The countdown is now really on to the big book launch at Your Horse is Alive and the annual operation F2F (feral to fabulous) is firmly underway. A few weeks ago I had my hocks injected with super slime, so I do have a few unfortunate bald patches but mother is hoping that everyone will be totally distracted by the brilliance of my sparkling personality and now pearly white smile, thanks to a visit from my arch nemesis Evil Army Man yesterday.
For those of you not down with my past and thus some of these key characters (where the HELL have you been?!) Evil Army Man used to be my mother’s instructor until he got very tired of dealing with hysterical middle aged women with zero talent and a penchant for falling off and instead finished all his qualifications (and he has LOTS) to become a very high-end specialist in equine dentition.
So now instead of shouting at mother and me whilst wistfully pondering if it was beer o’clock yet, he sticks a large metal gag in my mouth and takes out his frustrations with a black and decker. He did say that my teeth belie my age and that I have the nashers of a landshark in leg warmers – which I am taking as a compliment, regardless of how he meant it.
Today I complete the trio of my support team visitors as Cool New Shoes Man comes to give me some new dancing shoes ahead of Your Horse is Alive and ensure my tootsies are top notch.
As mother’s facebook memories reminded her the other day, there were enough of you loonies who voted for him to have once made him Farrier of the Year at the Horse & Hound Awards so he cannot have me on parade with a subpar pedicure for fear of being kicked out of the funny handshake mob he belongs to.
I am constantly reminded of the unbalanced nature of our relationship when I have to turn up at these events with perfect teeth, feet, clip and feathers so white I can be seen from the European space station, whereas mother turns up looking like she’s been dragged through a hedge backwards with huge black bags under her eyes and a slightly nervous twitch. In fact, if any of you don’t know who she is then just look out for the human raccoon – black eyes, white face, fat, vicious and very possibly rabid…
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I am due another clip from Crazy Self Employed Lady next week, but I am slightly alarmed what she might do as I am not in her good books at the moment. I am personally blaming Herman the German and his super slime injections, but it’s fair to say I am a little “fresh” at the minute and apparently wrangling me into the field of a morning is the equivalent of trying to put a badger into a sleeping bag.
The additional bounce coupled with the fact that going from the bright barn into the darkness of an English morning so early that the bird hasn’t even dreamt about the damn worm let alone gone looking for it, is a bit beyond my one working eye’s capability to adjust at speed, which means that (and I quote) she is “doing the “chacha slide with a 3/4 tonne Stevie Wonder”.
Rude. Just rude.
So, I am off to try to placate her before she comes near me with any scissors, practice my perfect selfie pout, and attempt levitation as I don’t know how the hell I’m supposed to keep feathers clean in a mud bath.
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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.
