I have started to think this being on the one-way street of life’s great exit might not be as bad as first thought. For a start, as I mentioned last week, I have now managed to train mini-mother to fetch my greenery and forage for me in a nice clean bucket, so thus removing the need to actually deplete energy putting my head down and pulling up my own grass and avoiding the “soil on the moustache” fashion faux pas. Secondly, it’s now officially winter: cold, dark, wet and frankly, depressing causing even the most hardy of horses to stand backs to the wind while their wet rug blows up their bum like wind up the M1, and water pours down their noses like the budget seats on a rendition flight. I, in the meantime, am standing in my nice warm, dry stable listening to Smooth Radio, being fed warm honeyed water and the boss lady’s coffee. And that’s before I mention what mother bought for me this week… peoples, I haz an electric superhero cape that warms up! The Hoverine is now officially hot! Although hopefully not smokin’, unless there was a tragic wiring accident of the type usually seen in the Christmas edition of popular soap operas…
I love my new LL Hot H cape, but what I’m slightly more alarmed about is the boss lady wafting vibrating wands about my personage with the gleeful abandonment of a bunch of mares at an Anne Winters party. I confess, I like it across my shoulders, but I’m not keen when she starts wafting it about my posterior: I’m not that kind of guy — well, not without dinner and some serious wither action first, then quite frankly you can vibrate away like Sooty on a jack hammer.
It’s fair to say that the Hovis day spa treatment is causing me some haters among the other lesser equines on the yard (to be clear here, mother means that in the “less expensive/less stress inducing/less likely to be heading to the large sky pasture imminently”, whereas I mean “just not me”), including the blonde barnetted Barbie Boy. It’s fair to say, as he stood the other day dripping rain water all over the floor, with his mane plaited like a My Little Pony, his pink boots on and a stressage lesson ahead of him, watching me eat a bucket of handpicked dandelions with my warming cloak on that if looks could have killed, I would have been over the bridge faster than Usain Bolt on a promise. The rest of the yard does come in at night from this weekend due to the fire-flies with flatulence issues we seem to have around this time every year, so he will at least stop moaning about sleeping outside in the rain. Honestly, he’s more high maintenance that Mariah Carey on a blimp. Whinnies at the same falsetto too…
The blubbership is videoing me moving every few days and sending it to Herman (although with all the vibrating that’s going on, I do have serious concerns about fetish sites — and you all know my view on starring in prawn films; I don’t like seafood), who is content to carry on for now at least, although according to La Sniveller Supreme, if I don’t start to show signs of being able to be weened off the white stuff soon then it will all be over. I did always think it wasn’t over until the fat lady sings, but then my mother is no lady and quite frankly it would be a grotesque act of cruelty to anyone with ears in a 100-mile radius to let her sing. She joined along with the radio the other day for all of about two bars and I nearly throttled myself with a lead rope just to make it stop.
And just one final point, primarily aimed at any of you hoomans who have one of my fellow equine incarcerated on box rest. Let’s briefly talk “boredom breakers”. For absolute clarity, these should be fit members of the opposite sex and NOT under any circumstances you floating their food in a bucket of water. Just because you are all daft enough to think apple bobbing equals “fun activities”, does not mean that we are as big an imbecile as you. If I wanted to stick my arse in the air and my head into freezing water while my dinner bobs about like mother’s airbags when she runs, then I would have been born a duck. The same applies to any form of vegetable bondage. It’s wrong on more levels than a lift in a brothel, so please desist. End of public service announcement. My deed here is done.
Laters,
Still Hoppy Hovis
Horse & Hound magazine, out every Thursday, is packed with all the latest news and reports, as well as interviews, specials, nostalgia, vet and training advice. Find how you can enjoythe magazine deliveredto your door every week, plus options to upgrade to access ourH&H Plus online servicewhich brings you breaking news as it happens as well as other benefits.
Stay in touch with all the news in the run-up to and throughout the major shows and events during 2026 and beyond with a Horse & Hound subscription. Subscribe today for all you need to know ahead of these major events, plus online reports on the action as it happens from our expert team of reporters and in-depth analysis in our special commemorative magazines. Have a subscription already? Set up your unlimited website access now
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.
