I have enjoyed a mostly quiet week as she who must be obeyed was in Port Seagull for a work-related international kick off thing. It was the first time that she has been away properly since her human kissing spines operation and apparently she can confirm she sets the metal detectors off now at the airport. I’m also hearing tales that such travel has nearly broken her, so I’m expecting much sympathy-provoking limping, wincing and muted whimpering when she turns up later.
It does make me ponder the unfairness and lack of equality when it comes to lameness in humans versus us horses. We so much as have one draggy step and it’s an army of vets, countless hours running up and down concrete runways while everyone stares with intent at every leg, similar hours running around in tight circles on concrete while everyone stares at alternate legs and sometimes some total knob giving us a dead leg and expecting us to do a Taylor Swift and shake it off. For the record on that one, they apparently do mean you to actually run it off and not get blood flowing again by karate kicking the dead-leg-giver in the head… you’re welcome…
In the meantime, the human herd are shuffling about with the athletic capabilities of septuagenarian sloths, so obviously bi-laterally lame even Stevie Wonder could call it, and no one says a thing. Seriously, if I lunged mother on a tight circle on a hard surface what’s left of her spine would disintegrate. Even Herman the German Needle Man who likes a good laugh doesn’t have her trot me up anymore (when she’s having another one of her “OMG is he going to die because he took one stiff step out of the barn on a cold, damp, dark morning” moments) as he says he can’t watch such suffering. And to be clear here, he doesn’t mean me. There was a time when the trot-ups gave the watching public a bird’s-eye view of mother’s bouncing airbags, but since she’s lost weight, it’s less two cats wrestling in a bag and more like two sprouts stuck to the side of a pan, so not nearly as entertaining.
It’s fair to say there is mass inequality in not just the fitness and lameness, but also weight. So while we have to be sound, fully mechanical, 100% at all times and fit enough to be lunged for a thousand years without breaking a sweat or breathing like an asthmatic on a treadmill, it seems it’s fine for our human herd leaders to be broken, unfit and two steps way from euthanasia without anyone batting an eyelid. So don’t even get me started on weight… If my fur so much as fluffs the wrong way to optically add an inch, I have a grazing muzzle strapped to my mush faster than Hannibal Lector when he eyes up a nice Cianti. My grass intake is monitored closer than Wesley Snipes’ tax return and I think I was last allowed a lickit back in 2019. My mother, however, needs a wide load sticker applying to her ass and any photo of her definitely requires the use of a panoramic lens, but does anyone gaffa-tape her gob shut? Nope, no siree.
Anyways, such is the inequality of life, but as mother hobbles back tomorrow, I shall ponder on the fact if it was the other way around, she would be going for the big sleep… Good job I luffs her and I am happy to have my elderly, unrideable steeds with me until the end. Mind you, if she’s in a grump, then I might be writing a gumtree advert for her by Sunday…
Laters,
Horse & Hound Newsletter
Never miss out on the latest happenings in the equestrian world
Stay in touch with all the news in the run-up to and throughout the major shows and events during 2026 and beyond with a Horse & Hound subscription. Subscribe today for all you need to know ahead of these major events, plus online reports on the action as it happens from our expert team of reporters and in-depth analysis in our special commemorative magazines. Have a subscription already? Set up your unlimited website access now
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.
