It's Maria's MutS and Stuff. What a great idea on iHeartRadio. Welcome to Maria's Mutts and Stuff. And with me is doctor Phil Bushby is the Mississippi State University College, a veterinary medicine. He's a veterinary professional, and I believe he's a trailblazer and I need to ask you about that. So welcome and I'm looking forward to chatting with you today. All right, Well,
I'm excited to do this. Yeah, so you have I've read that you are a trailblazer when it comes to the spae and newter in of our of our pets, especially cats. So tell me how did that all begin? How did it all begin for you? Oh? A long time ago. I graduated veterinary school in nineteen seventy two. The the veterinary curriculum did not talk at all about head over population. In four years in the veterinary school, we never visited an animal shelter. Really, wow, Okay, I
don't recall euthanasia in animal shelters as being ever discussed. You know, we might we might spend three or four more hours of lecture on kidney failure in cats or congestive heart failures in dogs. But we were ignoring the fact that the largest killer of dogs and cats in the United States at the time was euthanasian shelters because of pedover population, right, And apparently that and stuck out
to you. That really was like layer. Yeah, well it was only blaring as I was able to look back at it because I went through veterinary school completely ignorant of an issue of peed over population or overcrowding of shelters or
euthanasia for space. I was unaware, completely unaware. But I did an internship at Henryburg Memorial Hospital of the ASPCA in New York City when and at that time, this is early nineteen seventies, the ASPCA in New York City was also animal control for all all five boroughs, right, which today city Right today it's really separate, correct, right, But at the time it
wasn't. Yeah. And so the wake up call was that in the year of my internship, the animal shelter at henry Berg euthanized over one hundred and thirty thousand dogs and cats in one year. Wow. I do not recall if they euthanized on weekends, wow, right, Yeah, but if they didn't that was over five hundred animals a day. Yeah, that's five days a week. Yeah, five days a week, fifty two weeks of the
year. Wake up call. The most light threatening condition that a dog or cat could have in the United States was being in an unplanned litter of puppies
with no home right or litter of kittens with no home right. And so I progressed through my career and I became Boardsird five in surgery, but that number of euthanasias never left me. And so having done all the having done Mefer level surgeries and this type of thing, there was this constant pull back to the largest killer of dogs and cats in the country, and that being euthanasia because of head over population right in the in the in the early nineties.
You know, now we're I'm twenty years out from veterinary school, when
I'm I'm still haunted by this number. And in the early so in the early nineties, I actually had an administrative position at the College of Vedinary Medicine and was not really doing referral levels much at all during that administrative position, but I had an opportunity to begin taking veterinary students to an animal shelter in the next town over the animal The Animal Shelter in Columbus, Mississippi, had a small surgical suite in it, and so I could take students over there.
I was. They were third year students, third year veterinary students. I would take them into the shelter. They would see how overcrowded a small shelter in southeastern United States was, and we would do space and neuters. I would scrub in with them. The students would do the surgeries and it was a positive experience for everyone. The students loved having the surgical experience.
