[Slimjim]

My 6 mth Sprocker puppy has a very conspicuous 2cm bony projection from the inside of her lower  hind legs with a nail at the end. They don’t touch the ground, but are so hairy she looks like a Brahma hen. She is booked in for a laparoscopic spay in 10 days time and we are thinking of having them removed while she is under G A. Our only reservation is, because they are bony, that  the wounds will not be small and healing time prolonged. We have a dog active holiday booked for 5 week after the surgery.
Do you have any similar experience/advice please ?

[SallyintNorth]

Take the vet’s advice, but a puppy should be a “healing machine” to quote Neil Fitzpatrick, so 5 weeks ought to be ample time for the wounds to heal.

My other thought was that with a dog as active, and as prone to running through brambley and gorsey undergrowth as a Sprocker, leaving them be could be quite likely to result in an injury at some point, so may as well get rid when you can do it neatly and with no real inconvenience to you or the dog.  But others who have gundog types may advise you otherwise.

[Buttermilk]

Having had a collie who used to tear her hind dew claws regularly I would get them removed while safe to do so.

[Jukes Mum]

I'm quite suprised that the breeder did not have them removed when they were 2 days old.
I would certainly ask for them to be removed when she is spayed as they will indeed heel quickly and she will be quite likely to damage them if left.
Out of interest, is there a reason why you are having her spayed so young?

[doganjo]

This really angers me.  I make no apology!  Soem vets in America were doing it at 8 weeks.  Damnable!!!

Six months is FAR too young to have a bitch spayed.  If your vet recommended it find a better vet. They are only after your money!

A bitch needs time to grow to her optimum size, and have one season to settle her hormones, so the recommended time is at least one year old and certainly not before her first season!

As to the dew claws. they should have been removed at 2 days as has been said,so take off the booking for the spay and get the dew claws removed.
JMHO

[Me]

doganjo the bitch will presumably be spayed at some point regardless so to say the Vet is simply after the money is not correct as they will get the money anyway just maybe a few months later - I could understand the accusation if they had advised two separate ops as you have (perhaps rightly so) rather than one but it is simply a difference of opinion regarding optimum timing isn't it and clearly nothing to do with money

[doganjo]

OK I retract the money comment then.  But I still insist that any vet who recommends spaying before a bitch is fully mature is not a good one.  There is actually no proven need to spay a bitch other than for our own convenience.  In later years the incidence of mammary tumours has not been proven to be avoided by spaying before 2 years of age.

[SallyintNorth]

In later years the incidence of mammary tumours has not been proven to be avoided by spaying before 2 years of age.

My vets are still saying that spaying them younger (not sure of age, but certainly less than 9 years old) does reduce incidence of mammary carcinomas.  They say it is still worth doing a spay, even if you’ve passed that age, as it removes the risk of pyometra, which becomes increasingly likely in older bitches and which can be life-threatening if not spotted and treated (by emergency spay plus antibiotics etc) promptly.

Perhaps it is that the incidence of all mammary tumours is not reduced by spaying at two years old, but that the proportion of the tumours which are malignant is reduced? 

Dot had a particularly nasty malignant tumour excised last year, and is too old for a spay to reduce the likelihood of any further tumours being malignant.  She’s now 11.

[alang]

We've had all our bitches spayed via two different vet practices and all have said they must be at least one year old and have gone through their first heat/season. The vet we currently use is highly regarded in the area for being a straight talker and doing what is best for the animals under his care (not saying others aren't).

[Me]

Advice might have changed, when I last cared about such things there was proven to be no protective effect vs mammary tumours spaying after 18 months old

[SallyintNorth]

Advice might have changed, when I last cared about such things there was proven to be no protective effect vs mammary tumours spaying after 18 months old

I do hope you are right, as it would make me feel a whole lot better about not getting Dot spayed earlier!  But I have had more than one vet, from two different practises, tell me the same thing over the last five or six years :/

[Me]

That is zero after 18m, maybe negligible at 17m? I cannot say. Did you mean to type months or years in your post above? 9 year old spays??? So for my own pets it has been sub 18 months or keep what god gave you.

[Slimjim]

Thank you all for those comments- like most problems posted on here, some conflicting advice given.
Anyway, we have considered all the info we have gathered from a range of sources including vets, owners and the breeder. We have also had it confirmed by our vet that the laparoscopic procedure does involve removing the ovaries rather than Fallopian tube ligation , so she would be thrown into immmediate menopause. There appears to be evidence that the complete absence of female hormones inhibits their normal development, especially of bones and joints and they never really emerge from the puppy stage.
SO,we have decided to delay the spaying until Rosie has had at least one season and is much closer to being fully grown. In the interests of exposure to just a single GA, the dew claws will have to wait too.
Thanks again.

[SallyintNorth]

Did you mean to type months or years in your post above? 9 year old spays???

Yes, 9 years.  I never had Dot spayed when I was up north.  She was a working collie on a hill farm and it never seemed to be a problem.  We mostly had bitches, and the one male collie was neutered.  They lived outside in a stable, and I could never see how I could keep her still and clean enough to recover from the op, so I never got it done.

Then I was going to be moving down south, to a community with more dogs, including a couple of entire males, so I asked about it.  Ironically my first pad here had steps up to it, so I delayed again.  Finally I have a setup where I can keep her calm and level, but then last summer she developed lumps in her one mammary, so she had them removed.  They did turn out to be carcinoma, a nasty one, but they did get it all.     The vet had preferred to do one procedure at a time, so now we are waiting for an opportune moment between seasons.  She’s not regular, which doesn’t help   .  I had her booked in in November, but she had some swelling due to a kind of false pregnancy, so we waited.  I booked her in again in January, but they were still not happy, so we gave her hormones.  That worked, and she was booked in again, but now we were going to be doing the op seven weeks before the six month anniversary of her last season, so cutting it a bit fine.  We had one twenty four hour period in North Cornwall when a massive (for us - 4-5”) snowfall caused major travel disruption.  I bet you can guess which day that was.  .   So now it will have to be three months after her next season .