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Yeah, I can talk about stalllions since I'm considered "that crazy 
foreign woman who gelds her boys and makes them live out of doors and 
eat hay"...  I have geldings of 7, 5 and 2 years of age and none of 
them had any reason to be gelded for behavioural reasons. They were all 
perfect gentlemen at all times. I once hauled the now 5 yr old out of a 
garden gate by his tail at the age of 4 when he ignored my "Don't go 
there!" verbally. I geld mine because they get to live in a herd 
situation in paddocks as a result and I don't have a jilllion 
unexpected babies.

Most people here don't geld stallions as it's considered a waste of 
money to do so and anyway "You can't cut THOSE off!"  But stallions in 
Egypt get no respect at all. They are the work horses, unproductive 
animals who are given the dirtiest jobs. Mine were by any standards 
pampered but at the same time yelled at for being rude or rowdy or 
noisy. I do see nasty, badly behaved stallions sometimes. I dislike 
them for the same reason that I'd dislike a mare pursuing one of their 
lines of behaviour. If you set the rules at the start when they are 
little, you get nice boys when they are big.

I'm the oldest of four kids and the shortest one in the family.  Both 
my brothers are over 6'6" and my sister comes in at 6'. My mom was 
always saying of kids and dogs that everything that they do that you 
might find annoying but cute when they are little should be examined 
closely and probably squashed immediately. My mother was always saying 
when I accused her of being tough on the younger kids, "Well, maybe 
it's sort of okay now when he/she is only a baby, but how cute will it 
be when he/she's 18?"  Works with horses too. The respect and obedience 
should be encouraged when they are small enough to push around still, 
so that they never really learn that they are bigger than you.  Mom 
didn't know beans about horses, but it was very good advice.

I always tell my riding students to stop before they mount a horse and 
say to themselves with strong conviction, "I am a carnivore. You are 
lunch."  Amazing what the thought can do to equine behaviour.  Wonder 
if Sally Swift ever used that visualisation.

Maryanne
Cairo
(currently with 5 ex-stallions who just lost the family jewels because 
no one needed them for breeding and I was extravagant enough to put the 
vet's kid through 3rd grade.)


On Friday, Jul 9, 2004, at 21:32 Africa/Cairo, Dyane Smith wrote:
> >
>
> Maryanne can probably speak to this with more authority than I, but 
> when I
> was a kid I rode stallions almost all the time in Libya and Pakistan 
> because
> they just don't usually geld (or didn't then, a 100 years ago, who 
> knows
> now).  I used to ride a colt that reared all the time and some others 
> that
> reared, but I don't remember any talking at all.  It's true the horses 
> were
> usually very socialized and no one thought much about whether you were 
> on a
> stallion or not because mostly you were, but I never had a problem 
> with a
> mare in heat.  I did have a couple of instances where two stallions 
> dumped
> their riders and mixed it up a little, but in four years and many, many
> horses those were the only times.


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