They saw the conditions in the shelters. We were able to do it without any charge to the shelter, and so it was you know, it was there was win for the students, it was win for the animals, and it was win for the shelter. Yeah, win went all around, sure, and and slowly over over the years that program has grown and grown and grown. We now have a our shelter program at the Mississippi State University College of Vene. Medicine has three different courses in the veterinary curriculum right, two
of which are elective, one of which is a required course. But in the in the elective. The first elective is for junior students. Our our our first and second year students are in the classroom and laboratories. Our third and fourth year students are in clinical rotations. Our basic surgery labs are in the second year of the curriculum, which is in most schools it's the third
right, and they're all modeled after Spain Looter. The students, the sophomore students in their basic surgery labs are doing space and castrations on shelter animals, with those animals going back to the shelters for adoption. And then in the third year of our curriculum, we have a it's a short one week elective
that students can rotate through the local animal shelter. They're involved in routine intake exams, routine medical care of patients in the shelter, involved in health certificates, health evaluation and health certificates for animals being prepared for transport, and they're involved in Spain neuter not only of shelter animals, but of pets of low income families. All right, that's that's a one week elective. Just the
statistics for the last six months of last year. The junior students in that elective average doing sixteen surgeries during each student doing on average sixteen surgeries doing that one week rotation. When when a third year student is doing surgeries, a faculty member is scrubbed in with them. The student does the surgery with the faculty member guiding, assisting, stopping them from doing something crazy or helping them
out when they do do something crazy. Right, in the senior year of the curriculum, there is a required two week shelters, a newter rotation. Every student in the curriculum goes through that. They spend two weeks. The senior students when they're doing surgeries, they're supervised, but they are but no one is scrubbed in with them. They are doing the surgeries on their own. The senior the senior students average uh fifty five surgeries during that two week
rotation unassisted them doing you know, doing it on their own. And then and also in the senior year, there is a third a third course. Uh. It's a it's an elective course. It's an advanced clinical rotation in the shelter. It's it's a two week long rotation that in some respects is a repeat of the junior rotation, but at a much higher level. And what I mean by that, when there's an animal in the shelter that has a broken leg that needs to be fixed, that senior student is going to
be involved. In fact, most likely would be the primary surgeon repairing that broken leg, an animal that needs a new creation or a femo headosteectomy. Not only are these senior students doing routine health maintenance and medical care of patients in the shelter and health certificates and stay newter, but they're getting involved in the more advanced surgical procedures that shelters frequently need as well. Sure, I guess, I guess the trail break blazing component of all this I would I
would argue that there's two components. One is, our students are getting more hands on surgical experience than probably any other veterinary school and any other veterinary students in the world. They graduate not only competent, but confident their surgical skills. Yeah, that's very important actually. And then the second trail blazing thing of this is we've been able to do it all with grants and donations.
Our college pays the salaries. Most of the salaries of the faculty and staff that work in this program, but all of the procedures are funded either by grants or so there is no charge to the shelters we work with. And currently we're working with twenty six different shelters and rest your groups in the in the state. And there is no charge to those rescue groups. Well, that's wonderful. So so let me just yeah, let me ask I mean,
that's that's that's incredible. And because spaying and neutering is just such a big and like probably the most important thing to do with your pet. Do other universities have the same type of program or not as what can I say, expansive as yours is? Because I feel like if every university, veterinary university had the same type of program, I think our Spain neuter problem in this country would be pretty insignificant instead of at the number that it's at.
Well, I think I think no one is, no, none of the other veterani schools address it quite the same the same way. Right, We
do have the advantage in the way our curriculum is constructed. The basic surgery labs are in the second year of the curriculum and not the third and the third and fourth years of our curriculum are all clinical rotations, and so we get our students into the clinics a year earlier than many of the other veterinary schools, and certainly earlier than all of them, but a full year earlier than many. So our students are getting hands on experience, more hands on
experience with you than with other adams. Yes, obviously a significant part of that, in the part that I'm involved in is the hands on surgical experience with space and newters. I suspect that every veterinary school has. You know, the days of never mentioning animal shelters and never talking about ped over population
are probably over in the veterinary schools. I don't think. I don't think any any of the veterinary schools do it to the level we do right right now now, there are there are veterinary schools that do a better job than we do from the standpoint of working with shelters on the medical care. You know, I'm I'm fans of UH. I'm a fan of the shelter program
at Florida UH, and that UC Davis a veterinary school, MH. But there their emphasis is much more preventive care and medical care, where our emphasis is much more preventing unwanted litters, getting animals, you know, intact animals and shelters, getting them spade and newted, which is for many of those
animals, is the ticket to getting them into a home. Sure, sure, I mean, I just feel like it's such a simple solution, and I'm kind of surprised that other VET schools aren't doing the same type of program, Like it's almost like a no brainer to me being on the outside looking in. Well, it is, but I think you have to you have to recognize that I started doing this in early nineties, So we're thirty years in and it wasn't like one day we turned to switch and we had this
program right. This program, this program has evolved from an infancy in the early nineties to a more a maturity directed towards spain neuter thirty years later. Sure, but there are a lot of along that pathway to get us to where we are now. Right, So, I think I think it'd be safe to say most of the other veterinary schools are on the same pathway.
