When to spay my puppy or how to deal with a female in heat?

[RemsMom]

My past experience with dogs is two female Miniature Schnauzers that were spayed at six months old and two male German Shepherds that were neutered after they turned one year old (I had the Schnauzers first and then the GSDs).

 

Nattie is now six months old. I want to do what is best for her but I have never had to deal with a female in heat and I really think my husband will think I have gone insane if I let her go into heat. I will add that I am the one who is completely responsible for Nattie and if she goes into heat I will not let her out of my sight as I don't want a litter of puppies.

 

I am so stressed about this. I didn't worry until she turned six months old because (from past experience) I felt I was "safe". I got Nattie to be an agility dog for my daughter and I really love her and want what is best for her. I want her to live the longest and healthiest life that she can.

 

Nattie is a house dog. We take her for walks and play with her in the yard but most of her time is spent in the house.

 

Help!?

 

I don't know if this will help but at six months she is around 17.5-18 inches tall and 25 lbs.

Edited October 7, 2014 by RemsMom

[CptJack]

I would not spay or neuter any dog intended for sports before maturity/full growth. I know it's stressful and scary when you haven't done it before, but they really benefit from those hormones during growth and agility is not an easy sport on the dog's body. IMO they need all the advantages they can get with it, and that includes not being altered before at LEAST 12 months, ideally 18-24. For females, yeah, that means between 1 and 3 heats.

 

I don't think it will be as bad as you think. Annoying, for sure, and I wouldn't want to live with an intact female indefinitely, but not impossible at all.

 

And do remind yourself if something happens emergency spay to prevent those puppies being born is an option, and in the event of it just being too much anxiety? Not like the option of a spay has evaporated.

[simba]

Two links here:http://skeptvet.com/Blog/2010/09/evaluating-risks-and-benefits-of-neutering-dogs-and-cats/ http://skeptvet.com/Blog/2009/12/benefits-risks-of-neutering-what-does-the-science-say/

 

I had a bitch unspayed for 7 years, she finally had an emergency spay (and even then it was a particularly stupid accident that caused it). You are much more responsible than I am, doubtless, and would manage it fine. It's the health concerns that I would be interested in.

[Oko]

I wouldn't spay a dog that you're planning on doing sports with until 18-24 months old. Read up on the signs she's coming into heat, start being very vigilant on that. When she's in heat, keep her away from other dogs, and confined if not under your direct watch. If the spotting is heavy/as a precaution, they sell diapers for bitches in heat at petco and petsmart, and you can buy washable ones online to put a liner in. It's really not that hard.

[HJTRAS]

Having the same thoughts and doubts about spaying our female BC Ziggy, so this has been interesting to me she will be 7 months on 10/18 and she is has no signs of maturing at all. We had the rotti mix fixed at 5 months and the vet said she was ready to go into heat and had a giant uterus. Ziggy has none of the signs at 7 months that Dezi had at 5. Watching this thread to get a better feel about it. Thank You

[GentleLake]

I'm with the others. If she's intended to do sports and you feel you can deal with the heats -- really not all that bad unless you've got an intact male. Much harder for them than for the bitch, ime -- I'd wait until she's older.

 

That said, she wouldn't be the first dog who was spayed at her age and went on to do sports. If you decide to spay her younger than the recommended 18-24 months, just be very careful with her until the growth plates are closed (which may be longer than if she's left intact), and teach her to sue her body as wisely as you can.

 

Best wishes making the decision.

[CSW]

I am also looking for information on spaying. I have read up a bit on the internet. My last BC was a boy, so that was easier. Can anyone speak to the different options for female spay and if there is a preferred method. My local vet does not use lasers, but I am willing to go to another one if it a better option.

[GentleLake]

Some people are now recommending an ovary sparing spay.

 

Only the uterus and cervix are removed, effectively sterilizing the animal and eliminating later pyometra, leaving the hormone producing ovaries to do their work.

 

If I were ever to have a dog where I could make the decision (my current dogs were all spayed an neutered by their rescues before I adopted them) I would be looking into his for a bitch and vasectomy for a dog.

[Gloria Atwater]

I don't think you'll find it nearly as bad as you fear. Without a male dog in the house (or next door,) given the conditions you describe, I don't think you have much to worry about.

Your only real concern is keeping her safe from any roving neighborhood male dogs. Period. Do that, and you are golden.

