We’d hate to be considered a kill joy, but while there’s still time for you to line your stomach ahead of tonight’s New Year’s Eve celebrations, and to write a post-it reminding yourself to down the required bucket of water before you hit the sack, we thought we’d just do a quick recap of the things that only happen when you do your horse while suffering from a hangover…
1. You shed an actual tear when water spills from your bucket inside your boot as you’re carrying it to the stable.
2. You try a new approach to feeding hay — which involves dumping it in a pile on the stable floor (because you’ve been trying to get it into a haynet for over 15 minutes now and it’s giving you the sweats).
3. You start relying on your horse to give you reassurance about last night’s behaviour as the hungover paranoia sets in.
4. Your “New Year, new me” schooling regime takes an early set back. What was going to be a 40 minute flatwork session has turned into a hack down the lane. And then back the same way. In walk. On a loose rein. Your horse swears you’d only just put the tack on?
5. Mucking out is akin to climbing Everest (you imagine). The miscellaneous salty snacks are helping, but only to a point.
6. You start trying to sweep the yard. But then you have to find somewhere to sit down, with your head between your knees. ASAP.
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7. While you’re sitting down (and having a good wave) you can’t help scrolling through the January sales — and spending ludicrous amounts of money on novelty bits of grooming kit, that you will almost certainly regret when you wake up in a better state tomorrow. (They were in the sale for a reason).
8. You realise that if it wasn’t for your horse, you wouldn’t have left the confines of your bedroom today. The power of horse guilt should not be underestimated…
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A graduate from Durham University, Madeleine joined H&H in 2011 and became Features Editor — producing content across the magazine and website, including the popular inside back cover article ‘The horse that made me’ and the weekly ‘The best of my fun…’ interview. She has written on topics as diverse as hay making and headcams, to hot totty in the horse world and circus horses. Madeleine now works as a freelance feature writer for Country Life, The Telegraph, Horse & Hound, cntraveller.com, The Spectator and The Field, as well as writing obituaries for The Times.