I think we just started started right, right. No, that makes sense, and that's I mean, and to me that that's key because that, to me is just such a such a big problem with people not spaying or neutering their pets. And many times, and I get it, they don't have access to affordable spaying or neutering, so you know, yeah, yeah, So let me put something to perspective because I know that one of the focuses of this discussion, and we're having this discussion because this is feline fixed
by five months. Yes, I was going to ask you about the first shelter that I started working with in the early nineties. When we first started going, they would not allow us to and neuter animals under six months of age. This is thirty years ago, but this was the chair of the board of the shelter and there was a veterinarian on the board of the shelter, both of which were absolutely opposed to stay neuter younger than six months of
age. And so the first few years we were doing all the adults and none of the puppies and none of the kittens were being spayed and neutered. And then a shift in the manager, the day to day manager of the shelter, and I met with that person and said, you know this is crazy. If we really want to have an impact, we need to be spaying the puppies and kittens. We can do this as young as six to eight weeks of age, and we should be doing it on all animals prior
to adoption. That manager bought that argument totally, and so we sometimes it's easier to get forgiveness and permission, and so we we simply started doing it right. And then some time later, I mean just a matter of weeks, Uh, there was a board meeting for the shelter, and so we
went to that board meeting and reported what we were doing. And the veterinarian on the board quit being on the board, and the chair of the board resigned from the board because we were spaying in animals, spaying and neutering animals so young. The thing the thing to realize. And this is where this is where the debate comes in about is it appropriate to spay and newt prior to six months of age? I'd say from the eighties to two thoy ten,
that's a guess. Virtually every virtually every veterinary school was teaching wait until six months, even at Mississippi State University faculty. And I'm on the faculty obviously, but faculty, we're teaching wait until six months, and yet I'm taking students out and we're doing it in six weeks, okay. And so the profession had standardized six months or older as the appropriate age to spay or
new either dogs or cats. They're been having graduated in nineteen seventy two, I'd watched the veterinary profession go from recommending that, you know, there's a reason the estimates for the number of animals euthanized in the early seventies was between
fifteen and twenty two million a year. Is at that time they were recommending that animals have a litter first before you spay or newt to them, right, I've heard that, yeah, And then then that was modified to let them have one heat cycle first, right, right, And then then then that was modified to six months of age, and the profession kind of collaced
around six months of age is the appropriate age? Right? Right, There's never been any research whatsoever the sports six months as the appropriate age for spee neuter you, if you want to judge it around the reproductive cycle, is your is your intent? In Spain neuter predominantly to prevent reproduction and if it is. If it is, we have to address the fact that cats can come Female cats can come into heat as young as four months of age.
A female cat can have and gestation period is essentially two months long. A female cat can have a litter of kittens by the time it's six months, yeah, and a half months of so picking it's almost like reach into a hat and pick out a number. Oh, the number is six. Let's do it at six. No research support as that's the ideal time. You know, small breed dogs can come into heat before six months of age, or larger breed dogs come into heat later. So six months of age is
an arbitrary number that profession coalesced around and is what was taught. Right, So virtually virtually every veterinarian graduating from veterinary school from say nineteen seventy five the two thousand was taught you have to wait until there's six months of age. So the majority of veterinarians out there are simply doing what they were taught correct. And oh, by the way, if you have questions about when you
should spay or new to your pet, who do you ask? You ask your veterinarian question your local veterinarian was taught six months of age, and so
that is permea permeated. The whole concept is permeated society as six months of age is the appropriate age, and there is no research that supports back right, and so this radical idea of you know, back in mid nineties of Spain and neutering six to eight week old puppies uh caused a veterinarian to resign from the board of the shelter I was working with, and and and the
chair of the board to resign. They just walked out in a huff, amazing because they thought it was so wrong, right, right, and yet and yet, especially in cats. You know, the dog world has gotten a little bit confused. And we could do we could do a whole podcast on my analysis of the research that most of which has come out of UC Davis Veterinary School and the flaws and that research. But if we if we put pushed dogs to the side right now and focus on cat, right,
we can do the dogs on another episode. We can do that, an absolutely, I would love to if we If we focus on cats, we start with this premise female cats can come into heat as young as four months of age all right, they are sexually mature prior to six months of age.
