Hovis’ Friday diary: ‘Christmas + boredom + social media sociopaths = hell for horses’
(Image credit: Karen Thompson)
Dear diary,
It appears the human strangles epidemic is back with a vengeance, but now with some added flavouring called omni-crumble, which sounds very very concerning. Frankly, most of the humans came out of the last enforced box rest hopeless out of work and with a body conditioning score that would have had even showing judges gulping, so I’m not sure some new thing that translates as “All cake” bodes well. Not that this will of course stop the ongoing unfairness that is the discriminatory behaviours seen between anthropoid and animal:
We are out of work and that’s seen as something that needs fixing – “fixing” involving a long and complicated exercise plan involving being stuck in a horse hamster wheel, hacked to the end of the earth and back again, and lunged like an over-enthusiastic weathervane in a cyclone. A human is out of work and they get box sets of programmes about mardy big cats and females with a penchant for digging new patios.
We put on a tiny bit of weight and all of a sudden, we’re treated like Hannibal Lector with halitosis, only allowed visiting rights with grass when the stars align with the Chinese New Year and a full luna eclipse and put through an exercise regime which would make a marine weep. A human piles the poundage on and they simply switch from skinny jean to “lounge wear” and stick their head further into the sand (or indeed fridge).
We cough or wheeze in any way and every vet in the area is arm deep in your unmentionables like the last kids at the lucky dip with your hay steamed until it resembles the wilted remains of something that died of nature causes and a thermometer lurking like a wrong direction fan outside Liam’s hotel room. A human coughs and they get to stay at home and watch sea food movies for 10 days while eating their body weight in Ben and Jerry’s and summoning for more food from some underpaid Kangaroo. It’s seriously unfair.
What’s worse with this new omnicrumble thing is that parties are getting cancelled faster than mother’s cheques and so once more we become the source of entertainment for the more bored humans who watched all the box sets last time round and now wish to spend “quality festive time” with us equines. May whatever deity you believe in save us all.
Last week I gave advice on how to avoid being decorated like an explosion in a tinsel factory (at east in public) but I was equally honest. This is all about beating the odds and the odd are seriously going against us now – Christmas + boredom + social media sociopaths = hell for horses. I can only suggest finding a large bush and hiding in it. I would suggest the stables, but I find this time of year every Tom, Dick, Joseph and Mary are in the bl**dy things…
Talking of bored mothers, I had to endure mine at the weekend. On Saturday I was saved from having to do anything as mini-mother and Barbie Boy went for a hack first and then as they arrived back at the yard and mother came to get me, my blonde admirer broke free of her confines and hoolied towards mother at full tilt like a runaway train. What followed was a simply hilarious – 20 minutes of mother trying to enact her inner Monty Roberts while my back up beau did the wall of death around her at 100mph. And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and her name that chased her round swearing profusely was Death, and Hell followed with her…
This meant that I was spared doing any work because I may have got a tad excited myself and thus, once again, there was more steam coming off my arse than there was coming out of mother’s ears – which to be honest, was saying something. Besides which, one of us was breathing like a broken winded cart horse, and it wasn’t me…
All this dashing about meant everyone was covered in mud, so the following day I had to have a bath. I say “had to” but should perhaps put that the newly crowned budget horse whisperer “decreed it” and so thus it came to pass. Well sort of – it came to pass after an impasse lasting about eight minutes in which I refused point blank to go into the washroom and mother glared at me with the intensity of 20 fat fighters eyeing up the last mince pie. In the end, mini-mother wafted treat (and maxi-mother wafted a lunge whip) and I decided that discretion was the better part of valour. The good news is the washroom at the new yard has warm water so shortly I was bathed in steam and the fragrance of shampoo while the mothership sweated and swore her way to getting four black matted feathers back to their more usual white. Aunty Em and I decided not to tell her precisely how long the white lasted for fear that high blood pressure at her age is a bad thing…
Anyway, I am off to man my phone line for distressed decorated dignity stripped damsels.
Laters,
Hovis
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