Just Call Me “Doctor”

Yesterday, I performed my first surgery. Two of them, actually – on goats. That’s right, I finally took the plunge and wethered (castrated) two goats. Since I had never wethered a goat before, we took the larger goat, Elvis, to the Harrogate Hospital for Animals to do it under the supervision of our vet. I was quite nervous to make the cut, but it wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be and the whole procedure went off without a hitch. That gave me the confidence to go home and wether the other goat that needed to be done.

Our son, Ryan was helping. He held the goats still while I did the dirty work. He did a great job, but he couldn’t bring himself to watch. It is a clean and simple procedure with almost no blood, but if I were a guy I would probably be squeamish about it too!

When we got home, I gathered the supplies we needed, caught the goat, cut him open, removed the first testicle, went for the second one and it wasn’t there. Oh no! It had not descended. Thankfully, I had my cell phone on me so I called the vet. We took him to the vet and she was able to coax the shy one out.

So it was done. I had not even thought to check to make sure they were both “there” before I started. I won’t make that mistake again! Moral of the story: measure twice, cut once.

Both goats are recuperating without problems. They bounce right back like nothing ever happened. It makes my wonder why a vasectomy is such a big deal for men…