A HANDS-ON LEARNING EXPERIENCE FOR VETERINARY STUDENTS AND PRACTITIONERS
SPAY
ACADEMY
Previously Spay Academy Spain
Develop your skills and confidence with routine neutering in our tutored courses in Europe.
5 days of 100% practical surgery
Mentoring and monitoring by experienced practitioner
High standard practice with IV access, multimodal pain relief and gas anaesthesia
BRINGING CONFIDENCE TO ROUTINE SPAYS
Veterinarians often struggle to achieve surgical competence and this undermines their confidence in their skills.
Why We Struggle
Lack of Opportunities
In many countries, due to the structure of clinical practice, you don’t even have the opportunity to practise surgery.
Lack of Support
When you don’t have adequate support, you don’t feel good about practising new surgeries on your patients completely alone.
Not Enough Cases
Even when you do have the ability and knowledge to perform surgery, sometimes cases are not frequent enough for you to feel like you are keeping your skills up to date.
The “No Experience Cycle”
In a busy practice, it is common for surgeries to be completed by the most experienced vets, as this is the most time efficient, with best outcomes. This starts a cycle where inexperienced vets do not have the chance to improve.
THE COURSE EXPERIENCE
The Spay Academy is an intensive and immersive learning experience lasting for 5 days. You will be part of a small group and you will have one or two tutors available to support you while you are in surgery.
Spay Academy
Level 1 - Portugal
This level focuses on cat spays and is appropriate for vet students and vets who are starting the surgical experience.
Spay Academy
Level 2 - Portugal
This level is suitable for vets that want to learn and improve their technique with bitch spays and go through a high number of back-to-back surgeries.
MORE THAN JUST A TRAINING COURSE
Support
Your tutors will be available for you the entire time. They can guide you, help you or just cheer for you, and will be ready to put down any fires!
Experience
You will be the only surgeon doing surgery on your patient and you will be assisted by our tutors whenever needed.
Standards
You will be working mostly with shelter dogs and rescue cats, as well as some private pets, and you will be exposed to private practice conditions.
Community
We will be there to give you support during and outside of the course. Take some time to relax and stretch your back after a day of surgeries.
Next Courses
Our surgery courses are appropriate for veterinary graduates as well as final year veterinary students.
Level 1- 2 vacancies
6 - 10 July 2026
Level 2 - 3 vacancies
11 - 15 May 2026
TRAVEL, STAY AND MEALS
In Portugal, the Spay Academy takes place in our Training Centre in Vila Franca de Xira, in the outskirts of Lisbon. This city is 20-min drive from Lisbon Airport and can also be easily reached by underground + train from the airport. We will help you with your travel arrangements.
We will offer you accommodation at a local guesthouse. This is a 5-minute walk from the Training Centre and downtown.
We provide all meals from Sunday night to Saturday morning, including breakfast, coffee breaks, lunch and dinner.
The costs of accommodation and meals are already included in the course fee, so you don’t have to pay any extra for your meals or your stay.
How to Book a Course
As we have limited vacancies and match our students, our booking process is a bit different from what you may be used to!
Choose the dates that suit you best
Have a look at the dates available and the levels and choose the one that is better for you to join the course.
Pre-Book
Once you know what date suits you, send us your intention to book a vacancy by leaving your details in our registration form. You can access this below on the button "REGISTRATION FORM".
Q&A session and vacancy confirmation
Once we receive your registration form, we will ask you to arrange a free Q&A session at your convenience. In this session we go through the most appropriate level for you, taking into consideration your goals and experience, and explain to you what to expect from the course. We will also explain next steps should you want to go ahead with the registration.
Deposit and registration
After the Q&A session we hope you have all the information you need to make your decision. If you want to join us and we have confirmed that there is a vacancy for you, we will send a deposit request to secure your place. Once this deposit is received, your vacancy is secure.
JOIN US
Three Good Reasons to Join
The Spay Academy will offer you a unique learning experience and growth opportunity.
40h of CPD
40 hours of certified CPD with a proficiency diploma at the end.
Expert support
Guidance, mentoring and help from your tutor or tutors.
From competence to proficiency
Our different levels help you take the right level of support for your case and improve your competence and confidence in the fastest possible way.
What people say about our course
Thank you so much for the great course and the great time, Luis and Judy are awesome. This was an excellent experience and an outstanding course!! I have learned so much and I found the course one of the best courses I have attended. I feel so much more comfortable with surgery after only a week, definitely an invaluable experience for my future.
Clara Garcia
The course was great, I learnt so much from Luis and Judy-they were excellent teachers. I have gone from worrying about spays to now being comfortable in what I am doing and can’t thank them enough. It was a fun and enjoyable experience and I would recommend it to all.
Mia Kalyvides
This course exceeded any expectation that I had. I imagined that the first two days we would be confined to a chair and a desk as our mentors would theoretically talk about different techniques/anaesthetics procedures used in bitch spay. I couldn’t have been more wrong. We arrived at Scooby on Monday and as soon as the brilliant staff brought the first dogs we were doing bitch spays.
Stefana Trufin
Our Partner
Frequently asked question
Here are a few answers to our most common questions
Yes, this course is for veterinary graduates and final year veterinary students who want to develop their skills with neutering and become confident with the procedure. If you are still not in your final year, you will need to wait a bit longer ;)
Yes you can! We will make sure you get support for your first ones and we will teach you the foundations of surgery and go at your skill level.
We don’t want you to focus solely on the number of surgeries, but we aim to do 3 cat spays per day on level 1 and 3 bitch spays per day on level 2.
We always make sure you have an experienced general surgeon to teach our courses. We try to find tutors who love surgery and who also love to teach.
For our foundational level 1 course, you will be doing cat spays, and in our level 2 course, you will focus on bitch spays. Whenever possible, we try to make these surgeries back-to-back (we prepare patients for you and deal with the anaesthesia). However, if you want, we're happy to let you do procedures for your patients such as placing IV catheters, inducing anaesthesia and intubating your patients.
The 5-day Academy costs a total of £1850 for level 1 and £2500 for level 2. The fee already includes accommodation and meals for the entire length of the course and is paid in two installments.
You will stay at a local guesthouse in the town centre, which is a 5-minute walk from the training centre.
Yes, from Sunday night to Saturday morning, your meals are all included and you don’t pay any extra for them! We will also accommodate your preferences and limitations.
Travel is NOT included in the course fees, so you will need to make your own travel arrangements. However, we will help you with them and can help you look at flight options, as well as travel options from the airport to your hotel.
Comfortable shoes, an extra pair of scrubs if you fancy (although we do have laundry facilities and extra scrubs) and your own stethoscope if you are anything like our founder and can only hear things with your stethoscope and no one else’s!
Still have questions?
Book a free Q&A session.
Learn To Spay Dogs And Cats
Develop your surgical skills with spays, improve your technique, reduce surgery time and learn to deal with complications.
Book a Q&A session if you have doubts about the course and want to know if it's right for you.
Fill out the booking form so you can join the course of your choosing.
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Scotland
© UniVets Global 2025. All Rights Reserved.
UniVets Global is the trading name of AD-VETERPRISES LTD. Registered in Scotland, Co. No. SC581517
The UniVets Global Brand and Course Methodology are owned by AD-VETERPRISES LTD (UK).
Physical courses in Portugal are sold and administered by our licensed trading partner, Andreia Dias Veterinária Unipessoal Lda., trading under the name UniVets Global em Portugal.