Hovis’ Friday diary: it’s time to learn how to ‘cowabunga canter’
(Image credit: Karen Thompson)
Dear Diary
It seems at last someone has found the temperature control button and managed to wrestle it off that mercurial cow bag mother nature for long enough to turn the flipping thing down. I mean what on earth has got into her? Has she seen an old rerun of “some like it ‘ot mum” and thought that it was a documentary? Or some sort of aspirational goal? Seriously. If I’d got any hotter then I was going to ask Cerberus for a job swap just to get some respite (if you don’t know who he is, then google – I iz like cultured like). As it was there was so much sweat running down my back legs that my Hovis Sausage asked for a life vest. It was not pleasant peoples, not pleasant.
Still, it has dulled down to merely a tad warm, which has given us a break, but frankly we do need some rain as I have zero grass and the ground is that hard that a canter around the field expressing my joy at the slightly cooler climes is like doing River Dance in a prison yard – it’s seriously hard time and likely to result in a broken leg or two…
The extreme temperatures had at least halted “Operation Back To Work” in its tracks, but all that changed at the weekend. I was somewhat perplexed when mini-mother, mother and granny all rocked up to fetch myself and the blonde Bimbette in at the same time. Usually it’s one at a time and then only when mother has taken sufficient painkillers to be on the same spiritual plane as Keith Richards has spent the past 90 years…
Anyways, off we both tootled, with me plotting a million and one ways to help Barbie fall into some of the large cracks that have appeared in all the tracks around the yard. At the yard I was even more confused as mother got frankly quite insistent about me not rubbing my tail on the wall (I fail to seewhy it is my fault the walls were not tested to “itchy Clydesdale” engineering standards), whilst throwing tack on both me and the pint-sized pain in the posterior simultaneously. She and mini-mother got hats and gloves on and all four of us headed down to the school like some sort of preview screening for a budget remake of Noah’s Arc. Granny followed clutching mother’s camera phone, which it later became apparent she is as qualified to use as mother is to claim she can ride.
Once at the school mini-mother mounted the ginger ninja and, shooting a slightly worried look at mother and I, scuttled off down the school. At this moment the light bulb went on that for the first time ever they were going to try and ride at the same time. Like in the same arena. Mother on me and mini-mother on the inferior one. As mother positioned me next to the mounting block and attempted to communicate to her right leg that at her age she’s supposed to be able to get it over, it also became clear that mother had forgotten the most important bit of kit she owns these days – her back brace.
Honestly watching a sloth audition for Ninja Warrior would have been a) quicker and b) more athletic than watching my mother mount, but eventually, some three hours later, her hip joint did open sufficiently for her to actually get on and I briskly set off to go and put some markers down with the two blonde ones. If mother hadn’t actually got her stirrup by that point, I fail to see how that’s my fault – time and tide wait for no man and I had a small person to go and drill.
We did attempt to have a photo taken of us both to capture this major first, but mini-mother seemed reluctant to get into the same postcode area as me. Either that or the gap in the photo is caused by the inclusion of the welsh wazzock’s ego in the frame…
We then did much walking about whilst mother tried to convince mini-mother that I wasn’t going to kill her. Which was true – I would never harm my favourite human. The pint-sized princess pony – well, that’s a whole different discussion…
Anyways, since it became clear I wasn’t going to be allowed to do anything other than walk for fear that my mother’s kissing spine would collapse without her girdle on, I took up residence in the middle of the school and reluctantly began to impart my extensive knowledge to the clueless carrot-coloured clown. It’s fair to say mini-mother in her short 10 years on this planet is already a better rider than mother will ever be (which to be honest isn’t hard – mother sets the bar so low ants have to limbo under it) and if she was actually astride something with some talent, could be a serious contender.
As it is, she’s stuck with the pony equivalent of a blonde who couldn’t guess which way an escalator is going if you gave them two attempts. In this case the correct canter lead was the main issue and so mother and I spent a lot of time yelling “WRONG!” very loudly. Forget which leg its on – he canters like he’s got a stick wedged somewhere unfortunate; there is “collected” and then there is “congealed”. Honestly, mother moves faster – admittedly only when someone has yelled last orders, but we all have our motivations.
It’s clear that I have a lot to do, but since I am at the moment still awaiting my call up to coach the GB team, I suppose I might as well attempt to make mini-mother look as good as I can do whilst she’s astride that Welsh waste of space.
I am off to draw up lesson plans which start with the “learn how to cowabunga canter”.
Laters,Hovis
You may also be interested in…
‘He gets quite excited!’ Super 128cm pony’s unscheduled trip up Hickstead Derby bank
13 things all the best horsey mums and dads do for their kids
The Clydesdale horse: the pride of Scotland with both substance and style
Subscribe to Horse & Hound magazine today – and enjoy unlimited website access all year round
