It’s now day 75 billion of the human strangles epidemic and the herd is now almost back to normal — well, normal if you take style advice from Captain Caveman (and if you’re too young to know who he is, then Google him). I’ve not seen hairstyles this bad since I caught sight of myself in the stressage mirrors after mum sneezed when solo combing my mane — and they definitely fall into two camps — full on Andalusian floor-length mane or the Stevie Wonder school of clipping. Literally. There’s nothing in-between.
In other news, I’ve decided I would like to return my human — she’s faulty and therefore I would like a credit note or exchange such that I can get one whose survival instincts actually work. Oh, and one about five stone lighter would be quite nice too…
Once again, last week I was worked into the ground by Aunty Em, who in turn, was being “coached” by mini-mother. Now, as I said last week, there was a time when mini-mother looked up to me (literally and figuratively, as she is a short-arse) as her equine stamp of excellence. However, since bronzed blonde-maned Barbie Boy has come along, she’s changed; first she went and joined an elitist organisation which discriminates against anything over 14.1hh and then she went and got herself a stressage coach. And not just any stressage coach, oh no, she went and got herself an Olympian stressage coach (admittedly who is still in awe of me), who is fixated with circles and some overrated waffle about accuracy in tests. This has given short-stuff delusions of grandeur, which means she thinks she is now qualified to pass comment on Aunty Emily and I’s eggs (otherwise known as 20m circles), and insist on 23,000 transitions while yelling random letters out like a bingo caller with Tourette’s.
So, by the time the weekend came I was in desperate need of some quality chill out time, an absence of work and ideally a lack of fun-killing females. But, since this is my life and I’m owned by a female so gormless she makes Nemo look like a homing pigeon, clearly it didn’t happen.
On Saturday night I was made to sleep outside as usual, despite the fact that the ever mercurial mother nature decided to unleash the al fresco equivalent of a power shower at the crack of sparrow fart, such that by the time she-who-must-be-obeyed arrived to fetch me in, I was wetter than the inside of an otter’s pocket, but heh, at least I was going into the nice, dry, warm barn right?
Wrong.
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We were hacking in it.
It’s raining sideways with the savagery of a hen night at a Chippendale concert and she wants to go hacking? I mean, the woman needs therapy. If it wasn’t for the fact I donate all my money to charity, I’d even offer to pay for it. By the time we set off, you couldn’t see two hooves in front of your face (and that’s those with two functioning eyes), and within 10 yards I had that much water pouring down my face, Atlantis wanted to charge admission fees. There was such a volume of water collecting on my eyelashes that Cape Town wanted to buy the abstraction rights to, which meant that I was the equine equivalent of DareDevil — if DareDevil had weighed ¾ of a tonne and fallen over his own feet a lot… By the time we got down to the road, we had established that a) it is entirely possible for me to do shoulder in for a full ½ a mile, b) mother didn’t think a lot of my interpretation of the Little Mermaid, and c) Bob is as much use as an umbrella on a fish. We were wetter than a submarine’s number plate.
Continued below…
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To be fair to the weird weather woman, she did actually stop just short of the point where we actually drowned so thus we managed at least half of the ride where mother wasn’t almost holding my bit ring in an attempt to straighten me up, and so we had marginally changed status from drenched to soaked by the time we got back to the yard.
Between endless criticisms of my circles by a 3ft high dressage dictator and a mother who has the preservation tendencies of a suicidal sheep I honestly think I’ve got such a case for animal abuse. And that’s before I mention the constant dieting — sadly not mother’s…
I hear from the weather wombles that its supposed to rain again all weekend, so I’m looking forward to that like root canal work. Please send help. And water wings.
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.