As for the dog herself, it's not much bother for anyone. You'll see a little blood spotting around the house and she may lick herself, and she may have to pee more often, plus her behavior may alter slightly, such as being a bit clingy or nervous or scatter-brained. But so long as you don't leave her outside alone - ever, not even for one minute - and don't take her to dog parks or other places where you might encounter intact males, you and she should be okay.

It won't change who she is, she won't smell funny or turn into a different dog. The first few days of her cycle you'll mainly notice the puffiness, spotting and self-licking. Then it's from about the 9th to 12th day that they are apt to be most receptive to a male's attentions. But it's a solid 3+/- week period during which you'll have to be super diligent about not letting her outside alone.

If you can do that, and if you don't have to worry about any family members "accidentally" forgetting her outside or leaving her out "just for a minute," you should be fine, and so will she.

~ Gloria
P.S.
I'm calmly saying all this while privately freaking out, because I'm considering that it's time to begin hunting for my next puppy and I want a girl and to not spay so early this time - but I DO have an intact male in the house!

[Eileen Stein]

I had not heard of an ovary-sparing spay. Wouldn't leaving the ovaries intact eliminate one of the chief benefits of spaying -- reduction in risk of mammary cancer?

[Sue R]

Plus you still have to deal with in-heat behaviors, I would think, and attracting "outside" dogs. But it is an alternative when you do wish to keep the benefits of the natural hormones.

[Oko]

The purpose of an OSS is to keep the hormone production while rendering the dog sterile and greatly reducing the risk of pyometra. They do indeed continue to have 'heats' but no discharge, and they are attractive to males during their 'heat'.

 

For those on Facebook, https://www.facebook.com/groups/alternativealteringinfo/ <- that group has great info on different altering options, risks and benefits, and studies.

 

The information on mammary tumors being less likely in traditionally spayed females vs intact ones is weak:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22647210

[Gideon's girl]

Don't forget, you can give chlorophyl tablets to reduce the odor while she is in heat. This is more of a courtesy to your neighbors that do have intact male dogs, and it makes it a little more difficult for them to figure out where the female in heat is, though not impossible.

[GentleLake]

I had not heard of an ovary-sparing spay. Wouldn't leaving the ovaries intact eliminate one of the chief benefits of spaying -- reduction in risk of mammary cancer?

 

Maybe. If that supposed benefit is real. It may not be.

 

http://healthypets.mercola.com/sites/healthypets/archive/2013/04/10/early-spaying.aspx

 

And it would be offset by the increased risk of other cancers related to hormone loss, including bone cancer, increase in CHD and CCL.

 

http://www.ivcjournal.com/articles/the-pros-of-partial-spay/

 

http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0055937

 

https://www.avma.org/News/JAVMANews/Pages/130401s.aspx

 

http://www.parsemusfoundation.org/ovary-sparing-spay/

 

http://healthypets.mercola.com/sites/healthypets/archive/2013/09/23/modified-spay-procedure.aspx

 

I'd recently seen another online article with nice charts, but can't find it now.

[Eileen Stein]

The information on mammary tumors being less likely in traditionally spayed females vs intact ones is weak:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22647210

 

Interesting. The entire article can be found here, and it appears that it's the sole basis for those who are questioning the benefits of spay regarding risk of mammary tumors. I have been wading through it, but I'll need to do a lot more wading, because it's very difficult to evaluate the factors the authors say give rise to the discrediting of these studies as having too high a risk of bias. (Difficult for me, anyway.) I wonder if this kind of scrutiny has been applied to the literature on other veterinary issues, and what the results were -- whether virtually all the peer-reviewed studies were found to be insufficient. I note that the review study found NO previous study on the subject to be free of a high or moderate risk of bias, suggesting that there is no reliable research on this subject one way or the other.

 

This was probably the leading study among many on which the high impact of spaying in the first year or two was based. (I see that the Merck Veterinary Manual still cites its figures.) Some of the factors cited by the review study as giving rise to a high risk of bias in this study do not seem very significant, but others I'm not sure of.

 

I should say that I'd personally like very much to believe that there is no increased risk of mammary tumors from not spaying, having lost a wonderful 5yo unspayed bitch to aggressive mammary cancer. It would certainly make future spaying decisions easier. Thanks for the reference.

[Eileen Stein]

Maybe. If that supposed benefit is real. It may not be.

