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You’ve probably heard it before. Even the most well-meaning pet lovers will sometimes say:
“I’m just going to let my pet have one litter before she’s spayed. What could just one litter hurt?”
When there are already more pets in a community than there are available homes, every litter hurts.
Shelters across America are bursting at the seams with unwanted animals. In Allegheny County alone, conservative estimates show that 25,000 abandoned pets enter shelters each year. Nationally, an estimated 3-4 million dogs and cats are euthanized at animal control facilities and shelters every year. That’s over 10,000 animals a day and over 400 per hour – pretty sobering statistics.
With organizations like Animal Friends offering financial assistance for spays and neuters, there’s no excuse for not spaying or neutering your dog, cat or rabbit. Not convinced it’s worth it? Here’s something to consider. It’s much easier and less expensive to have your pet altered than it
is to be responsible for raising your pet’s offspring. Even if you find homes for all of your pet’s offspring, this doesn’t solve the problem; it means there are fewer homes for animals already living in shelters. The answer to the pet overpopulation problem is to reduce that population, and the way to do this is by spaying or neutering your pet.
If a female dog or cat isn’t spayed, she will endure regular heat cycles, which causes crying and unwanted attention of every unaltered male dog or cat within miles. Unaltered females will continue to have litter after litter, sometimes becoming pregnant by her own offspring, or while nursing her current litter. Unaltered males are territorial and sometimes aggressive. Male cats are more likely to spray in or outside of the house, fight with other males, and run away when they catch the scent of a female in heat. Both male and female cats are at greater risk for contracting feline leukemia and feline AIDS, which are transmitted by both mating and fighting.
Unaltered male dogs also tend to be more aggressive than their neutered counterparts and have the same tendency to run away in search of a female in heat. The serious (as well as expensive) health problems of an unaltered dog or cat include cancer of the uterus, mammary tumors, pyometra (a life-threatening uterine infection), as well as prostate and testicular cancer.
In short, there simply are not enough homes for the thousands of dogs, cats and rabbits being born every day. The luckier ones end up in shelters, while the others endure tough lives as strays or ever worse.
When every pet is altered, this heartbreaking cycle can be broken. Please be part of a community that is helping to create a humane world where each life is precious, and every pet is a wanted pet. Please spay or neuter your pet.
Contact Animal Friends for low-cost spay and neuter options. Call 1.800.SPAY.PGH or visit www.ThinkingOutsideTheCage.org to get started. Animal Friends’ Low-Cost Spay/Neuter program also has a feral cat package, including spay/neuter, rabies vaccination and eartipping, for $30 per cat. Call us at 412.847.7004 to schedule your feral cats for surgery and for advice on trapping and colony management. Plus, our Project Pit Bull offers spays and neuters for pit bulls for just a $20 deposit. Call 1.800.SPAY.PGH to learn more.
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