Decisions…… to desex or not

[Rascalmyshadow]

My current situation we have 6 dogs (5 female, 1 male)  all are desexed except one, I am faced with a concerning dilemma and I’m hoping posting here will help me make my decision to desex her or not.

 

Mia is a two year old Bearded collie x Border collie, we own her mum (Abby) a pure Bearded Collie, ever since having Abby desexed she has had incontinence issues, she is on the highest possible dose of stilboestral which isn’t controlling it so we are adding in propalin as of tonight with hopes the two together will work, my concern is Mia ending up with the same issue if I desex her, I am aware that there is a risk of pyometra and mammary cancer.

 

[Deeds]

What about trying Suprelorin instead of surgery.  I have used this quite a few times on my male dogs with little to no side effects.  I usually use the 12 month one.  It's not as invasive as surgery .

[Dogsfevr]

No one can really answer .
There are pros/cons .
In near 40 years never ended up with an incontinent bitch .
I guess you just have to weigh up all the factors including how an entire bitch affects your council permit & managing pack dynamics when she is in etc etc 

[persephone]

None of our sheepdog bitches are ever desexed. In my 60 years of remembering - and many, many bitches in that time

,bearing in mind dog numbers varied between a dozen and maybe 5  - there have been 3 with pyometra and two with mammary cancer(these were with bitches  well over the age of 10 yrs) . All dogs have been farm bred and working sheepdogs, if that makes any difference. 
In suburbia, I would vote for speying . BUT the incontinence can be an issue .Our one bitch who was speyed..the family lab ..was incontinent afterwards.My own pet terrier was also speyed at 6 mths and was absolutely fine . 

[Rascalmyshadow]

Thanks for the replies, I went against my gut and had her desexed last week, I am concerned about her becoming incontinent, living with her having a season a couple of times a year is a lot easier than living with a dog that has incontinence issues and a hell of a lot cheaper, Propalin is $169 a bottle and that will last her mum two months, the stilboestral isn’t cheap either so I’m praying we don’t end up with two dogs on the medication.

[Deeds]

And you won't have to worry about Pyometra.

[Rebanne]

I have no idea where you are buying your stilboestrol but it's cheap as chips from my vet. 

[Rascalmyshadow]

21 minutes ago, Rebanne said:

I have no idea where you are buying your stilboestrol but it's cheap as chips from my vet. 

I think it works out to be $2 per tablet and that’s from my vet so for both meds just for Abby it’s $26 per week which doesn’t sound much but on top of everything else it’s another expense we don’t need.

[sandgrubber]

If You want a sense of the probabilities,  this is a good article, though it's best for the specific breeds studied.  Spay incontinence seems to run around 10%, and is worse for early spay.

 

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fvets.2020.00388/full

 

 

[Rebanne]

10 hours ago, Rascalmyshadow said:

I think it works out to be $2 per tablet and that’s from my vet so for both meds just for Abby it’s $26 per week which doesn’t sound much but on top of everything else it’s another expense we don’t need.

I'd be finding another source of meds.

[Rascalmyshadow]

5 hours ago, Rebanne said:

I'd be finding another source of meds.

How else do I get them, I know they won’t write a script for me to get them online and I live in a small country town the only other vet that’s reasonably local is more expensive than the one I go to.

[Rebanne]

3 hours ago, Rascalmyshadow said:

How else do I get them, I know they won’t write a script for me to get them online and I live in a small country town the only other vet that’s reasonably local is more expensive than the one I go to.

That's a bummer, they got you over a barrel.

[Rascalmyshadow]

26 minutes ago, Rebanne said:

That's a bummer, they got you over a barrel.

Thank you for your suggestion, I asked them a few years ago for a script for different meds and they told me they wouldn’t do it for anyone, out of frustration I decided to call them today after I looked online and the cost of both meds is way cheaper so i spoke to a nurse and they agreed to write the scripts for a $35 fee, hoping if all goes smoothly I will save at least $500 for the year just on those two meds.

[Deeds]

A lot of Vets in Sydney have now started charging a $35 fee for scripts . 

 

 

[tdierikx]

I suppose it comes down to whether they will write the scripts with a number of repeats, or they will want to write a new script each time you need to get the stuff elsewhere.

 

Out of curiosity, when you get meds from the clinic, do they charge a dispensing fee also? I've noticed that a lot of Sydney suburban vets have started adding this fee in recent times, when they never used to charge any extra to dispense medications previously.

 

T.

[Rascalmyshadow]

Yes a dispensing fee is always charged, even when I worked in a vet clinic years ago they charged a dispensing fee, it’s a joke, your paying a ridiculous amount just so they can print a label and stick it on the bottle.

I’ve spent $169 on a bottle of propalin that I won’t be continuing using, Abby has become so aggressive in the last two weeks I have to stop the medication, we’ve had multiple incidents and if I wasn’t so experienced handling dogs either one of the other dogs would have been injured or somebody badly bitten, so as of now we don’t know what we can do from here as the vets have said the only other option is expensive surgery that doesn’t have a great success rate.