Responsible ownership

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We at dogs.ie encourage responsible dog ownership. Our thoughts on this is that you should only have a dog if you can give it adequate care and attention while also adhering to the law (i.e. purchase of a dog licence). We urge owners to “spay” or “neuter” their dogs to help prevent the seriously high numbers of dogs that are destroyed each year in Ireland. Owners should also bring their pets regularly to vets.

Spaying / Neutering Dogs

The current consensus is that spaying or neutering of your dog can be done from 5 months. At 5 months bitches can come into their first heat cycle. There has even been research in the recent years that dogs that are neutered tend to have a decrease rate of other issues in later life. This report looked at over 70,000 animals across 180+ different breeds, and found that ‘sterilisation increased life expectancy by 13.8% in males and 26.3% in females’. There are some caveats to this rule, such that larger dogs, like St. Bernard / Irish Wolfhounds should be left intact until later for full muscle development.

Finding a dog

When looking for a pet we recommend that you use trusted sources for your dog, which includes animal rescue centres (or ourselves). We don’t allow so-called ‘puppy farms’ on our platform, and work together with the relevant authorities to report any suspicious sellers.

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