedures are a little expensive, but you must take them as a one-time investment to save yourself from future expenses.

In this article, we have tried our best to summarize dogs’ spaying and neutering, and we hope it will prove helpful!

Source
https://www.petmd.com/cat/general-health/spay-and-neuter-overview-cats

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