Hovis' Friday diary: Put your big girl pants on and let's fly

Screen-Shot-2016-04-07-at-15.25.48-e1460039192803.png — (Image credit: Unknown)

Dear diary,

Thank you to all of you who were preparing an international rescue bid to save me from my hellish grazing nightmare in which you all envisaged me practically hobbled to the side of the road, helplessly and forlornly attempting to scavenge enough to eat from a few measly blades of green. I luffs you all.

I do however have to point out, in the interests of mum not getting arrested for CAH (crimes against Hovis) that I do occasionally like to exaggerate ever so slightly and therefore I am not actually being grazed in a strip so narrow I can’t turn around. I would of course like to be grazed in an area MUCH bigger (like say my entire field) but that doesn’t usually happen until April when I’ve just about eaten every morsel as I’ve slowly been allowed to push the electric back a millimetre at a time over the space of months. I do of course argue that this is cruel but my mother, boss lady and the king evil that is Herman the German Needle Man all join forces to insist that it’s for my own good and that looking like a barrel is not attractive to anyone. This has never seemed to stop my mother but I have long since accepted that it’s one rule for our mothers and one for us when it comes to matters of weight and being a “good do-er”.

Let’s face it, the same double standards apply to fitness and vetting — I didn’t see mother doing a flexion test before I agreed to own her? Which admittedly might have been a good thing (for her anyway) as there’s no way she’d have passed a trot-up let alone a flexion test, which would have left me with the option of allowing her to be thrown to the sales or quietly put to sleep on the spot.

Mum has been scouring the internet for help after both she and Aunty Em agreed that the saddle that the lovely saddle lady had left us to try out, while fitting me didn’t work for their old limbs. So far to no avail but lots of people have suggested lots of options and judging from the look on mum’s face I think she’s considering asking Aunty Em to donate one of her kidneys as well as mum’s to pay for it. I thought I overheard her bemoaning the other day that she’d sell her soul for a “normal” sized horse but I’m pretty sure I must have been mistaken. How on earth would you want to swap for anything else once you’ve experienced perfection in equine form? My mother remains a constant mystery…

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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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Hovis’ Friday diary: Put your big girl pants on and let’s fly

Talking of being saddled — the hunt for a new saddle continues. I am a manly type with huge muscular shoulders and powerful movement and that coupled with my lame mother needing a lot of knee support means that finding a new saddle to fit both of us is proving problematic.

Continued below…

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