Morning Call Ranch: Ace's adventure....

Hi! I'm Ace. Mommy said that I could write in her blog this evening and tell you all about my exciting adventure. I had the BEST day!! (I think.) Mommy always keeps me in my pasture with Kitch, far away from the mares. But, today Mommy put me in the round pen to play! It's right next to the mare's pasture, so I got to spend the whole day flirting with them! It was really, really fun and Lily & Tillie were enjoying themselves too. We ran and bucked beside each other, squealed & whinnied and carried on like crazy. It was VERY exciting!!

Then, Daddy came home and a strange truck followed him into the yard. This red truck parked right next to my new pen. I was very friendly and came right up to say "Hi!" to the newcomer, who turned out to be a vet, and also to Mommy & Daddy when they all came into my pen to visit. Then the vet pinched me in the neck!! I thought that was kinda rude, but before I could complain, I started feeling very sleepy. The next thing I knew, I was stumbling around the pen trying to wake back up. I feel really weird, but I don't know what is different. The mares are concerned about me and Kitch keeps calling to me. But, now I'm eating my supper and everything seems okay, so I'm going to pass the computer back to Mom. She can fill you in on what happened while I was sleeping....

Ace is now a GELDING!! We had put a call in with an old-timer vet that everyone highly recommended - he has been in business for over 50 years, so pretty much everyone has used him at one time or another. His price for the procedure is much more reasonable than our regular vet. He had an opening become available this afternoon, so Dad hurried home from work to meet him and guide him here. This vet has done so many castrations that he has the method down pat and it only took a little over 1/2 an hour! After the first shot made Ace sleepy, he gave him another shot, which really knocked him out and Ace fell over. The vet directed Dad to straddle Ace's neck and swing his front legs up into the air. (Dad really wanted to take pictures, but fortunately in his position he couldn't and I refused.) Then, the vet knelt down between Ace's back legs, made his incision, pulled out the testicles, tied strong strings really tightly around each cord and then crimped and cut the cords. Simple and done. He gave Ace a shot of penicillin and then Ace started to get up. He stumbled around the pen for a while and then settled into his pile of hay. I'll start giving him antibiotics in the morning, just in case. Other than some swelling and a small amount of discharge, he'll be fine, just a bit sore for a few days. The vet said that he only needed to stay in the round pen overnight. He didn't see any reason why we shouldn't put him right back out in the big pasture with Kitch in the morning. I guess I had thought that after being gelded he would need to be confined, but he said it was better to keep him moving around. Interesting note: the vet drives a 10 year old Dodge Ram 2500 Cummins Turbo Diesel that has almost 650,000 miles on it!! Wow!!

I'm really glad to have that over and done with. We have debated it back and forth for a year now. He has such great bloodlines that he would be a great stallion prospect. But, I always said that we can't have a stallion here because they aren't safe around kids. And, I warned him that when he started to act studly, we would have to get him fixed. Well, about a month ago he started to get really pushy and acting like a big-time JERK!! He would have been okay for me to work with, but we need horses that we can trust around the boys. I'm glad that those hormones are going away now. The boys love him dearly and are psyched that he's gelded.

I put the worst of the pictures down here at the bottom of this post. If you're squeamish, you don't want to look! Dad used the camera after the operation...