The overwhelming amount of overpopulation is seen as the bigger priority, I think. And the surgeries are easier on younger/smaller dogs. My vet had no problem with me waiting but I was the one that brought it up and she knows I’m a responsible sort. She did say that they try to wait until after a year for the large dogs but that many people can’t deal with waiting that long. My dog is an enormous pain for many reasons but (sadly) none of them are related to testosterone, lol.
Why can’t I find that statistic in that article? I admit I’m just skimming but I skimmed twice and didn’t see pyo mentioned at all.
I think it’s actually cited in the paper alpine posted.
“Due to the limited evidence available and the risk of bias in the published results, the evidence that neutering [this paper calls spaying “neutering”] reduces the risk of mammary neoplasia, and the evidence that age at neutering has an effect, are judged to be weak and are not a sound basis for firm recommendations.”
Looking at other data (like this) it’s spaying before 2 that has been suggested as protective:
Among the 599 female dogs [presenting with mammary cancer], 306 were intact (51%), 50 (8%) had been spayed before 2 years of age (ES, early spaying), and 243 (41%) after 2 years (LS, late spaying).
But then there’s also this, which is really interesting:
“Estrogen’s role in canine mammary cancer is more complex than previously understood, according to new research. The nuanced findings may help explain why dogs spayed at a young age are more likely to develop more aggressive cancers, the team says.”
I find all of this very murky, and struggle with it quite a lot. I have no problem in preventing mating in my in heat girls, and just don’t find heat cycles onerous. In my small sample of the girls I’ve owned, I’ve had one pyo that had an uncomplicated pyo spay at maybe 8 or 9. I’ve had no mammary tumors at all.
So I very much feel your uncertainty moving forward! There’s so much we don’t know. I have defaulted to not removing an entire organ system because of that.
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I’ll put in a word for OSS and vasectomy --can be a very good option and one I make sure to offer at puppy visits.
The Parsemus Foundation has good resources (with admittedly a pro hormone-sparing bias) and there is also a 35 breed study that looks at relative risks based on gender and timing of spay/neuter.
IME, risk of mammary cancer is higher in some breeds; other cancers also more likely in certain breeds. I tell people that we can make a choice to decrease but not eliminate risks for health problems, and try to give them the info they need to make the best choice for their pet at this moment in time.
As for pyometra, I am admittedly biased as to risk, since we see the dogs who come in flat out and septic.
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Its towards the bottom, right before the Discussion; here is the snippet:
Labrador Retriever Females: Cancers
As seen in Figure 2-B, the underlying rate of intact females having at least one cancer of those tracked was 3.2 percent, close to that of males. In contrast to female Goldens, the only increase in the incidence of dogs having at least one cancer, was with the 2–8 year neuter period where the incidence was modestly increased to 5.6 percent ( p = 0.03), a reflection of the increased occurrence of LSA and MCT (Table 5). The mean age of diagnosis of these two cancers in females was 5.5 and 6.5 years, respectively.
With regard to MC, only 1.4 percent of the intact females were diagnosed with MC. With the 2–8 year neuter period MC was diagnosed in 2 percent of females. Pyometra was diagnosed in just less than 4 percent of intact females. The mean age of diagnosis of pyometra was 5.5 years.
Again, I am not a vet, doc or any sort of medical professional, so I may be misinterpeting the data and I so much appreciate all of the voices on this thread.
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In my very limited n = 1, I knew something was wrong with my dog and suspected pyo because of the timing. We went to emergency care who diagnosed a UTI. A week later, something was still wrong, I still suspected pyo, so I took her to my regular vet. Imaging was kind of inconclusive, but the radiograph showed organs pushed a bit cranially. Uterus was full of puss. Closed pyo.
I don’t think the regular vet had ultrasound capability, but the ER vet did, and still didn’t catch it. But there were definitely plenty of symptoms of NQR in the dog very early that now I believe (perhaps foolishly so) that I’d be able to recognize another pyo before it all goes to hell.
