Dear diary
Well hello “Casa Del Pero” — it’s nice to see you again. Yep you’ve guessed it, I’m once more in the dog house, languishing unloved like a basset hound in the pound (well minus the big ears, the droopy sad eyes, the short legs — ok this image didn’t work at all did it?). Let’s put it this way — I think if one of you had offered mother £2 and a stick of chewing gum for me on Saturday she’d have taken your hand off and run without a backward glance. It’s fair to say she was a trifle “irritated” with me.
What can I say? It’s been months since I’ve been worked properly and mother decided that Saturday was “D” day. What the “D” stood for I never really got to find out — unless I missed the explanation somewhere amongst the slurs on my breeding, ancestry, brain capacity and general levels of intellect.
Mother tacked me up and seemed surprised I’d put weight on — what did she expect? Like her, I even look at grass and I put weight on, and trust me mother has clearly been gazing at many a green pasture…
After much moaning about how hard it was to do up the girth on a barrel when you’ve only recently had the cast removed from your broken wrist (lord she does make a fuss), we got ready and mother led me into the school. She had decided that as she hadn’t been on me in a while, I am confined to walk only activities and I’m not entirely trustworthy out hacking on my own (note I would call it “hyper alert and ninja-like in my reactions” rather than untrustworthy) that we would “play it safe”.
She popped me onto a lunge line and we quietly walked around the outside track of the school, just in case I’d had some sort of brain fart and couldn’t remember what a school was. Admittedly, I probably didn’t cover myself in glory by spooking violently at a pigeon, nearly sitting on mum’s lap, Scooby Doo style when a rabbit ran across the centre line and then momentarily forgetting that the big dude heading towards me was in fact me — mirrors! Doh! I tried to make amends by executing a couple of fabulous walk to canter transitions, a small amount of piaffe and some impressive half pass but mother didn’t seem amused — well if her language was anything to go by but then she is a drama queen.
Post by Karen Thompson.
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Finally deciding her feet were clearly safer on board rather than next to me, mother mounted (and I am far too polite to suggest she’s clearly not been paying her fat fighters subscription whilst I’ve been off…) and we poddled around the school for 20 minutes. It was very, very dull and I was very, very bored. Mother did insist I walked properly, didn’t walk about with my head in the air like a giraffe and didn’t appreciate any attempts at livening things up with a few Hovis disco moves. The disco moves may, with hindsight, have been a mistake as apparently, until I stop “throwing shapes like Beyonce” I will be confined to the school for my own (and mother’s) safety. Rats!
So operation “get fit” has commenced with walk only for the next six weeks. Anyone with a foxily-bottomed mare want to come and hack out with me? I need something to distract me from the utter boredom of walking around the school or walking around the country lanes for the next six weeks. Walking is the bit you do from the trailer park to the jumping warm-up ring and has no place featuring in hacking. It’s cruelty in the highest form. Mother was last heard muttering something about tranquilisers but I’m hopeful Herman won’t supply her with any — she’s dopey enough as it is…
Laters
Hovis
My three books Hovis’ Friday diary: From the beginning, Hovis’ Friday diary: The year of the Destroyer and Hovis’ Friday diary: Fifty Tastes of Hay are available to buy from the gift shop at www.bransbyhorses.co.uk with 100% of the proceeds from the sale going to the charity.
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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.
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