Very rarely do I feel a fraud, I am after all a talking/writing horse with thousands of followers and eight books to my name with a ninth on the way. But I think, even for me, whinging about the fun and games Mother Nature is inflicting upon us here in the UK is somewhat insensitive given what’s happening to my fellow equines and humans across the pond. Two hurricanes in quick succession is more devastating a force of nature than my mother after day drinking her way through several bottles of wine and getting to the “shots is a good idea” period. For the record shots are NEVER a good idea where my mother is concerned…
Stories, videos and images of people putting their horses inside their homes or even more awfully having to turn them loose with phone numbers spray painted on them brings home the magnitude of the situation and I can only hope that all of our fellow equine community in the affected areas are as safe as possible. Our thoughts and love are with you all.
To be fair though there is one small ginger pain in the posterior who I would dearly love to turn loose, only without a phone number on him for someone to bring him back. He and mini-mother have their first proper one-day event on Sunday and frankly from the way he’s carrying on you would think he was going around Burghley. It’s a Pony Club one day thing and we don’t even know if it is going ahead because let’s be honest, more than 4cm of rain and half the short arses would be swimming, thus making it more of a triathlon than a ODE…
He was clipped last weekend (note I was clipped WEEKS ago so he’s hardly special) and he’s spent the week admiring his newly hairless frame at every given moment. I did point out that the “orange and aerodynamic” market had already been cornered by Sleezy Jet, but it hasn’t stopped him.
They have a stressage test to do and then obviously the jumpy, jumpy bit and I have tried to give him the same coaching as I gave a certain three equines over the summer, but it’s like trying to teach an amoeba a card trick. He is related to the greatest equine coaching talent the world has ever seen, the OFFICIAL supporters’ mascot to the British Eventing team at the 2024 Olympic Games (did I mention that before…?), the horse who one hoofedly led our team to glory through the sheer brilliance of his technical briefings and tactics, and yet the ginger whinger is paying about as much attention to me as mother does to the portion size advice on cheese.
Frankly I don’t care if he comes 50th out a field of 40 – it might make his ego come down to proportions slightly more akin to his actual size – but I do want mini-mother to have a chance. I am currently wondering about waiting until he’s asleep and then subliminally trying to whisper instructions to him through the bars of the stable, but that would require his brain to function when he’s asleep; as it barely works when he’s awake then I worry that’s highly unlikely and all I will do is make myself a little horse…
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I can therefore only act as slightly concerned bystander if they do actually get to go at the weekend – because it’s Pony Club and we all know they are a secret cult of featherist, sizeist pony pandering individuals who won’t let anything of my size, talent or capability take mini-mother. At least I think that’s what was meant when the suggestion was met with mother and mini-mother rolling about the floor laughing (thankfully rolling in opposite directions or mini-mother would have been flatter than roadkill).
I’m off to find the furthest corner of the field away from the orange ego, pray for those in the way of Mother Nature’s latest display of power and to plot my antics at Your Horse is Alive.
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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.