And there are no studies, zero studies in cats that document adverse medical consequences or behavioral consequences from spading and neutering as young as six to eight weeks none so AB American Vetteranu Medical Association, BAHA, American Animal Hospital Association,
Association of Feline Practitioners, Association of Shelter Veterinarians. Four major professional veterinary associations have all endorsed the concept put out by in twenty sixteen by the Task Force on Feline Sterilization that ultimately results in this fee line six by five campaign. Four major veterinary associations, fourteen state veterinary medical associations have endorsed the whole concept
behind stay nuter of cats prior to five months of age. Where it gets a little bit confused, maybe, where it gets a little bit confused in the shelter environment. We're saying they and neuter prior to adoption. Uh, And if you're adopted out at eight weeks of age, spay or neuter between six and eight weeks of age. We we don't recommend that for owned puppies and kittens for for a very logical reason which seems to confuse a lot of people. Right, do you own a puppy or kitten, all right,
and that puppy kitten is in your household. That household is a pretty safe environment from the standpoint of the risk of being associated with any infectious diseases. Right, do you take that puppy or kitten to an environment where the risk is great? Right? Meaning an animal hospital. Sure, the risk of the risk of an animal being to an infectious disease is much greater in an
animal hospital than it is at home. All right, So what we recommend our own animals is, yes, take the animal to the veterinarian for the vaccination series, and you routine vaccination and parasite control, but don't hospitalize that patient, that puppier kitten at that age. Let the puppier kitten get all the way through the vaccination series, which usually is over by sixteen weeks of age, and then once they're fully vaccinated, then you set the next appointment.
A lot of veterinarians set up their vaccinations and parasite control appointments at two or three week intervals. So you've been taking your puppier kitten to the veterinarian every two or three weeks, since it was six weeks, since you got it at six to seven or seven weeks of age. And so let's say it's let's say it's you get the puppy, it's seven seven weeks of age, and your veterinarian says every three weeks, so it's seven weeks, it's
in thet it goes to the clinic for vaccinations. It's ten weeks. It goes for vaccinations and parasite control for thirteen weeks, vaccinations and parasite control for sixteen weeks, vaccinations and parasite controls. It's finished its vaccination series. One more appointment, nineteen weeks. Now it's safe. That animal is fully vaccinated. Now it's safe to hospitalize that animal for the day for the shade neuter.
And you've still gotten it's spader neutered before five months of age. Right in the shelter environment, that's a different world than home, and the largest, the greatest risk of infectious disease for a puppy or kitten is to stay in that shelter environment. All right, and the shelter is vaccinating too. But these animals are constantly exposed to the risk of bacterial enviral diseases. So what you want to do is get them out of the shelter environment and into
people's homes. And the ticket for getting them out of the shelter environment and into people's homes is getting it spaid or neutered. So we push the spady neuter in the shelter environment as young as six eight weeks of age, and we push it in the for the owned pets two between four and five months of age. Both of those are logical recommendations for the health and safety of the pet, right, but the PS two, all of that is for
me. In the animal welfare animal rescue world, we prefer that people get their their pets from a shelter or rescue so right, because you know, adopt the shop, don't go to pets store because that's puppy mills and everything else, and why even bother going to a breeder when the shelters are filled. So and not to take away from the different timetable if it's home or it's shelter. But you know, most shelters won't adopt out a pet unless
it's already spade or neutered. And that's yeah, yeah, and that's if they're adopted. If they're adopting about reproductively intact, they're simply digging their whole defense because three months later or six months later, they're going to get a litter of kitten, correct, litter of puppies. Right, So we adopt out this, we adopted out this, we're just helping kitten or this playful active puppy, and six months later we get fixed back in return. Exactly.
