I would like to register a complaint to anyone prepared to listen. In fact, you might even say I am taking a stand against the gross unjustness of society when it comes to the levels of fitness we equines are expected to maintain vs. the level of fitness our owners/riders/general hangers-on have to achieve. Take for instance my mother. Quite frankly, if she was a horse, someone would have shot her by now; an aged, overweight mare with limited breeding capability, questionable temperament and noticeable lameness issues would be a one-way ticket to the knacker’s yard if she had bigger ears and four legs. But nnooo! Because she’s a human it’s quite ok for her to be a good doer whose body parts are so shot that they actually revoked her donor card. The only way she’d pass a vetting is if she slipped them ketamine in their camomile tea. The woman is a wreck.
One would assume therefore that in the spirit of fairness and equine equality that I too should be allowed to be a tad more on the curvier end of the spectrum, have any slight blemishes on my soundness over-looked and for my general cardio fitness to be allowed to slip below that of an Olympic athlete. Fair is after all fair.
One should not apparently assume. It merely makes an ass of you and me.
One little limp — that’s all I gave on Friday. One little limp in recognition that I had only days before taken a Fall Guy inspired stunt fall in the school and executed a roll so impressive that that Tom Cruise is thinking of using in the next Mission Impossible movie (working title: Mission Impossible 10 — making mother reasonable). I weigh 0.75T people — I am not a bantam weight mini-mother doing rolly pollies. When I take a dive, it makes muscles twinge a tad. Just a tad mind. o, heaven forbid I limped. I didn’t roll around the floor like a hysterical football player trying to forge a new career in Hollywood. I didn’t go all sensationalist like the Daily Fail and blow a non-story into a 10-page special. I didn’t cry like Halle Berry doing an Oscar acceptance speech (because good lord that was a LOT of snot). No. I quietly and manfully winced.
Which in turn sent mother into a tailspin of Tasmanian devil like proportions. Seriously, if over-reacting was a sport, mother would be in every hall of fame known to man. You’d honestly think my leg had fallen off. The vet was nearly called for heavy sedation and that was just for mother…
Now admittedly I didn’t perhaps help my cause when having been given the weekend off (as reluctantly as a TOWIE member giving up their phone for an hour), given a couple of bute and told to relax, I made the fatal mistake, not even 24 hours later, of piaffing down the field line like Michael Flatley after a triple espresso; all high knees, big hair and Irish attitude. As Dolly and I practised our synchronised line dancing with the grace and ease of Farcey Bushell, an icy voice could be heard screaming “You’re supposed to be lame you lying excuse of equine incompetence! And YOU! You’re old enough to know better!” before she flounced off trailing expletives and the last traces of any decorum like an Andrex pup trailing loo roll. For the record, I didn’t think you could actually flounce in wellies, but it appears I was very wrong…
Horse & Hound Newsletter
Never miss out on the latest happenings in the equestrian world
By Sunday, not only was I back in the school, but I was requiring thermals to protect me from the arctic waves of frostiness emanating from mother like smell waves from a skunk. Admittedly she wasn’t asking much of me, but when a very helpful human at the yard pointed out I looked magnificent and one sneeze away from a zero to gallop take off, mother’s reply was so colourful, a nearby rainbow disintegrated in the face of such competition. The fact that her back is so bad when she gets off she has to cling on to me like a limpet to Skegness pier to prevent testing out the airbag like quality of her substantial derriere, clearly doesn’t come into it. Equine inequality. That’s what it is. And I shall take a stand. Who is with me?
Laters,
Hovis
For all the latest news analysis, competition reports, interviews, features and much more, don’t miss Horse & Hound magazine, on sale every Thursday.
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.
