The kindest cut

Whenever I have a horse castrated, I come away content and happy that I have done that horse the biggest favour I can do. It's worth making this point, because I often get the impression that many people do not appreciate just how wrong it is to keep a colt entire for any longer than is necessary. Horses are gregarious animals. They love each other's company, just as we humans do. I love the fact that here we allow the horses to socialise, so that the fillies and the geldings all get their turns, at various times of the day or night, of spending some time with their peers, just hanging out together and doing whatever they want to do, whether that's frolic together, nuzzle each other, or even ignore each other. Any colt, though, cannot be afforded that luxury. He obviously can't be turned out with any fillies, but even with other colts or geldings it often isn't feasible as some of them can fight - and just watch wildlife documentaries on the TV if you can't envisage that. So the colts live a life of solitary confinement: in the stable 23 hours a day (and even convicts nowadays aren't allowed to be given solitary) and even when out at exercise they have to be kept from getting too close to the horses around them. That's an awful life. But at least he's got his balls, you might say. And? What use are they to him? He's never going to be allowed to use them; in fact, he's never even going to be allowed to talk to a female horse, never mind touch one. Under those circumstances, how can a horse's testicles be anything to him other than a source of frustration and privileges denied? My yearling colt (by Layman ex Minnie's Mystery) arrived from France on the first Tuesday of this month, having been lucky enough to have spent his entire life thus far at Haras de la Cauviniere in Normandy, where his dam is privileged to lead a life of luxury. He was castrated two days later. A week later he joined the herd and he now mixes in with a bunch of fillies and geldings as happily as you like. No doubt you'll be hearing plenty of him in due course, but that's enough of an introduction to him for now. And here's his smiling little face. I've got a name selected for him but I haven't yet sent in the application form, so it might be tempting fate to tell you what it is. But as of now, he's a potential champion - and a gelding too, so that's a good start.

With dogs it's less straightforward. We had Gus castrated yesterday. I think that that's a good thing, as it's in neither the dog's interests nor his owner's for sexual thoughts to start taking over his brain. We had no aspirations to turn Gus into the Sadler's Wells of the dalmatian world, so castration was the obvious option. It will definitely make his life more straightforward and has no drawbacks at all apart from the small amount of discomfort in the immediate aftermath of the operation - discomfort which is being massively increased at the moment by the bucket which he has to wear around his head to prevent him from interfering with his private parts and thus hindering their healing. He has not taken to this well at all (and, just between you and me, I think that its hours are numbered, even though he is supposed to wear it for a week) but already he is back to his usual perky self, only 34 hours or so after the operation. So that's good too: the advantages aren't as massive as when one castrates a horse, but even so I think that it was still the right thing to do. With a horse, though, there is no doubt - and I'm glad that I've made that point, because the fact that so many people allow colts to remain uncastrated for far, far longer than is necessary is a constant bee in my bonnet. There are hundreds of colts going around Newmarket who are never going to be stallions, who are going to have to be castrated eventually and whose lives would be far happier had it been done x amount of months ago, rather than at some unspecified point in the future. So if I've changed the way even one person views castrating with these few sentences, then they won't have been written in vain. And the other benefit, of course, of having Gus castrated is that, with him having been slightly subdued over the past day or so, it has allowed the cats to curl up in their baskets safe in the knowledge that no one is going to blunder in and disturb them. (And, by the way, in outlining the advantages of castrating a horse as soon as possible, I've only discussed the increase in a horse's happiness, and haven't even touched on the additional benefit to his keepers that a gelding is far less likely to fail to fulfill his potential as a racehorse than a colt is).

Here endeth the lesson.