Hovis’ Friday diary: ‘The most loathed word in the equine dictionary’

Dear diary,

It’s now been so long into the human strangles epidemic that “normal” is more of a distant memory than mother being a size eight and me having Hovis baby makers. Meanwhile, clearly not content with her attempt to wipe the human race off the planet, this week mother nature has upped the ante by turning Lincolnshire (other shires are available) into the seventh circle of hell. Seriously, the only thing that’s ever been hotter was Emily King’s horse sticking its tongue into my ear at Your Horse is Alive – well, at the point I thought it was a mare at any rate…

As a result of being a man with a delicate disposition – and a nose that burns to a colour of red that rivals mother’s bank balance, then peels more enthusiastically than a banana split – I have been mainly coming in during the day and going back out at night as we don’t have a huge amount of shade in our fields (unless you shelter in the shadow cast by Barbie boy’s barnet then it’s fine). As this also applied to my lady love, wingman Bob and sadly Barbie himself than I was quite content with this arrangement until I overhead the boss lady discussing the most loathed word in the equine dictionary. Nope, not castration (let’s face it, that boat has sailed and subsequently sank), not laminitis, not even *whispers* sheath scrubbing *shudders*. On no this is FAR worse.

That’s right.

She used the D word.

Now the use of the D word can be traced back to being the fault of two key individuals at the yard who need to have a good long hard look at themselves in the stressage mirrors (literally and figuratively here peoples). First off, there is my lady love who has always been what might call “buxom” and who may have forgotten to breathe in last time the needle waving neanderthal was around.

Secondly, there is porky pretty pony whose ability to look like he’s either pregnant or has eaten mini-mother has led to wide spread consternation and a lot of lunging over the last few weeks.

Either way, both of them had blood tests this last week (I didn’t realise they could detect the absence of brain cells with a blood test but hay every day is a schooling day — or it has been for Barbie…) and both have hormonal reasons for being a touch of the curvaceous side. They are now on varying treatments – which sadly don’t seem to include the gaffer taping of the chatty chestnuts mouth…

Despite this however, it has been decreed by the boss lady that as a show of solidarity we should all join fat fighters together and thus be allowed about an inch of grass in the 12 hours we’re allowed out overnight and then enough hay to keep some sort of depressed dormouse alive during the day. Now, I’m all for a show of support but I can be supportive from my field… with my grass…which unlike the rest of them hasn’t gone onto my ass. I am a CLYDESDALE peoples, I am not meant to look like the body double in Racing Stripes. I could never eat again and still have enough junk in my trunk to be banned from the local tip (something the blubbership and I have in common), but I am actually reasonably svelte considering the most exciting thing I’m still allowed to do (officially) is 15 minutes of walk in the school. I do NOT need to go on a diet. Admittedly finding my ribs might be harder than convincing mother’s bank manager to extend her overdraft but they are there I can assure you – mother finds them no issues when she’s digging her heel into them to make me straighten up and get off her hands. But then mother is a bigger kill joy than fire ants at a nudist picnic…

On Sunday, mini-mother set up a Pony Club games course which seemed to involve mother and I bending in and out of bright yellow sticks; which would have been all well and good if it hadn’t been bright sunshine thus rendering the things more invisible than a member of the TOWIE crew on a tour of the Heinz factory…

Continued below…

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Having walked into them twice – did I mention the fact that I’m blind in my right eye? – I did decide that mother was as much use as a pilot as Stevie Wonder and as such our bending took on more of an appearance of a slow stealthy walk up (with much manly snorting and the possible encouragement of a stressage whip wedged up my derriere) and then a rapid jog through (not as mother described “a scuttle through like a crab with piles”) to safety. According to mini-mother her decision as to whether to take me to Pony Club Camp instead of the flaxen fatty is pending.

I remain hopeful but please send me food parcels whilst I wait (or weight?).

Laters,

Hovis

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