About two months ago I realized that her next heat cycle, although it is a bit sporadic, is due right around the time that the baby will be born. That would be...bad. She gets moody and needy and I have to keep a close eye on her and a diaper on her so that she won't bleed all over. Of course she pulls the diaper off so I have to do constant laundry as well...all of these things would NOT be ideal with a brand new baby in the house.
Recently, Smeagol developed another infection in her facial wrinkles and we took her to her best buddy, the vet. She gets this infection every few months and we have tried everything including daily wrinkle cleaning with a special prescription gel, a complete removal of red meat and red meat products from the diets of both dogs, no prepackaged dog treats etc. We have been told that her problem is possibly an allergy, possibly an immune system issue, possibly just that she is a pug etc. But as the vet was scraping her skin this time he told us that he had been reading up on the possibility that recurrent skin infections in unspayed female dogs are as a result of the fact that they are not spayed. He pointed out that hormones can wreak havoc on skin (at which point I informed him that he was preaching to the choir) and that perhaps spaying would help her a lot. Even if it doesn't help the constant, costly for us/painful for her infections, it would still dramatically help reduce her chance of some cancers and completely take away her risk for some other cancers.
So we were already pretty well committed to the idea that we would need to suck it up and get her spayed for her sake and for ours and then this damn false pregnancy started. We can't get her spayed for at least another month or so since at her last visit she had a steroid shot and she can't undergo anesthetic for eight weeks after that shot so we have some time to kill but this false pregnancy is a serious pain in the arse. I get the impression that she feels quite terrible and her lactation has not stopped. She looks significantly more pathetic than usual and I feel really terrible for her.
Basically all things are pointing to her needing to be spayed and as soon as possible but I'm really scared about it. She's middle aged for a dog, she's not very healthy and this is major surgery - like a total hysterectomy in women. I read earlier today that the more skin and fat the vet has to cut through the longer and more dangerous the surgery will be...she has lots of skin and fat!
Wish us luck making the right decision and coming up with the money if we do it etc. She's our little girl and we both just adore her. She has been with us both through so many bad times and she has been with Paul since she could fit in the palm of his hand and slept under his chin at night. But...the right decision is to spay her, right?
4 comments:
I absolutely believe that spaying her is the right thing to do. I've never had an unfixed critter in a very long time, and that was a male cat who lived mostly outside. I think she'll benefit from it immensely, as will all of you.
I agree. I am all for spaying/neutering ASAP. Healthier all the way around, IMHO. There are always risks involved, but you have to weigh those as well.
I agree. We are completely adamant about the importance of spaying or neutering pets. My concern is that Smeagol is a middle aged, not very healthy dog and I'm frankly worried that she'll die, to be honest.
Look at that face, people!
Yeah, I'm kinda with everyone else... BIG advocate of spaying. And I am also learning that pets are a lot heartier than we think. Everytime I took my "elderly" cat on a plane, I thought she was going to die before the flight touched down. She was always fine.
You can prepare for the worst, it can happen with any surgery, but it seems her quality of life is affected right now anyway without doing it.
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