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I’m so sorry --that’s a scary experience. I’m glad you were able to advocate for your dog. You will DEFINITELY recognize it again (though I hope you never have to). We see it often enough that everyone from the front desk back says “we’ve got a possible pyo coming in!” if there’s an intact female dog, recent heat, ADR phone call. Can definitely be a sneaky one, though–have had old lady dogs that haven’t had obvious heat cycle in years per the owner come with pyo.
If you read the pet vet group on Facebook you might feel otherwise.
The amount of people who have very sick dogs with with pyometra but can not afford the emergency surgery is staggering.
I will add, along the same lines, shelters can not afford (in the lives of animals being put to sleep) to not spay/neuter before adoption. The amount of excuses why their unspayed female got pregnant people give is astronomical. “I only left them alone together while I was in the bathroom” or “My male was never with her, could it have happened while she was alone in the yard all day while I was at work?”, etc.
Shelters do the best they can with what they are dealing with and that means juvenile spay and neuter.
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An ovary sparing spay removes the uterus. Done correctly, pyometra isn’t possible. Neither is pregnancy.
The entire point of an ovary sparing spay is to remove the risk of pyo and accidental pregnancy, while preserving the protective effect of the sex hormones.
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I really looking into spaying/not spaying, or doing a OSS, but did go with a lap spay and pexi when my giant breed girl was almost 2. She had her first heat at 13 months (my girls heats were about 3 weeks long and fairly heavy, but it didn’t bother me at all and she wore her diapers without any issues) and we are on a 70 acre farm but have a very close neighbor with an intact lab and a holy fence and he escapes often.
We also have a very active coyote population and my girl is loose on the farm when I’m around (shes a velcro dog and never goes far from me). When she was in heat, I was paranoid all the time and kept her on a leash, which of course worked, but I hated being worried all the time.
So for me, it was a no brainer but I did really think about an OSS. The closest clinic that did this procedure to me was 6hr away and I had to be a client of theirs to do the operation. So I did cross that off on my list. I also didn’t want my girl to go into heat still as our coyotes are a pain (I don’t want to encourage them any more) and they have destroyed our electric fencing (twice!!) as in tore it into shreds, and chewed on all of our plastic insulators. Our paddock is 4 acres so it was a lot of fencing destroyed (we have them on game camera - its unreal). Our solar electric box was working during the day, but the back up battery was dead and it did not hold a charge through the night, so the coyotes had a blast (it took us 2 times to figure this out. Battery replaced and no more chewing!). I can’t tell you how much fun it was to pick up 1,000 small pieces of electric rope all through our paddock and replace some of the plastic insulators that were chewed.
A friend of mine just lost her 5 year old boxer to pyro. She did bring her to emerg as she knew the symptoms and what it was, they did surgery on her but she passed away a few days later. Heartbreaking.
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This is actually really comforting! Thank you!
Wow! My old lady dogs have never been sneaky 
Although I could see how maybe it would be easier to miss in a dark long haired dog?
I bred and showed Great Danes for 15 years and spoke with boarded repro specialists and stayed as up to date on research as possible. After 2, the major benefits to remaining intact until maturity have been realized, and the older the dog gets, the higher a chance of pyo per cycle. My repro vets have said that your chance of pyo on a given cycle increases exponentially in an 8 year old dog versus a 2 year old dog. Since I wanted to avoid risk of a major emergency surgery in an older dog who would likely be more affected by a pyo, I do spay once they are 2 or done having puppies.
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Only labs and goldens were studied in this case, and the results don’t necessarily apply to other breeds. That’s what I was told. If you had a lab or a golden, your vet might have discussed this study with you.
One of the worries with waiting to spay a larger dog is that the spay surgery is more complicated (and therefore more risky) on a larger dog. I weighed all the information and opted to spay my large dog (non lab, non golden) at age one, much to the chagrin of one of my dedicated dog lover friends. I decided to go with my vet’s advice over that of my friend. One went to vet school, one didn’t 
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