Books with Spirit – Joyfulness between horses and people

I have done two “healing” sessions lately, where male horses were complaining about castration and asking us to not castrate on auto-pilot, but to think through all the issues.

Well, OK, now I’ve thought about it … and from a practical point of view, I would probably still castrate my young colts and I expect that I would do it before they had a chance to learn what they were missing.

In the past, castrations have typically been done for two reasons – one to stop the colt or stallion from being able to make a mare pregnant and secondly to make them quieter and more amenable to being handled.  Geldings typically have a much more even temperament than stallions and even mares.

I don’t know what the circumstances are like where you keep your horses, but at our place, having a colt or stallion just wouldn’t work from a practical point of view.  We already run two herds – our “little horse herd”, which consists of 3 miniatures and a pony and our normal sized horses in another herd. 

At certain times of the year and for quite long periods, these two herds run together with all the fun and activity that a herd of ten horses can have.  Two of these herd members are mares, so no matter how much I wanted them to, a stallion just wouldn’t work in that herd configuration.

However, for those of you thinking about gelding your colt just for behavioural reasons, there is a good reason to think again.

There is a beautiful new wave of being with horses that is sweeping across the horse world, that the book Zen Connection with Horses (available here) is a part of.  And this way of being with horses works with the most beautiful co-operation.  It works with a gentleness and a consideration for the dignity and wonder-full-ness  of the horse that has a stallion reacting differently than when we were dominating them and making them do the things that we wanted them to do.

So from a behavioural point of view, it may not be so necessary to castrate as it used to be when I used my old ways of being with a horse. (Even though it may still be necessary from a practical point of view.)

And what about the horses we have gelded? What does castration cost them?  The two horses I was working with in “healings” talked about losing their “mojo”, their male-ness.  They talked about testosterone being the source of their joy, their bounce, their play and the sheer physicality of being male.

With my new way of being with horses, I can handle that in a horse now – the joy, the bounce, the play and the sheer physicality of being male.

When Bobby was younger, his behaviour was very stallion like, even though he was a gelding who was gelded correctly.  My vet at the time explained to me that testosterone can be produced from glands other than the testicles and that Bobby was producing a high amount of testosterone from these other glands.  At the time, I couldn’t handle that behaviour and I had a homeopath help me get rid of it.

Funny now, that in this new way of being with horses, I am working out ways to give him that testosterone back…

I am really feeling my way around this issue (stallions are not an area of my expertise) and would welcome any thoughts, insights, knowledge, or information, to add to this post.  Please feel free to either leave them here in the comments section or email me so that we can either add to this article or put up a new one.