It’s day 1,569 billion of the human strangles epidemic and due to the lack of hairdressers, grooming parlours and people who spray them orange, the human herd grows ever more feral in both looks and behaviour. This in turn seems to have caused a fascination in the humans for grooming us — or is it just my mother? So not satisfied with a haircut that has me with a fringe so straight the Romans could have used me as a template for roads, a set of feathers that thanks to Cool New Shoes Man are the slightly green hue of Grottbags on the Waltzers, a facial cut that makes my cheekbones look like the stairway to heaven, the woman THEN decided I needed a bath.
Apparently I was “a greasy, scurf encrusted disgrace to my breed”, which is rich coming from the woman whose roots are so dark they could be mistaken for the Grand Canyon from space, providing everlasting proof that mum isn’t a natural blonde and that she is, after all, just dim.
Anyway, expressing any view point I might have had on whether I did or indeed did not need a bath would have wasted the efforts of some poor oxygen producing tree, so I capitulated with grace (and the bribery of several handfuls of treats — just because mum isn’t blonde don’t think I’m dumb…) and got on with it. To be fair, the capitulation was also driven in part when I realised that the boss lady had taken pity on me and run out the hosepipe from the hot tap, meaning mother could mix cold and hot water in buckets and give me a bath that wouldn’t have a Polar bear suing for hypothermia.
Now, the highly amusing side effect of mother squirting me with the cold water hose with the fierce savagery of a possessed Fireman Sam, is that mother is short. Like as tall as she is wide. So thus, when she tries to pour water over me using a bucket, she ends up wetter than I am. Five minutes in and she resembled the “before” image on a Tena Lady advert, 10 minutes in and drowned rats could have sued her for copyright, and by the time she came to finish off my feathers, South Africa had land grabbed her for abstraction rights. All of which amused me immensely, not least because although it was sunny, it was still February and in an attempt to instigate her own return to work plan, she had hacked on shanks pony to the yard…
So, while nothing can be done for my home-made hair styles, I am at least sparkling white and whiffing faintly of lavender — so much so I was melancholy to go to parties again. And talking of which… The other evening mini-mother had the opportunity to attend a Zoom call with the one and only Mary King, who was speaking to her Pony Club. I have never been prouder, or indeed more convinced she’s not genetically linked to mother, because instead of asking boring questions about fitness or stressage, she proudly told Mary that they’d both ridden the same horse and what was it like riding me. Of course Mary remembered each instance (have I mentioned ever that there been six of them?) with great fondness: apparently I am very different to riding a weedy thoroughbred — which is in synopsis what I think she meant when she described them as “fit event horses” — and am jolly good fun. By all accounts, mother was sliding under the table in horror at this point, but then again she’d probably been on the gin again…
Anyway, my lovely friend Mary sent me her love and kisses, so right back at ya Mrs King, and if you’re stuck for Burghley you know where I am!
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.
