Sunday, March 7, 2010

Spay or Neuter, Please

Somewhere around 20, 000 dogs and cats enter animal shelters each and every day. About 10,000 dogs and cats are euthanized in shelters each and every day. As much as I might want to stop that, to bring all those animals home and show them loving care, I cannot. You cannot. No one person can. If each person does his or her part, however, by spaying and neutering their pets and encouraging others to do the same, we can help prevent animals from filling all those shelters.
Luna's spay was completed last Thursday, March 5th, and she has recovered well. They actually also did an umbilical hernia repair while they had her anaesthetized. The jury is still out on whether that repair was successful. Her surgical incision has a pucker in it right over the hernia site, and since I don't want to apply pressure to her belly (that would just be mean), I can't tell if the pucker is just in the closure or if it's actually the hernia's continued presence. Frankly, I'm gonna be a little miffed if it's still there. I really don't want to have to put her under again.

By the way, I do recognize that another way to prevent the overfilling of shelters and help those animals is to adopt from a shelter or to take in a rescue from another source. Big Sister, and her big sister, Chelsea, both came to us that way, and both have loved us immeasurably. We debated long and hard about getting a purebred this time around, and about getting a puppy versus a grown rescue. This time, we came to the conclusion that this was the route we needed to go. Again, we were granted a precious gift, and Luna's circumstances brought all of us together. In the future, though, we wouldn't hesitate to adopt another rescue. Please consider this if you're pondering a pet.
Luna loves to lie next to her big sister, and she's actually learning to do so without completely driving Abbie nuts. Today was a good day, with much less harassment than usual.

We have an appointment with a dog trainer Wednesday to try to help us communicate better with the wee one. Abbie will be going this time around, too, in hopes of our learning a way to keep Luna from biting at her,pulling her hair and otherwise harassing her. I also hope to work on the "come" command and on heeling. I'm sure we'll come away with lots of homework. :)

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