Dear diary,
I think I am doomed. I am being ganged up on by every female in my life, who all seem hell bent on working me to the size of a Shetland pony.
So I officially have a new sharer. She is a friend of Aunty Becky’s and thus already “knew” me, mum and the Hovite Army — which made explaining things a LOT easier for mum. She’s very lovely — or so I thought. She made all the right noises about how gorgeous I am, how lovely I am to ride, how wonderful my personality is and then said the magic words. No! Not piff paff poof! The other magic words: “I love to jump”! Here is a woman I could really love I thought to myself; Aunty Emily, I loves you.
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But then it started. This whole riding malarkey. And not just riding — FLAT work! Stressage! Hours and hours of it. Like nearly EVERY day! I’m dying here people and my feet haven’t so much as left the floor yet. What’s worse is mother seems to have accepted that a) winter is about over b) she isn’t very fit and c) I might start loving aunty Emily more than her, so SHE’S started working me into the ground too.
I want to lodge a complaint with someone.
Anyone.
I always knew mother was evil but I now have a sharer equivalent of one of those PTI instructors at a fat camp — if she’s not riding me she’s lungeing me. How is it fair that she doesn’t work when her legs hurt? How about MY legs? Or soon to be the lack of them, when they’ve been worked off? I’m sure the hours I’m putting in must be against the working horse directive? The fact I spend 23 hours a day doing what I like is beside the point here, I’m being made to do stressage work and a lot of it.
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With hindsight my “prove everything mother says about me is wrong” campaign may have backfired.
Mother said I’m strong and a bit of a twerp. I have been gentle, accommodating and well mannered
Mother said I’m a total knob to lunge and will pull your arms out unless lunged in a bridle. I let Aunty Emily lunge me in a headcollar and pulled less than a poodle on a promise.
Mother said I’m hard to get to maintain a decent canter in the school. I have delivered canters that Viagra could only dream of.
With hindsight all of this was a bad idea as now Aunty Emily seems to think I a) like flat work and b) am quite good at it. Drat!
I did show her my dark side the other day by refusing to be caught when she came to get me but was thwarted in my attempts to make her run around the field after in a Benny Hill stylee by Aunty H. She-who-scares-me-more-than-mother walked into the field, quirked her eyebrow at me in a manner that convinced me she was doing poundage to hamburgers created calculation on my rump, and beckoned me with her finger.
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I went towards her with the enthusiasm of a turkey approaching Christmas (and with a similar view of my fate) and she calmly put my headcollar on. There’s some things in life that are inevitable: the sun will set, mums hair will frizz in all weathers and I will always obey Aunty H. She’s like the equine equivalent to the child catcher and I’m scared…
THEN in one final insult to me I find out that mini mother is going to go for riding lessons. On a PONY. I discovered this after she turned up at the yard wearing a riding hat in such neon pink she will be seen from space. I was faintly intrigued and wondered if I was to give her a lesson. But NO! My father (who I always thought was the cool dude of the family) has decreed I am too big for mini mother to learn on and has said she has to have lessons on something that barely comes up to my knees. To say I am insulted is to say the Grand Canyon is a little crack in the earth…
So I might not be writing next week people, I might be collapsed in an exhausted heap too tired to lift a hoof to keyboard.
It’s been nice knowing you all.
Laters,
Hovis
