It’s day five hundred and forty nine billion of the human strangles epidemic, but as grooming parlours start to open across the land, we are slowly starting to remember what our human slaves look like under their winter coats, unruly tails and un-pulled manes. For some of you it’s a pleasant surprise as you fondly gaze at the unfurred features of your food fetchers, for others it’s an experience more akin to throwing back the veil and realising you’ve married Uncle Fester. And trust me, there is no food on Earth that can make that more appealing.
Mother has not managed to get a hair appointment until this coming Sunday, but to be fair, she has let Aunty Em near her with a pair of scissors — which shows the level of trust she has in Aunty Em. Aunty Em has not reciprocally let mother near her head with a pair of scissors — which shows that Aunty Em is not as dumb as she looks; she’s seen the horror of mother’s “Dwyane Dibbley” cut on my poor head on more than one occasion…
Aunty Em did however make me work pretty much all week under the ever-watchful eye of a now eight-year-old mini-mother, whose recent birthday has done nothing to lessen her dressage dictatorship. This week’s focus was on “self-carriage”, which is the most over-rated thing since I discovered Apple watches weren’t edible. Why on God’s green Earth should I carry my own head when I’ve got a mother-shaped muppet up top to do it for me? I mean, let’s be honest, neither of my two riders bring anything else to the party so they might as well make themselves useful and do the heavy lifting. Literally. I’ll be the brains of the outfit and they can be the brawn; let’s face it, in mother’s case, she’s built for it. I’ve seen Russian shot putters with skinnier arms; and that’s the guys…
On Sunday, once again I was dragged from restful slumber on the sabbath and frog marched into the barn, where I was unceremoniously tacked up at an hour so early the worm protested a breach of the rules. Since mother has been slowly starving me to death, it came as no surprise to me that my girth went up another hole as weight falls off me, but still mother’s smugness made Nigel Farage look like he has the humility of a Buddhist monk. Not attractive at all (mother I mean, not Nigel in an orange sheet).
Bob and I set off into the early morning light and were surprised to see (well he was, I can’t afford surprise with only one working eye; I have to use it to see where I’m going) that we were heading a different route to normal around the adjacent villages. On roads. Like roads with lorries and cars and even more scary, mass amounts of MAMILs (middle-aged men in Lycra). I do feel at times I am owned by a depressed lemming, only this week she’d watched Matt Spancock do Parkour and wanted to up the stakes of “101 idiotic ways to die in public”. Still, who I am to argue? I am but her faithful steed, sworn servant and much maligned mount… and she has a lower leg like a steel bar and a schooling whip…
Anyways, off we tootled with trepidation of Kylie Jenner’s accountant, sneaking past the lair of the tractors of terror before heading down the lanes to do a circuit of the neighbouring village. We had a few “moments”, which included me tripping over a hole and then Bob spooking like an electrocuted cat (not because he was scared — he just thought he’d missed an opportunity — see last week’s diary for more detail on the inner workings of the “spook”), an actual cat hurtling out from beneath a parked car requiring me to undertake an ariel manoeuvre that would have had the Red Sparrows weeping with envy, and a flirty filly in an adjacent field to the road enticing me to show her my moves. To be honest, the appreciation from foxy female was somewhat dampened by mother’s ego inflating faster than a space hopper at a wind farm, as she genuinely thought my sudden high-kneed power house trot was due to her “putting her leg on” rather than me wanting to get my leg over. Honestly, the woman is utterly delusional — I can only assume someone put a stop on her reality cheque early doors…
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Needless to say, despite a chance encounter with a little old lady whose underwear will perhaps bear testament to what a bad idea silently leaping out of a hedge on my blind side is, a MAMIL, whose spray on spandex made me wish I was blind in both eyes, and one of Bob’s imaginary evils we did manage to get home in once piece. Miracles, it appears, do occasionally happen. Now, if for the next one I could get a lie in on Sunday, six hours rolling in the hay with the black and white babe from the next village over and a breakfast of larger proportions than the amount of brains in my mother’s head, that would be marvellous. And yes, I know, the squadron of pink pigs have just done a fly-by. Lord, it’s tough being me…
Laters,
Hovis
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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.
