Читать книгу Infectious Disease Management in Animal Shelters - Группа авторов - Страница 53

Another essential component of a shelter wellness program is ensuring that cats and dogs are spayed or neutered prior to adoption. Surgical sterilization remains the most reliable and effective means of preventing unwanted reproduction of cats and dogs. In shelters where animals awaiting adoption may be held for long periods, reproductive stress from estrous cycling in queens and bitches and sex drive in tomcats and dogs can decrease appetite, increase urine spraying/marking and intermale fighting, and profoundly increase social and emotional stress. Spaying and neutering animals awaiting adoption is essential in shelters where cats and dogs will be housed for periods of longer than two to four weeks. These procedures decrease spraying, marking, and fighting; eliminate heat behavior and pregnancy; and greatly mitigate stress. This facilitates group housing and participation in supervised playgroups for exercise and emotional enrichment. In addition, the medical benefits of spay‐neuter have been well described, including the elimination of pyometra and ovarian and testicular cancers, and decreased risk of mammary cancer, benign prostatic hyperplasia, prostatitis, and perianal hernias (Johnston et al. 2001).