When people ask me what I did during lockdown, I would like to give an inspiring answer, apart from growing vegetables.
I thought I would write The Real Life Guide to Keeping a Horse, with all the stuff other books won’t tell you.
Chapter One, ‘You Will Need’, will give the most realistic list ever published of the items you should assemble before bringing home your new equine friend.
Number one item: gaffer tape. I know you’re thinking the farrier comes every six weeks. But in practice most farriers are harder to get hold of than O. J. Simpson on the San Diego Freeway.
Thoroughbreds reign supreme in the art of shedding shoes, then demolishing their feet by galloping round their field. Even a farrier who says he shoes the Queen’s horses — and they all say that — will have to resort to advanced engineering processes more complicated than redocking the lunar module to reattach a shoe to a crumbling hoof.
The moment your horse throws a shoe, therefore, bandage the foot in ‘vet wrap’ and a quarter of a roll of gaffer tape — even if your farrier promises to come just as soon as he’s shod the household cavalry.
Next, barrier cream. Before completing the purchase of your dream horse, buy shares in the company that makes Sudocrem. You are going to be using so much of it you will want to claw back some of your outlay.
In winter, you will slather it on your horse to treat mud fever, which will strike despite everything you do to prevent it, including encasing your gee-gee’s legs in turn-out wraps like knee socks.
You might go for years without mud fever, then one day, when the moon is in Taurus, a puddle he has walked through will infect him with strange, crunchy lumps.
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