So today is the day. Today we find out if my mother is all mouth and no trousers or if her trousers end up a different colour. I just hope she wears the black jodhpurs and not the cream ones…
Yes today after months of recovery, endless trauma, a LOT of needles, some highly dodgy haircuts (or should that be feather cuts?), much hysterical crying (mother), the sale of a kidney (Cool New Shoes Man), much horrendous singing (Herman the German Needle Man) and a vet bill that would make Bill Gates’ eyes water, mother is finally going to ride me out again.
I think if she was honest, there’s been times when she did wonder if she would ever get to ride properly in that very fancy *cough* second hand *cough* saddle she bought just before my potential career ending/life ending injury so I predict there may be some snivelling and possible some snot today. It might be a small few steps, but they are ones at one point we didn’t know if I’d take. Herman is nothing however if not a rather good vet — awful rapper/singer mind but a very very good vet — so here we are.
What the future is going to hold, how much my leg will tolerate and whether we take two steps forward and one step back (which if there’s tractors around is highly likely) is debatable but the net result is while you read this, mum and I will be finding out whether we’re still the magnificent team we once were.
OR in the non-Disney version of events mum will be hanging on for grim death swearing incessantly about my ancestry while I ignore every effort (drugs included) to walk sensibly and piaffe sideways down the road like Michael Flatley at a rave, causing a rural traffic jam long enough to be seen from space. Which — if you’ve been a fan for a while — you may find way way easier to visualise…
It has been suggested that mother informs the local radio stations to tell all drivers to avoid the area unless they like 0.75 tonne bonnet ornaments and for the local A&E to be placed on standby. I thinks it’s fair to say not many people have ANY faith in this going well. Frankly I am offended. Mind you, they have seen the standard of mother’s riding so they might have a point…
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So last week Cool New Shoes Man came to fix the chip I had put in my hoof (fairs fair, mum has one on her shoulder, I wanted one on my foot) and to put my front dancing shoes back on.
I’d not seen him since his epic efforts on a steel horse to raise money for the farrier’s foundation. Admittedly he’s not in my league of fundraising philanthropist — which is a good thing because unlike me he couldn’t spell it — but he did a great job and it was an almighty effort.
We have previously discussed if I can get back to fitness that he and I would team up in a sort of poor man’s version of the film Champions so I will have this firmly in mind as I drag mother around the block. He did however bombard MY Facebook pages with pictures of him and other men in Lycra which the traitorous Hovite Army lapped up like cats at a cream factory. An unfortunate use of imagery which is now causing me to shudder and reach for the brain bleach…
The only Hovites who are in my good books are the handful who commented I looked under-nourished in recent photographs. Now admittedly mother isn’t exactly David Bailey so the angle perhaps didn’t help but I was grateful for their sentiment. I was less grateful for comments encouraging mother’s vicious starvation by saying how trim I looked for a horse which has done little more than eat and fertilise for the last six months. Those members are now firmly on my fertilisation list I can assure you. Call yourself fans?
So stay glued to my Facebook pages to see if mother survives today and indeed to watch my progress over the coming weeks. I’ve been down people but I’m a long long way from out.
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.
