Dear diary,
I know peoples, I know. Keeping me from you has been crueller than the wait you are all enduring for the latter half of Yellowstone season five, and about as talked about. But what can I say? Mother is tighter than a duck’s arse and wouldn’t pay for me to have a secretary to take my witty musings down, and since the last laptop didn’t survive my attempts at self-typing, I am at her mercy.
Although to be fair, it does sound like the karma bus has come round and firmly run her over, as she’s come back from foreign climes with a bite on her finger and some sort of galloping lurgy. The doctors are apparently considering sending her to the infectious diseases people and she’s taking more pills than Robert Downey Junior in his day. Personally, I’m more concerned about the poor kitten that bit her. All I can hope is that counselling is being provided and it’s had its jabs…
Talking of Yellowstone, we don’t have a train station at the yard (more’s the pity), but we did this past week have a weigh station. A big, accurate weigh station. Which revealed the level of abuse I am enduring. For at the moment, I am the lightest I have been since I was strip fit back in my racing snake days – bearing in mind that was over 10 years ago and if I follow the mothership logic on weight to age – weight GAIN. In her case, quite disproportionate, but still, it is a known fact as we get older, we get heavier – probably due to the weight of the world being on our older, wiser shoulders.
But NO. As usual, one rule for her and another for me. I am not “fit”, I am famished. The fact everyone around her is congratulating her on her brilliance in protecting my joints and my overall health is massively concerning. The horse world it seems is very definitely in two camps – those who like fat show horses so it makes their bums look proportionately smaller and those who are just deluded. For the first time in my 21 years on this planet, I am actually wailing that I didn’t get to having a showing career even though our one attempt saw me thrashed within an inch of my life by a county level Shire and his handler who clearly understood the idea you’re supposed to run beside your steed to show off their magnificence, not run beside him turning puce and panting like an obscene phone caller. The fact that I got distracted by an ice cream van, fell over my own feet and stood on mother had absolutely nothing to do with the comments that “this perhaps wasn’t our thing”. Any smart arse comments about my shine or my dapples are just a distraction – I’m shiny because mother shoves more supplements down my neck than Gwyneth Paltrow, not because I am in rude health.
I have now been allowed out 24/7 on to my summer paddocks, which at least means I get within sniffing distance of grass. But New Crazy Boss Lady is so scared of mother’s wrath that I am only allowed a patch at a time that even a London estate agent would struggle to market as anything other than a postage stamp. This of course doesn’t stop her hacking me out on my own such that I burn even more calories with the stress of not having a sacrificial offering while dealing with tractors, buses, men acting suspicious in hedges (trimming his bush, my arse) and ever-multiplying clouds with legs. And that’s BEFORE we mention all the ruddy flags.
My only solace is Barbie Boy has been placed on very strict measures as unlike me, his weight has gone up, and since he has PMT and mother has no body parts left to sell for his drugs, he’s being rationed within an inch of his small ginger life.
So, I’m off to try limboing under the electric fencing when no one is looking (which at 695kg is a hell of a trick), or to try and talk Crazy Daisy into sharing some of her grass.
Wish me luck.
Laters,
Hovis
Subscribe to Horse & Hound magazine today – and enjoy unlimited website access all year round
Horse & Hound magazine, out every Thursday, is packed with all the latest news and reports, as well as interviews, specials, nostalgia, vet and training advice. Find how you can enjoy the magazine delivered to your door every week, plus options to upgrade your subscription to access our online service that brings you breaking news and reports as well as other benefits.
