Spaying or Neutering Your Pet
Our veterinary clinic in West Des Moines offers spay and neuter services for cat and dogs.
Did you know that spaying or neutering your pet can help prevent certain illnesses and diseases and help your pet live longer?
Both of these routine operations completely remove your pet’s reproductive organs so that they no longer feel the need to mate or advertise for a mate, which can lead to behavioral problems.
Benefits of Spaying and Neutering
Having your pet spayed or neutered provides certain health benefits that can help your pet live a long and happy life.
The major benefits of spaying and neutering include:
- Helps prevent testicular cancer in males
- Helps prevent uterine infections and tumors in females
- Pets are often better behaved.
- Your male pet will be less likely to go roaming for a mate
- Female cats won’t advertise for a mate by yowling and urinating because they will no longer go into heat.
Spaying Your Pet
We recommend females to be spayed as early as six months of age, which is before she enter her first heat. Spaying early provides the most health and behavioral benefits, but you can spay a pet at any age.
The process of spaying your pet involves completely removing the uterus and ovaries through a small incision. The procedure typically takes less than an hour, but it can take longer if your pet is in heat or pregnant at the time of the operation. All spay surgeries are performed under general anesthesia. After your pet wakes up from the anesthesia, she can typically return home with you the same day.
We do ask that you monitor the incision and make sure your pet does not try to bite or scratch the area. Your pet will need to have reduced activity levels for up to two weeks, but most pets feel much better the day after surgery.
Neutering Your Pet
Neutering involves removing the testicles from the scrotum.
Once your pet wakes up from his surgery, he can go home with you the same day. Like females, we do ask that you monitor the incision for signs of infection and proper healing and prevent your pet from scratching or biting the area.
It usually takes one or two weeks for the area to heal, but your pet should start acting normally as early as the day after surgery.
Spaying and Neutering at our Veterinary Practice
Grand Avenue Veterinary Hospital offers spaying and neutering for all sizes and breeds of cats and dogs. When you schedule your pet’s surgery, we will give you pre-surgery instructions, which usually include not feeding your pet for a certain amount of time prior to the surgery.
After the surgery, we will give you instructions on how to care for the incision and the signs of infections to look for while the incision is healing. If you have any questions or concerns before, during or after your pet’s spay or neuter, we would be happy to answer them.