Being a female myself-- Once or twice a year is a cake walk. AS the mom of two human daughters -- once or twice a year is EASY.
:lol: Yes that does give perspective!
The scar is negligible and you probably will never even notice it a year from now. The scars tend to disappear on most dogs and are generally very hard to find anyway -- so much so that all of us who do rescue have a darn hard time telling if most female dogs have been spayed! The vets have a hard time too -- with my Lily being Exhibit A: she went in to be spayed only for the vet to find.... she was already spayed. But only after they opened her up, poor thing. She didn't care -- she's the tomboy of female cavaliers and probably liked showing off her stitches. :roll:
If you have your female around a male be aware this would have to end completely for a full month as she goes into heat and you would need to watch her like a hawk for signs of going into heat -- they can get pregnant in a second of contact and the male would go crazy around her as well, so visits are totally off and the two could never even be out at the same time; one would need confining the entire time the other was running around.
I think for the majority of pet owners, spaying sometime around 6 months works best because most pet owners have a frustrating time working the management of a heat into a normal home schedule; they aren't prepared for a female spotting blood around the house; they can't walk the dog or have any males around including any male neutered within the previous two months; and they also have to deal with the possibility of unwanted male dogs hanging around the outside of the house as they can scent a female in heat from a mile off, easily. A male can and will scale a high wall or fence too, to get to a female in heat and that includes much larger breeds -- they don't discriminate much :lol:.
I also think people prepared to take on the extra responsibility and time commitment can manage without much hassle -- but you need to know the full implications and how to manage the dog during that time. Remember too that pregnancy itself is a higher death risk to your cavalier than many of the illnesses you prevent through spaying so making sure she absolutely cannot get pregnant needs to be the top priority. And that no one wants cavalier mixes any more than they want any other mix at the local shelter or pound so there are real moral issues of not being a firm guardian of your girl(s).
For those who put off spaying past 6 months the likelihood is very high the dog will go into heat (at 7 or 8 months in particular snd usually before 10 months) so if you are thinking of spaying and you have females this age, call the vet TODAY and get her in right away. If she goes into heat you will need to wait til 3-4 months after the heat ends to think of spaying again plus you will need to mind your female through those heats.
Though I often see this claimed in discussions on the topic, it isn't technically true that a neutered animal remains pubescent all its life. Certain aspects of development are halted but these are only some secondary sexual characteristics. Back when human males were regularly castrated in several cultures, including in Europe to create the singers known as castrati, this was done when they were young pre-pubescent boys. They still grow into men and many were famous for being quite the ladies' men.
But their voices didn't change and they didn't grow as much body hair and still had sexual drives (just as most neutered males will still find bitches in heat of interest to some degree). The dog still grows to adulthood, gains many adult sexual behaviours (eg raising legs to pee for most males), etc.