For a while this past week, I had been concerned that I was not going to be able to get this diary to you as it’s rather hard to dictate with a snorkel in your snoozle, which at one point I was busy fashioning al la Bear Growls, made from bambo shoots and woven grass to survive the night. I considered the option of standing on Barbie Boy to escape the rising water, but he’s as short as he is skinny and orange so would have been about as much use as standing on an orange peel. Personally, I blame mother – while everyone else was running for cover and avoiding Scotland, which was being pummelled with the worst of storm Hufty McPufty, my dearly beloved mother was heading towards it like some sort of slightly psychotic Phileas Frog. When faced with this tempest, the storm itself about faced and headed further south – right on top of us…
It’s fair to say last time I saw this much water was when mother was sobbing all over Herman the German about my imminent demise a couple of years ago. With the water rising faster than my vet bill did at the time, for a period it looked very very dicey. Luckily for us our stables didn’t flood unlike many in our area, so we were better off than many, but currently our fields could be used for the muddy bit of a tough mudder and the only thing happy are the ducks. God bless Crazy Self-Employed Lady, who was flooded at her own yard, has been battling through the mud to make sure we all get a walk etc, and trying in vain to find any patch of white on my feathers. Fair to say I have had a good few baths of late and all for it to have been in vain within 12 hours.
The weather turning has at least meant we are now in at night (and most of the flipping day at the minute, as swimming without adult supervision is not allowed), which has at least meant a return to comfy beds and some semblance of civilisation, instead of this “living naturally” garbage, which involves lying on like the ground with no duvets or anything. It’s fair to say that for once (and only once) I do agree with mother, who firmly espouses a love of the countryside and nature, which is to be best enjoyed from the window of the bedroom of her five-star hotel.
This muddy nightmare has meant that the pint-sized pain in the posterior is now not getting to go to an event held by those most featherist individuals in the Pony Club at the weekend as there is a feeling the ground isn’t good enough. While I did harbour joyous ideas of the small ginger winger drowning in a divot hole left by a proper horse, it would have meant mini-mother competing in a life vest instead of a body protector. While the child is clearly suffering delusions about her equine choices, I have managed to raise her to the age of 11 and I still cling on to hope that she will come round to my way of thinking at some point. Not to mention the fact she’s growing like a runner bean and soon amber-hued ass will have to make way for something bigger…
Prep for Your Horse is Alive has been set back considerably as by now my feathers would have been scrubbed more times than mother’s bank balance has been in the red, but it would be somewhat of a waste of time. I can see a lot of whitening chalk in my immediate future…
Stay dry, stay safe and remember that Shetlands can be deployed as stepping stones in an emergency flooding situation.
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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.
