So I know many of you will have waited on this news with the level of excitement only usually reserved for Christmas or the release of tickets to the next Ed Sheep Shearer concert. I know many of you are probably going to get emotional — Kleenex share price has surged in anticipation — but the time is nigh. So drum roll please…
Wait for it…
Patience…
After nine months, lots of crying (Herman), lots of snotting (mother), a smattering of appalling rap singing and a debt equivalent to some third world countries…
I
Am
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SOUND.
Herman is thrilled and feels this reflects on his incredible vet skills. The Hovite Army is thrilled and feels this reflects on the power of positive vibes. Mother is thrilled and now feels that selling a kidney might just have been worth it. I’m just shocked that no one had any faith in me. I TOLD you I was down but not out did I not? Nothing, not even a busted leg, will keep the Destroyer down for long. I am an unstoppable force of nature, a magnificent manly machine of equine excellence. I am… well OK I am just cleared for trot right now, BUT Herman wants the ‘C’ word within the next four weeks. Just a little one but still it was the C word. And no I don’t mean cake.
I am SO excited.
So it didn’t require mother removing her jumper to distract Herman with her human air bags, it didn’t need crying or begging. It merely needed me and my innate power to piaffe past the clouds on legs which are currently in residence in our winter fields — what is that about by the way? — to convince the needle-wielding ninja that I am fit to step it up a notch.
We did hit another issue later but mother will fill you in when we know more on that front.
In the meantime, it meant that Saturday saw mother drag the *cough* second hand *cough* saddle out and then tentatively ask me to remember what trot is. We only did a little bit as mother decreed that I was getting far too excited and was motor biking around the corners like Evel Knievel after a four-day bender but it was TROT. It wasn’t walk. haven’t been so excited since Dolly shimmied out of her rug during the summer of love two years ago. Since then I have powered Aunty Emily around the school multiple times demonstrating that my legs are fine but my hearing isn’t. Hey people I’ve spent nine months waiting for this — I’m allowed selective deafness when it comes to “whoa”…
Mother will be back on board later today so I’m now waiting so see if I’m allowed out hacking with my main wing girl again soon — I have to be allowed to trot to hack with her because embarrassingly her stride is longer than mine so even in walk I have to have little spells of trot to catch up. Hey that’s OK, I’m man enough to admit that.
So Cool New Shoes Man came and fitted new dancing shoes this week too in anticipation of my workload climbing again so I’m all good.
Give me a few months people and I intend to be back in business. Hold the front page, calm the Pony Club masses, gee up the moral-less mares and inform the British eventing selectors, the Destroyer is back!
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.
