[Ellie May]

Because there are some unknowns about about the best timing for spay/neuter and nobody seems to agree, that is a personally decision.

There are no tests that I know of to see if a dog is allergic to anesthesia. There are tests (preop blood work) to make sure that the organs are doing their job and the CBC is normal. I would most definately get preop blood work. You can take this a step further and do a bile acid test to look specifically at liver function. I would do this also...some other people would not. Since it should be done on all Yorkies anyway, six months and before spay/neuter is a good time in my opinion. There are other screenings you can do like fecals and urinalysis to make sure she is perfectly healthy but these aren't usually recommended before surgery.

As Beth said, insist on pain meds. Some vets will tell you that if the dog is in pain, they will take it easy. Well, if the dog is on pain meds they may be sleepy which is good. I think that it is so sad that some of them do this.

Toy breeds lose body heat quickly. Surgery should be done on a heated surface.

Isoflurane or Sevoflurane anesthesia should be used. Usually they will do the induction with something else. That is okay if you are happy with the drug that they are using. Sometimes it is Propofol.

Sometimes they are kept overnight and sometimes they are not. If they want to keep her and there is someone there awake all night, then I would comply. If they want to keep her but nobody is there watching or they only come in a couple times a night, I would not leave her. Ellie's vet is staffed 24 hours and they let me take Ellie that night (she also had a liver biopsy) and while Ellie couldn't really even stand, everything was fine.

Then there are things like intubation that you can insist that the vet does (may be common practice for your vet already) instead of a tech but the techs should know what they are doing... If there is more than one vet in the practice and you would feel more comfortable if one of them acted as an anesthesiologist (instead of the one vet doing everything or a vet tech helping), you might be able to pay extra for that. I've never found that necessary but maybe it would ease your mind.