It’s day 343 billion of the human strangles epidemic and hope of the humans being allowed back into work anytime before bunny bonking season is fading faster than mother’s New Years diet. I so fear that their box rest is having lasting impacts on their mental states, which in turn is signalling yet more misery for us as we have to be on the receiving end of horrific hairdos, creative clipping, “lockdown challenges” issued by professional riders but carried out by those who shouldn’t ride the dodgems without a safety harness, and this week’s stressage top tips from Karen on Facebook who subscribes to “pole club” and thus is qualified to issue both training ideas and critique Charlotte-what’s-her-face-in-a-garden’s leg position.
It’s not just our owners/non-furry surrogate parents/payers of the bills that we need to worry about losing the plot more rapidly than I can empty mother’s bank balance — oh no! I am surrounded by “professionals” who are just as bad. After last week having my smile attended to by Evil Army Man, this week it was the turn of my tootsies as Cool New Shoes Man rocked up with his usual bend of worrying tongue action — lashing for mother, licking for me (I do wonder at times if I should be filing for a restraining order) — and hoof mastery. I am, afterall, pedicured by the Horse & Hound Farrier of the Year, which of course he never ever mentions…at all…
He was pleased with the progress my foot is making and how well I am growing new healthy hoof, which was inevitable as I am the Hoverine with the regeneration powers of a supersized Axolotl in legwarmers. What was much more concerning was the view that in his opinion he thinks that I could eventually come back into work — such news is such a double edged sword; on one level it means my team GB hopes remain faintly alive like a cryogenically frozen caterpillar (as an idea, it still has legs), but on the other it may mean that mother rekindles her view that she actually can ride one side of me when the reality is she should stick to pony patting and leave the riding to those who have marginally better coordination that a drunk trying to do their hair on the big one at Blackpool…
Having imparted this wonderous news, Cool New Shoes Man used the stunned silence to get mother to agree to film him painting my toenails in what I can only assume was some sort of warped commercial for his new career as a manicurist. I’m not sure that plastering your clients in green goop, which in turn made my feathers look like the love children of Grotbags and Snotbags is much of an incentive to allow him loose near any body part, no matter how “alternative” a look you might favour. Between the hole in my foot and my now green feathers, I look like the sole survivor from an explosion at The Simpsons’ power plant…
Needless to say, I will be spending the rest of the week facing the opposite direction from all mares at the yard, as between the “Cleopatra coming at ya” fringe, mother’s insistence on me wearing leg warmers to go out, a hole in my foot and green feathers, I’m hardly top of anyone’s breeding ambitions (AI or otherwise). Sometimes it’s fair to say my life sucks harder than a turbo charged Dyson
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Laters,
Hovis
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Hovis shared his weekly diary each Friday on the Horse & Hound website between 2008 and February 2025. Initially located on the popular H&H forum, he moved to the main website in February 2013. He published nine books, each to raise funds for his local equine welfare charity Bransby Horses. You can read all his diary entries below. H&H also published a final tribute to our much-loved equine contributor.
