Wabbit, thank you for your research and posts. I've kind of stopped posting here because I was really shocked at the hostility directed at me and my posts. The fact is, spaying and neutering is not a panacea, and there are some definite downsides to it. My Foxy is living...surviving...one of them.
My position is not to speak against spay and neuter but to speak in favour of the owners being fully informed. To be attacked as I have been here, to be obliquely accused of being in league with people who have something to gain from a reduction in the procedure was shocking...and hurtful.
Thank you, Wabbit, for taking a balanced view and posting corroborating information. Hopefully there are a few people who will take this info into consideration before they make their decision and, if they choose to spay or neuter, will now be able to monitor their pets for the potential harmful side effects and get them early treatment. My intent was not to imply that people who spay/neuter their pets are wrong or bad, only that they lack important information that can save their pet's lives, no matter which they decide.
For the poster who seems to think that legitimate research requires hundreds of study subjects, please be aware that legitimate research is conducted on fewer than ten subject: I just came across an article on PubMed regarding B12 deficiency in the nursing infants of vegan mothers that used just 7 subjects. The fact that it was published in a peer-reviewed journal is sufficient: it will trigger subsequent studies and if these findings are incorrect, subsequent studies to that effect will be published. Also, the fact that research was done in the 80s does not invalidate it: we discovered that penicillin kills bacteria back in the 30s, and that is still valid. I worked for a number of years in a company that did medical research and published in the journals, so I am intimately familiar with the way these studies are done, reviewed, and published.
For the poster who feels bad that her dog needed an emergency spay...the condition was likely pyometra...and even if you spayed her early she could still have gotten "stump pyometra," a condition in which the cervix...the stump of the uterus that remains after spay...becomes infected.
To those posters who refuse to consider that spay/neuter can have negative consequences, please read up on the conditions to which your dogs are now more at risk to contract and read up on their symptoms. Had I known about hemangiosarcoma, its symptoms and the higher risk spayed dogs have of getting it, my Foxy might not be terminal today.
I am not sure if I will return. If the way YTers respond to new information that challenges their beliefs is to, in essence, call the poster a liar and assassinate her character, then this is just the wrong place for me to be.
Thanks again, Wabbit. May you and yours live long and healthy lives. |