• LA offers many options for low-cost spay/neuter clinics if you already have a companion animal that is unsterilized. This encourages animal guardians to be responsible before they are faced with unwanted litters and fines, and before the animals themselves pay with their lives since many of these animals are put to death because there are simply not enough homes for them all.

OTHER IMPORTANT REASONS to spay or neuter your companion animals:

• It helps to reduce companion animal overpopulation. Most countries have a surplus of companion animals and are forced to destroy them and disregard their great suffering. In the United States,the surplus is in the millions, as is teh number of animals killed in public shelters every year. Cats are 45 times as prolific, and dogs 15 times as prolific, as humans. They do not need our help to expand their numbers; they need our help to reduce their numbers until good homes can be found for every companion animal.


• Sterilization of your cat or dog will increase his/her chance of a longer and healthier life. Altering your canine friend will increase its life expectancy an average of 1 to 3 years, felines, 3 to 5 years.


• Surveys indicate that as many as 85% of dogs hit by cars are unaltered. Intact male cats living outside have been shown to live on average less than two years. Feline Immunodeficiency Syndrome is spread by bites and intact cats fight more often than altered cats.


• The capture, impoundment and eventual destruction of homeless and lost animals costs taxpayers and private humanitarian agencies over a billion dollars each year.


• Approximately 70,000 puppies and kittens are born in the United States each day. Many of these animals are born in questionably-run “puppy mills” that sell animals to pet stores for a profit, some are born to people who want their children to witness the “miracle of life” (something they could otherwise see on television or on their computers without victimizing innocent animals!) and some of these births result from simply allowing fertile animals to roam freely and mate.
  

Unwanted animals are often treated as a nuisance. Incidents of kitten drownings and pet abandonments are common. Animal control agencies and shelters receive approximately 6 to 8 million animals annually. Those who are not adopted within about a week (4 million of them) are destroyed by lethal injection, or in States outside California, many states still employ carbon monoxide or decompression chambers. And in areas where “pound seizure” is permitted, unclaimed animals can be given or sold to laboratories for experimentation.

Female cats and dogs should be spayed soon after the age of eight weeks. Males should be neutered at eight weeks of age, but both spaying and neutering can be done safely through adulthood. LAAS and teh City's spay/neuter law encourage earlier spaying and neutering, which can be less stressful for animals. Younger animals also recuperate faster from surgery.

• Spaying and Neutering does not affect animals’ energy levels or change their personalities, as some people mistakenly believe.


• Spaying eliminates the stress and discomfort that females endure during heat periods, eliminates the risk of uterine cancer, and greatly reduces the risk of mammary cancer.


• Neutering makes males far less likely to roam resulting in many of these animals being killed by cars and trucks.


• Neutering also makes males less likely to fight, prevents testicular cancer and reduces the risk of prostate cancer.


• “Fixed” animals are less likely to contract deadly, contagious diseases spread through bodily fluids, such as feline AIDS and leukemia.

“Spay” is the medical term for an ovariohysterectomy that is done in female dogs,cats and rabbits. Although the name sounds impressive, it’s a routine surgical procedure that removes the animal's ovaries with a very tiny incision. There is absolutely NO evidence that a companion animal suffers from any personality, emotional harm or weight gain by having their ovaries removed and in fact, it is the healthy and moral thing to do for your female companion animals. Spaying reduces heightened sexual arousal cycles. Males in your neighborhood will be less inclined to roam or run away from home to find your female cat or dog in order to mate. One unspayed dog and her offspring can lead to 67,000 dogs in six years, while a unspayed cat and her offspring can produce 420,000 cats in seven years.

“Neuter” is the medical procedure done on male dogs and cats and is a routine procedure. The veterinarian makes a tiny incision in front of the scrotum and through that incision removes each testicle. The benefits of having a male animal neutered are well documented. Again,there is absolutely NO evidence that a companion animal suffers from any personality or emotional harm or weight gain by having their testicles removed and in fact, it is the healthy and moral thing to do for your animals.

Neutering can bring important health benefits: it eleminates the risk of your male dog or cat dying from testicular cancer, reduces and/or eliminates the risk of prostate disease, reduces and/or eliminates the risk of perianal fistulas, and reduces the risk of diabetes. It also reduces or eliminates risk of spraying and marking.

Some other benefits of Spaying or Neutering your companion animals:

• Prevents sexual behaviors such as mounting or “humping,”


• Prevents marking and spraying of their urine around your house or apartment


• Reduces forms of male aggression (especially relating to females in estrus or “heat”) due to the balance in hormone levels brought about by neutering. This is an especially significant benefit in male cats due to the extreme undesirability of male cat sexual behavior for companion animal guardians.


• Prevention of mammary tumors: Female cats and dogs are about seven times more likely to develop mammary tumors if they are not spayed before their first heat cycle. Female dogs that have been spayed before their first heat have a lifetime chance of developing mammary tumors of about 99.5% less than that of intact females. If allowed to go through their “heat” cycles before spaying, then their risk of mammary tumors is closer to 92% less.


• Spaying female dogs more than two years before the removal of mammary tumors increases the dog's survival by 45%.


• Once it can no longer reproduce a female animal effectively has a zero risk of pregnancy complications, such as blood spotting and false pregnancies, the latter of which can occur in more than 50% of unspayed female dogs.