Topper

Arabians: A little bit of everything perfect.
        - Amanda Ferber 

       Closeness, friendship, affection - keeping your own horse means all these things.
  - Bertrand Leclair 

WF Impressive

(GGS Topper+/ x LF Diamond Rose)

As he exited the birth canal, I caught him in my outstretched arms. Diamond Rose preferred to deliver her foals while standing. Only once did she lay down, with Zing. I should have known something was wrong because of that.

A beautiful, delicate colt. So refined he hardly seemed real. He was the last of three foals that year, the other two big bruisers of Half-Arabian colt flesh. Topper was so much like a china figurine in the middle of a bull pen with those two boys.

He was my sweet boy. I left him whole, he had the pedigree to back up his beauty and his athletic ability. His sire was an old horse at the time I bred Diamond Rose to him and he was dead by the time Topper was born. GGS Topper+/ was known as a broodmare sire and there are no other breeding sons by him. Just my horse.

And now I am faced with a gut-wrenching decision. Castration of my favorite, the manly one. The farm stallion. Topper is a breeding stallion, not just an intact male horse. He is a stallion who is aware of his job. He doesn't have a job anymore, since the last thing anyone with any sense is doing is breeding horses. So Topper is a victim of bad economic policies also.

My beautiful horse is not happy. He is anxious, angry and becoming neurotic. Sounds emanate from him that seem not of this earth. He needs a job and I can't give him one. I don't see a job for him as I look down the road. The horse industry is always the last thing to recover in bad economic times and this is as bad as I have ever seen it. It is likely he will never cover another mare again in his life. He is twelve, so that is a long time to be frustrated and angry.

So I am left to agonize over a decision I don't want to make. The emotion is all my own. The horse doesn't have the consciousness to understand the change. He will settle into being a gelding. He will get what he has always wanted; a mare herd to control and protect. He's been a stallion long enough that he will still have that instinct, but it won't result in foals. I, on the other hand, cannot seem to fathom him as a gelding. It brings tears to my eyes and a sickness to my stomach. It will be the end of a line and the end of an era. I know it's best, but I don't want to do it. And I know I must.