[selzer]

JeanKBBMMMAAN,

Do you think that bitches suffer when they are in heat?

Being a woman, I would have had my pieces parts out long ago if I could have. But a woman's body and a bitch's body are very different. Three weeks of bleeding every six months or so is not like having a monthly cycle where year in and year out you have PMS and then cramps, pain, bloating, bleeding, depression, etc, etc.

You would never guess my girls are in heat unless you see some red spots and check their backsides. They can and want to do everything they do when they are not in season.

Physiologically, every heat cycle bambards the uteris with progesterone. And I believe that without having litters, this will eventually cause a bitch to become sterile as she ages. So bitches having their first litter at age six or seven are very uncommon. And as years march on, their chances of having complications due to their body system's natural aging increases.

But is this a reason to cause the artificial aging that removing the hormone generating devices may create? I lost my Arwen last night. I have to wonder that if she had not had the major surgery removing her pieces parts while having a c-section, maybe she would still be around. Had they just done the c-section, they would not have had to spend so much time inside her cutting off bleeders. She would not have had to have been out so long. She would have maintained her hormones, and the aging that I recognized since the spay may have been accelerated becuase of it. Or, it could have just been her time to go. I will probably never know.

And it is probably best not to think too deeply about it today. But in the seven years she had her parts she did not get pyometra and she was not miserable due to heat cycles. There is always the possibility that in my attempt to save her from one evil, I have made her more susceptable to another.