 

http://healthypets.mercola.com/sites/healthypets/archive/2013/04/10/early-spaying.aspx

 

And it would be offset by the increased risk of other cancers related to hormone loss, including bone cancer, increase in CHD and CCL.

 

Not to me, it wouldn't -- not unless I had a breed of dog that was particularly susceptible to bone cancer. Mammary tumors are far more prevalent. And it seems to me most of those links pushing OSS reek of "here's a cool new way to make money and counter the growing unpopularity of spay surgery with the sports crowd." For example, from your IVC Journal link: "veterinarians offering this option will be able to both meet the needs of a highly-informed group of clients, and distinguish their value-added services from high-volume discount spay. Currently, only three veterinarians in the United States are offering ovary-sparing spay. This means that those who learn the procedure will likely be able to command a substantial premium, with new clients willing to travel a significant distance to obtain the procedure for their dogs." (BTW, I note that that same article accepts as true the protective effect of spaying re mammary tumors. But, as you say, maybe that supposed benefit is not real.)

[Bella B.]

I have never spayed a dog. My current dog is not spayed, nor do I plan on spaying her. She does go into heat, but it is not such a huge deal. She goes into heat about once every eight months for two weeks give or take a couple days. It can be difficult to keep her away from other dogs because she's oh so social. As for the blood...I have a dog 'diaper.' I cut up part of a pantyliner and put half in. I change it 1-2 times a day and I switch off on diapers giving each one a wash between uses. It's really not that terrible and after she gets used to being in the diaper she behaves like her normal self.

[simba]

Eileen Stein- your conclusion seems to be in line with that of a lot of the research (mammary tumors are more prevalent, thus the increased risk of that in intact bitches is more risky than the increase in bone cancer in spayed bitches). It's not that spaying doesn't cause bad things, it's that "Overall, it appears justified to recommend spaying all females not intended for breeding, because the procedure is more likely to prevent rather than cause disease. In male dogs, the benefits of castration are not so clearly greater than the risks. The evidence is also mixed regarding the risks and benefits of neutering dogs before 5–6 months of age, and so no strong recommendation for or against the practice can be made. However, it is clear that spaying female dogs before their first heat is preferable to spaying them later." link.

 

Skeptvet again on ovary-sparing procedures: "There is very little difference in the outcomes of different types of spay surgeries. The benefits are the same whether the ovaries and uterus are removed or only the ovaries. Because ovariectomy involves a smaller surgical incision and is generally quicker to perform than overiohysterectomy, there may be a slightly lower risk of surgical complications and a little less discomfort for the patient with this procedure."

 

Edit: the link isn't on ovary-sparing procedures, as the quote should explain. I just goofed.

[Maralynn]

Simba - An ovary sparing spay would be a hysterectomy. The Skeptivet article discusses removing just the ovaries vs. removing ovaries and uterus (traditional spay), both of which remove the hormones. A hysterectomy (OSS) does not. FWIW, there is more than just bone cancer in play here. The recent studies focused on the most common canine cancers - lymphoma, hemangiosarcoma, mast cell cancer. All of which were more prevelant in traditionally altered dogs. My late spayed female died from hemangio (the studies point toward an increased risk of that in late spayed females) and my neutered male died from lymphoma at 9 (once again, recent studies seem to point to an increased risk post neutering). I realize that correlation does not always equal causation but it does make me wonder sometimes.

[simba]

Sorry, I had flipped that in my head. My bad. Brain dead today. Thank you for being so nice about it.

[Eileen Stein]

It's true that correlation doesn't necessarily equal causation, especially when there are many other factors that characterize the likely environment of spayed/neutered dogs vs. intact dogs (Who typically spays/neuters? Who typically doesn't?). But I agree, it does make you wonder. Mammary tumors are more prevalent in female dogs than any of the cancers you mention, so if there IS a protective effect from spay in the first couple of years, that has to weigh fairly heavily. The studies need to be examined pretty closely in general, since a greatly increased risk of a relatively rare cancer may sound much scarier -- but actually be less scary -- than a modest but statistically significant increase in a more common cancer. Also, it's my impression that hemangio is becoming more common than it used to be. Don't know why, but if so, it might distort the results of studies where data from different time periods were merged together. (That thought probably would not have occurred to me before reading the mammary cancer review study, which recognized such a dense minefield of possible causes of bias.)

