My girl got spayed at 7 years of age after having a bout of pyometria (the ocult type, which means there is no discharge), hers was in fact an emergency op, as she had been off her food for a couple of days with a high temperature, high white cell blood count and was peeing more often than usual, so she had to go straight in, she came home midday, was groggy, sad and in her basket all day, but by night time I was told I could offer her a couple bits of chicken, and she nearly took my fingers off wolfing them down, thats when I knew she would be fine. The vet had warned us that she might take a bit longer to get back to normal as she had been weakened by the infection. He showed us her uterus and it weighed 4 times more than the normal weight and was all swollen full of pus. By next day she was up and mobile, wore the cone for 2 days and as we could see she wasn't bothered about the stitches, we took it off, 10 days later the stiches came out.