What’s the big deal with desexing?

 

 

 

Most shelters and rehoming centres are full.  Please vote with your dollar and if considering buying a dog or puppy investigate a shelter or a reputable breeder. Shelters give pups and dogs a temperament test, health check and make sure vaccinations are up to date.  They should be asking potential owners many questions to warrant suitability for a match.

Dogs supplied to pet shops are too often from puppy mills or backyard breeders (no licence to breed), from cramped conditions with little or no effort to socialize pups. Breeding is often for quantity rather than quality and lacking in health management. A pup in a pet shop also spends much of its time in a small area where it is also eliminating making housetraining even more difficult.  So before you ask ‘How much is that doggy in the window’ please think about where that animal might be coming from.  The lack of regulation on breeding dogs greatly helps compound the ‘pound’ problem.  Dogs end up in shelters for so many reasons and our heart goes out to any owner who has faced surrendering a pet.

There is a great difference between breeders, the level of care, knowledge, money and energy put into litters.  Having a licence to breed doesn’t automatically deem a breeder suitable.

Back to the spaying and de-sexing – we’ve heard it all… ‘We’d like our bitch to experience having one litter’. Who could blame you but does your dog want a litter or you? Drop into your local vet, shelter or doggy foster carer and hear first hand from those left with the fallout about the exasperation they face with the industry every day.  We also hear ‘We’re not breeding him but I don’t want my dog to lose his nuts’. Think again. Imagine having all that testosterone coursing around the body and not being able to do anything with it. Or how about the ‘We’ll mate him once but we’re not taking his nuts off’.  Ok, imagine being able to have sex once and never again. De-sexing helps ease the cycle of euthanized dogs in Australia and has health benefits too. Please speak to your vet about the best age/time to have your pup de-sexed.

Leah & Angela O’Meara

Hound Dog Day Care (Specialists in Dog Minding & Dog Boarding, Pet Sitting Brisbane & Doggy Day Care Brisbane)