 

Also, all of the studies you mention compared bitches spayed in the traditional way with intact bitches. While we can hypothesize that bitches undergoing OSS would be more like the intact bitches in their cancer stats, I doubt there are any studies of their actual cancer stats as a class.

 

Leaving population control considerations aside, I've always thought that the collateral disease benefits/risks do not make a case for neutering male dogs, but that they do make a case for spaying females. Certainly it seems a likely hypothesis that the great reduction in estrogen would result in less mammary cancer, and I don't know that I'm ready to toss out all the studies that seemed to find that on the ground that there were possible biasing factors. Don't know that I'm not ready to toss them out, either. Still thinking . . .

[Maralynn]

I'm wondering part of the rise with hemangio is that it's becoming diagnosed more often. One of the common sypmtoms is sudden death. My spayed dog also had benign mammary tumors removed when she was spayed @ 6 y/o and never had a recurrence. While that type of tumor is pretty prevelant in females, isn't it benign about 50% of the time? So that would be something else to factor into the decision. As well as it being something an owner can likely detect in it's early stages. The other cancers mentioned are all malignant and some can be hard to detect until they're advanced.

[Sue R]

I think there is a lot to be said for these questions.

 

The dog I grew up with, never spayed but kept responsibly and never bred, had minor benign mammary tumors for some years of her life. The same with the first bitch I had as an adult, also never spayed and never bred.

 

We had a dog with hemangiosarcoma, our Aussie MacLeod. It was not realized he was anything but "old" until I noticed him losing weight but his belly getting rounder. Sure enough, at 15 years of age, he had a huge mass that had been growing for some time with us being unawares. He was put down just two weeks later.

 

In talking to several vets over the recent years, it is obvious that veterinary care has advanced hugely in the last few decades so that things that were never even recognized are now being diagnosed - because people take their animals to the vet for more than the annual jabs, and seek care where in the "old days" of my youth and young adulthood, many things would have been simply accepted as a dog having a "gimpy leg" or a "knot on his belly" or whatever.

 

Now we have specialty procedures, chemo, and stem cell therapy and all sorts of treatments that would not have been proposed years ago - treatments that were often developed on dogs (and other animals) but simply with human health care in mind. And now so much of that research comes back to benefit the very species that was used in the studies.

 

I'm wondering part of the rise with hemangio is that it's becoming diagnosed more often. One of the common sypmtoms is sudden death. My spayed dog also had benign mammary tumors removed when she was spayed @ 6 y/o and never had a recurrence. While that type of tumor is pretty prevelant in females, isn't it benign about 50% of the time? So that would be something else to factor into the decision. As well as it being something an owner can likely detect in it's early stages. The other cancers mentioned are all malignant and some can be hard to detect until they're advanced.

[GentleLake]

Skeptvet again on ovary-sparing procedures: "There is very little difference in the outcomes of different types of spay surgeries. The benefits are the same whether the ovaries and uterus are removed or only the ovaries. Because ovariectomy involves a smaller surgical incision and is generally quicker to perform than overiohysterectomy, there may be a slightly lower risk of surgical complications and a little less discomfort for the patient with this procedure."

 

The blog post you linked to doesn't discuss ovary sparing procedures at all.

 

He compares ovariectomy (removing only the ovaries) and overiohysterectomy (removing both ovaries and uterus) here.

 

He may discuss ovary sparing surgery elsewhere, but not in the link (and quote) cited.

[Eileen Stein]

I'm wondering part of the rise with hemangio is that it's becoming diagnosed more often. One of the common sypmtoms is sudden death. My spayed dog also had benign mammary tumors removed when she was spayed @ 6 y/o and never had a recurrence. While that type of tumor is pretty prevelant in females, isn't it benign about 50% of the time? So that would be something else to factor into the decision. As well as it being something an owner can likely detect in it's early stages. The other cancers mentioned are all malignant and some can be hard to detect until they're advanced.

 

I think you're right that about 50% of all mammary tumors are benign, but I think it's so common (at least in unspayed females) that even the 50% that are malignant make it the most common cancer in female dogs. Of course, it is often treatable by surgery alone. I know that with my poor Meg the vet went into surgery very confident that it was going to be no big deal. I still remember how gray his face was when he came out -- the surgery took almost two hours and he was barely able to get sutures to hold. She died about ten weeks later. I'm sure I did detect it as soon as it was detectable, but it was very aggressive so even then it was too late.