Jolie turned six months old yesterday.
“We should get her a cake,” I said.
“We have ice cream in the freezer,” Nick assured me, without missing a beat.
Anyway.
I was supposed to call the vet two weeks ago to make an appointment to have her spayed, but I’ve been dawdling. Apparently, attractive female Jack Russells are in short supply, and we’ve already had two offers to breed her: Kristina has casually mentioned it about twelve times (as did her boyfriend during the five minutes of the one time that we met him), and some other guy actually stopped his car in the middle of a busy street to ask if my dog was, in fact, a female. While I didn’t catch most of his follow-up ramble, the main intent was pretty clear: he had one too; she’s very pretty; he’s been looking for a ____; have we ever thought about _____? I mean: with cars piling up behind him, and he didn’t just give up when I did my stock conversational shoehorn (“Sorry, no French“)–he just shifted into park and tried again. He was determined.
The point is that it turns out that we have this rare thing, and I feel a bit guilty about making arbitrary reproductive choices for her. What if she wants puppies? What if she could have one lovely litter and then be spayed and everything would be just fine? Wouldn’t that be better than just having her spayed now? And we’re in a position to make life substantially easier on at least one of all of those lonely, breedable males out there–shouldn’t we? It doesn’t help that pet sterilization doesn’t seem nearly as common here–people are constantly asking if Jolie is in heat, or warning me that their dog is. It seems to be more of an option than a given. There isn’t the constant bombardment about overpopulation, and at the risk of sounding crass, Jack Russell puppies sell for a small fortune.
And Nick has gotten all fixated on the idea of getting a second dog, anyway. We could just keep a puppy and call it a day. I’m just saying.
On the other hand, apparently the longer we wait, the higher her risk of about four types of cancer gets. And having a pile of mini Jolies in our bathroom for three months isn’t the most appealing idea I’ve ever had–especially now, when she is learning a whole new set of tricks (fetch! almost) and the contrast to when we first brought her home is even more dramatic than usual.
I keep reading that it’s just a myth that spaying causes personality changes; that her personality is going to change no matter what, just as a result of growing up. And so now I have more research to do, because I would like to put a stop to that. Immediately.