It cuts the opposite of what a shelter, right, Yes, avit spade or mooted before it goes out of the door. Yeah, And over time we will know the current estimates, and all we have is estimates, current estimates. The current estimates are that now in twenty twenty something, we're euthanizing one point five million dogs and cats a year in shelters, and it was ten times that or more fifty years ago when I graduated veterinary school.
So we've made tremendous progress in several fronts. One is in educating people about the importance of spee neoter and in providing access to spay neoter. Well, that's to me is more key is the access for people. Yeah, well,
very important people. People buy the idea. Now it's just a whole lot of them can't afford it, correct, Yeah, And so then you get into the whole realm of low cost you know, high quality, high buying, low cost paying hooter clinics, which in the nineties were absolutely controversial.
The profession was fighting them, and now they've pretty much realized that, you know, the practicing veterinarians out there aren't going to lose a client they never had, right, And if I can't take if I'm living on a six to eight hundred dollars Social Security check per year, per month, I'm not going to take my new puppy to a veterinarian and spend five hundred dollars spade. You know that's afford it and eighty percent of my income. Yeah,
you're right. So I think the profession is bought into the concept that these low cost space neuter clinics do do quality work, and I have not putting them out of The private practitioners out of business busier now than they ever
made. We're sure weren't as busy as they are right now. Sure, Well, let me ask you this for those because there there's always the naysayers in any situation, and I've had arguments with people over this when and I'm sure you have heard about people who refuse to spay or neuter their cat or dog and their reasoning is it causes more health problems in the animal, which I don't believe. But I'm not you know, I'm a civilian. I
don't have a vet background. What do you say when you hear people say that, Well, other than put my hair out, I don't have much of that, yes, but you know you know what I mean, right, You've heard that from people. Absolutely. Yeah. The the literature and again more in dogs. The literature has gotten confused over the last ten years because of some of the articles that have been published on what I believe is pretty weak research. But you know, the sad reality is things are published
online now and you know they're not true. If it's on the internet, it must be true, you know. And so everybody everybody before they talked to the veterinarian, they talked at doctor Google and leave was some misinformation. But there there are several studies that have looked at the impact of early Spade
Newter. By early, I mean as young as six to eight weeks of age in cats, and none of them, none of the studies have come up with conditions that are more prevalent because an animal with spade under five months of age. None of them all right, And what's so often missing in this dialogue, it's the fact that the larger the animal is and the older the animal is, the longer the surgery takes, the more difficult the surgery
takes. A a spay in a two pounds or three pound can we gold kitten is so much easier and so much faster than in a six to eight pound six month kitten. Hat the surgery, the anesthetic times or less, the surgical times are less, the incidence of hemorrhage is less, recovery times are faster, and so there's no zero in my professional opinion, there is zero reason I won't even talk about h doing a spee or neuter at six to eight weeks as early age. I talk about doing a spay or neuter
at six months of age being delayed. There is no reason to delay the surgery until the animal is older and larger and the surgery is more difficult and takes longer. There's no reason, especially in cats, and in dogs there may be a few slightly valid arguments occasionally, but not many cats. In cats, there are no reasons to delay spae neuter past five months of age. Right, No, so here here, here, here are specific arguments
people have made. Well, in male cats, it predisposes to urinary obstruction. Well, that was disproven in the nineties. Their their, their theory. We shouldn't say this because now someone's going to listen to only this sentence in the podcast and use it. But their theory is you castrate a castrate a cat before it's sexually mature, the penis is smaller, the urethra is
