The Pros and Cons Of Neutering Your Family Dog Or Cat (Part 1)
When you browse the literature, you’re rarely presented both sides of the discussion. This is possibly because, aside from rare cases of poor health (making surgery risky), or wanting the dog or cat to reproduce (such as a show dog or cat), there are few reasons to avoid neutering your pet.
Many concerns regarding pet neutering involve our own views on the subject. What appears to be life-altering surgery to us is not viewed the same to our pets. While there’s the biological instinct to breed built into all animals, there does not appear to be ill effects from not reproducing.
Neutering your cat or dog can prevent household problems. During heat, cats and dogs can upset others with mating activities and noise, can experience behavioral problems, can soil items with spraying or discharges, and generally are a nuisance. Neutering makes all this cease, and the animal is more even tempered.
Evidence that neutering is not cruel for the animal is that the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA) actually neuters all older cats and dogs that are adopted as a matter of course.