Dear Diary
So last week I told you all about my heroic operation and the resulting crater in my foot; I shall give you an update on that in a bit, but there’s other bigger news. WAY bigger news. Like life-changing news.
And I can’t say I’m happy about it.
Mini-mother has gone and got herself a pony. Well I say “pony”, but quite frankly he is an mini-cow with attitude and an awful lot of hair. And he’s in MY field. Eating MY grass. Whilst I’m stuck in my stable with a hole in my foot the size of an open cast mine and a metal plate covering the damage that makes me sound like I’m kicking the bucket every time I move.
More annoyingly the mini-menace has plastered himself all over MY fan pages and the disloyal turn coats of the Hovite Army have fawned all over pictures of him and mini-mother with much ooohhhing, arghing and clanging of ovaries. So, ok he’s smaller than me and his mane is less self-styled than mine, but his feathers are not as impressive, he looks like the love child of a cow and an old English sheep dog and he has blue eyes. I am WAY better looking, have melting chocolate coloured eyes and I’m a heroic injured warrior. This is supposed to be about ME damn it!
His name is Stanley and to be fair he did try and come over to say hello as soon as he arrived – clearly knowing already who I am. Mother stopped this just before he put his nose through the bars and I fully “welcomed” him John Travolta Style: i.e. Face Off…
I did have a moment of complete amusement when on Sunday mother was seen taking him into the school and he had a full-on panic attack over his reflection in the stressage mirrors. Mind you if I suddenly got insight into the fact I looked like Dougal from the magic roundabout, I might get upset too. I’m surprised he could see anything with all that mane in the way, but maybe the wind blew and gave him a window of opportunity for seeing the world like a normal equine rather than from behind a waterfall of hair…
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Mini-mother seems enamoured, which has put her on my poop list for the rest of her life. I was supposed to be her Pony Club steed, not a vertically challenged fur ball. I admit that the dismounting and remounting may have presented issues during the games, but I could have learnt to lie down or something – you know like a camel. Now I’ve just got the hump…
So, the miniature black and white bog brush is in my field, eating MY grass and I’m stuck inside. Apparently, my foot is looking quite good according to Herman the German’s much more attractive female side-kick who came to poke about my foot on Monday. She managed to get my plate off my foot, wound changed and re-dressed in about 15 minutes. I won’t disclose how long it took mother on Sunday, but let’s say at one point we had five people all peering at the screws in my plate as if they contained the answers to life on earth. Or the lottery numbers for next week. I stood on three legs for so long I started to wonder about requesting to be a flamingo in the next life – I’ve certainly had enough practise…
Continued below…
Hovis’ Friday diary: the hole in my foot is SO big it needs its own address
Hovis reports back after the attempted eviction of ‘Kevin’
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It’s a good job I am the saintly kind as in the end mother sat on a box, put my foot in her lap and attacked it with a spanner and more ferocity than Gemma Collins attacking the unsuspecting ice with her face. In both cases someone should clearly have done a health and safety risk assessment that’s for sure, although one was always more likely to cause damage than the other…
The results have come back on Mervin, or at least the preliminary ones and he was a nasty bugger; all necrotic bone and E. coli. I am definitely glad to be rid of him even if the resulting damage looks like Jack Nicolson mistook my foot for a door in his “Shining” period. Apparently, Mervin was rare – you see people I’m just an over achiever. It’s the cross I have to bear in life.
I’m hopeful of being allowed back out at some point and then me and the knee-high cow will be setting some ground rules. LOTS of ground rules. Any advice from other unfortunate equines saddled (or not as the case may be) with mini menaces would be welcomed; tips on how to eat a whole one welcomed even more.
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.
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