It must have been a pretty comical scene; 9:30am, the big grey horse and myself are both soaked through and arguing over the fact his forelock was still a shade of orange. Eventually, I had to surrender. He never was going to be spotless, no matter how much blood, sweat, tears and detergent I applied. An hour later, Big Sam was now raging with excitement. One set of snapped rains and one smashed up set of taps later, and I was considering whether to take the horse hunting, or murder him.
The meet was fantastic. It was a joint meet today, at my favourite location with guest hounds hunting. Field of about 60 or so had turned out. The mixture of black, ratcatcher and scarlet made the field far more colourful than usual. The one that caught my eye however, was a gentlemen guest in a green livery with purple collar, something I’d never seen before.
We had a flyer of a day. Running for miles, hopping plenty of rails along the way. Big Sam eventually ended up redeeming himself for the morning’s behaviour, having caught me after a drop fence. Though safe to say, the hours slaving away to get him clean were swiftly negated by the fact we were utterly filthy within the hour. I was pleasantly distracted from the mud covered horse by a friends hipflask. I tell you now, If you haven’t tried Chocolate Wine, you absolutely need to! I’ve already ordered mine on Amazon and it’s on its way. Another humorous moment consisted of three older gentlemen, who had been gate shutting that day, all sat in a row, mud covered and smiling, whilst munching on cadbury crème eggs. Must be near the end of the season!
We made it home for just after 2:30pm. Having stripped Sam of his tack, we were about to begin our argument about being washed, again, when I heard the hounds coming closer and closer. Sam also, heard this and began giving me his best Michael Flatley impression. Evidently, he was not as tired as I’d first thought. Suddenly, about 10 couple appear from behind the stables and shoot off up the farm track. Sam was most upset not to be following them and had what can only be described as a tantrum at being put away whilst all the action was happening. Next, following at a comical pace was our field master and the remainder of the field, looking even more muddy(if possible) from when I left them.
Fast forward to almost 8pm that evening, I’m sat at home, starting to write this when the other half flies through the door. Still grinning like an idiot from a great day.
“Just popped in to say hello, must go and start the kennels!”
Turns out they hadn’t finished hunting till well gone 7, being escorted home by headlights. He ended up coming in the house just after 9, eating a slice of pizza and collapsing on the sofa in a smelly muddy pile. After an hour or so, I nudged him to get up and come to bed, his only response being,
“I’m coming, I’m coming”
before promptly falling back to sleep. Thursday complete, bring on Saturday!
Foxy Lady Blog 