Unless you’re a certified breeder, there really aren’t any great reasons to keep your pet from getting “fixed.”

A couple good reasons to get their pet spayed or neutered:

• Studies have shown that female dogs and cats spayed before puberty (that’s typically around 5-9 months for a cat, and 6-10 months in small dogs and 8-12 months for a large dog) have a significantly lower chance of developing breast cancer than unspayed pets, or those spayed later in life.
• Health problems that can be associated with having litters are also eliminated with spaying.
• Also there is the great benefit of not hearing cats in heat trolling the neighbourhood. If you’ve ever been woken up to that sound before, you know what I mean!
• With neutering, testicular cancer is no longer a concern and the risk of prostate problems is greatly reduced.
• In addition, male pets who are neutered typically don’t “wander” as much looking for a mate, which lowers the chance of your dog or cat running away and being the next pet on the block with expensive bionic joints (the result of a car accident, tons of surgery, and a few vet bills, of course).
• And then there’s the all-important BIG number of pets who are currently homeless or in shelters right now because of all the cats and dogs who weren’t spayed or neutered before they could have litters.

Just think about it. And think about the positive impact we could have on a ton of animal lives if we made sure to spay and neuter as many as humanly possible. Yeah, pretty awesome.