I have had a week of having to listen to Barbie Boy whinge about how tired he is after his amazing week at Pony Club camp whilst being allowed to do the full sum of sweet FA for the past seven days. Conveniently he had managed to lose a shoe on the very last day of the cult event and thus has been occasionally hopping about like the mothership standing on a lego brick, but cunningly never sufficiently to result in a vet call. That boy is not as dumb as he looks…
Said shoe was put back on again by stand-in Cool New Shoes Man the other day as the real Cool New Shoes Man was down at his other job teaching new less cool new shoes peoples to eventually be able to shoe equines and cope with their highly strung mothers. Obviously, as a teacher he trades heavily on the fact he shoes one of the most famous equines in the world and as such all his students look at him in awe. That and the fact he turns up in the Maclaren that mother claims she’s paid for…
Anyways, I wasn’t out having fun last week so I was judged perfectly fine to work as usual with Crazy Self Employed Lady so once again was forced out hacking alone around the village, dodging buses, tractors of terror, bush-trimming men and the odd kilt-wearing attack pigeon. I know a video was smuggled out last week of me appearing to be happily hacking without a care in the world, but what you can’t see is that CSEL has legs of steel and therefore I am pushed towards my certain death with little to no ability to apply the “spin and scarper” approach as she had a tighter grip on me than Britney to her pre-nup…
Comments of how my ears pricked showed how happy I was, did reinforce to me that most of you have about as much equine understanding as my mother – which is to say zero: ears are pricked to listen to the sounds of my imminent death, my eyes (well the one that works) are trained for all aspects of danger, and my spritely walk is to ensure we get back to the safety of the yard as swiftly as possible.
I know I look like a mere colt but I am in fact in possession of 21 years of experience of being a BeeGee – i.e. staying alive – and as such I’m still here, despite being surrounded by lady lemmings. I am a survival expert, Bare Thrills has nothing on me – I know what all the things in life that can eat you, all two of them: things that move and things that don’t.
I know you all think we are 750kg (or in some budget models less than this) of flight animal with years of evolution contained by you humans by use of a bit and a few bits of leather, but the reality is we are far, far smarter than you lot. Let me put it this way; do you only have to work a max of an hour a day, have people cater to your every whim (including picking up your poo), and spending every last penny they own on your comfort and safety? No? So, tell me again which one of us is smarter…
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Anyways, I’m off to find a corner of a field where I can’t actually hear Barbie blathering on about his brilliance in the vain hope that said corner also has some grass in it. Chance would be a fine thing eh?
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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.