smaller, predisposed us to urinary obstruction. Well, there was a research study in the nineties that looked at urethral diameters and urethel pressures in intact male cats, male cats, male cats castrated at seven months of age and male cats castrated at seven weeks of age and found zero difference. All right, So so their basic premise, which makes them think that urethral obstruction might be more common, is false. Right, then there's been a lot of research looking
at predisposing factors that contribute to your retel obstruction in male cats. Several research papers out there, not a single one of them comes to the conclusion that early, earlier castration predisposed us to reteal obstruction. I mean, I could pull out a reference list and read read your six or eight research articles that have all looked at what are the things that predisposed cats to mail cats to retel obstruction, and none of those articles mentioned early castration. None of them
there. Another argument is and here the basic premise is correct, right, Removing sex hormones estrogens from females and testosterone from males causes a slight delay in the closure of growth plates. Right. The reason we get taller as we grow up is there are growth plates in all of our long bones that continue to grow until a certain age. For people, that age is usually around seventeen eighteen years of age before those growth plates close, and in tats it's
usually closer to nine to twelve months of age. And removing the sex hormones, if you will, causes a slight delay. Right. So if you are if you are really really concerned that your cat might be a half a centimeter taller, my god, don't have them castrated, worse trade until after they were a year of age, but there's been no clinical significance in the
cat. Zero documented clinical significance of that delay. One of the things in dogs is there may be some clinical significance in some cases, but in cats there's none. And virtually every argument that people come up with as to some condition that might be more common if the animal is castrated, it's false in the cat, you know, but then then then okay, what about what about if you delay? Well, the third most common tumor in cats is
memory neoplasia. Ninety six of memory neoplasias are malignant. The life expectancy of a cat once it's been diagnosed with memory neoplasia, whether the cat is treated or not, on averages less than a year, and the incidence of memory neoplasia jumps rises as soon as that cat has had one heat cycle. So yes, say it before it ever has that heat cycle. You significantly reduced
the chances of memory neoplasia. So people like to stop going to doctor Google on the Internet to get their information, or or at least if they go to doctor Google. I would I would really support don't go to doctor Google, right, But but if you do go to doctor Google, Google, recognize that d O G. Does not not spell cat. And and most of the negative literature out there on doctor Google is about d o DS correct. Well, yeah, and and and so again we could we could have
a podcast later on the whole issue. We will. Yeah, that and that and that will get even that will get more controversial and more exciting if you will. Okay, But but in cats. There was a veterinarian in two thousand, a veterinarian who worked in a high line spae nuterer clinic in UH Atlanta that in the year two thousand and you know, high volume space nuder clinics hadn't been around, there were a whole lot of them prior to
two thousand. But she interviewed veterinarians that were working in high volume space neuter clinics about the whole issue of pediatric spain neuter UH. And I shouldn't have brought this up because I'd have to go back and read it because I'm foggy on some of the numbers. But the bottom line was the veterinarians that were out there doing performing UH spain nooter on puppies and kittens less than five months
of age were unanimous, unanimous. The surgeries were faster the surgeries were easier, to recovery from antisy was faster, and the level of complications was lower. Unanimous, and and it's still true, right, And that's what we need to remind people of over and over and over and over. Feline fixed by five month, Doctor Phil Bushby. I appreciate all your knowledge, all your time. I want to definitely talk to you again on the UC Davis
and dogs. I definitely want to talk to you about that. But I thank you for all your time and all that you do and keep doing what you're doing and fighting the good fight, because thank you so much. I do. I appreciate it. And you know, knowledge is power. And for the listeners who I know are listening and their animal lovers, this is very important information that will help save their cats and you know dogs too, So thank you. You convinced one person at a time. Eventually you've convinced
enough that's right. So thank you. Thank you for all of your knowledge and information. You have a good day. You've never been a rader operator in the spot. See a later monicator