Should You Neuter Your Family Cat Or Dog? (Part 1)

So you’re trying to decide to neuter your pet. Are there disadvantages and advantages? And what will happen from going forward with it?

When you search the literature, you are rarely shown both sides of the discussion. In fact, aside from rare cases of poor health (making any surgery risky), or actually wanting the pet to reproduce (such as a show cat or dog), there are few good reasons to not neuter your pet.

Many concerns about cat or dog neutering are because of our own viewpoints on the subject. What seems to be life-altering surgery to us is not the same to our cats and dogs. While there’s the biological instinct to breed built into all creatures, there seems to be no problems from not reproducing.

Neutering your dog or cat can also prevent problems in the home. While in heat, cats and dogs can upset people with noise and mating activities, can soil items with spraying or discharges, can have behavioral issues, and generally are an annoyance. Neutering makes all this behavior disappear, making the pet more even tempered.

Proof that neutering is not cruel for the animal is that the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals neuters all older pets that are adopted.

Neutering also helps decrease the pet population. Although puppies and kittens are cute, few are able to care for a complete litter. These animals must go somewhere, and so are sometimes set ‘free’ or placed in animal shelters, where they may die. Unwanted pets also result in more wild animals, with increased problems in urban areas. The life of a semi-wild animal is not good, so neutering prevents any pet from ending up like that.

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