by Jerrie Lynn South-DeRose

Created on: February 25, 2009   Last Updated: April 24, 2010

The Importance of Spaying or Neutering Your Pet

The spaying and neutering of animals before they reach the age of procreation is important for a variety of reasons. Every year in the United States, tens of thousands of puppies and kittens are born to pets and strays that have not been spayed or neutered. Thousands of those animals are abandoned out in the country near farms or open fields, left in cardboard boxes outside of churches, in store parking lots, and are sometimes drowned or killed in other ways by owners who do not want the stigma of having it known that their adult animals procreate repeatedly. Inundated by the large numbers of young and adult cats and dogs that are brought in by citizens and animal control, many animal shelters and local humane societies, sadly, are forced to charge a fee for those animals that are brought in by owners or picked up at an owner's request.

Although the monies are primarily used for food, vaccinations, and shelter costs, at an average cost of $30.00 per animal this system only perpetuates the abandonment and killing of kittens and puppies. Those abandon animals are forced to fend for themselves. According to statistics provided by the Humane Society of the United States, between six and eight million dogs and cats enter U.S. shelters each year with some three to four million of those animals being euthanized because there are not enough homes for them.

Other consequences of uncontrolled breeding and the overpopulation of animals have more dire results, not to mention the cost to taxpayers for programs and services related to animal control, shelters, and the cost of treating victims of dog and feral cat attacks from strays. According to Paws magazine, approximately $2.2 million dollars was spent for euthanizing animals in shelters in 2002. Clearly, pet overpopulation is not just a problem for the animals or for the shelters involved.

Local communities and individual states spend millions of taxpayer dollars capturing stray animals, sheltering lost and abandoned cats and dogs, and providing rabies shots for the hundreds of citizens who are bitten by rabid animals or by stray cats and dogs that can't be caught and tested for rabies.

There is also the health threat that is posed by stray animals getting into trash cans and garbage bags, urinating and defecating in public areas or on lawns, and from bites or scratching citizens. Some of these animals may form packs and prey on smaller dogs, young children, and other animals

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