Hello and happy Grassy Munchies all.

My name is Frankie. I’m a 5 year old Piebald Cob – and a proper one at that. I mean I must be about 50% hair – I even get a belly beard in the Winter! I’m very proud of it.

I’m so hairy my Human also calls me Her Royal Hairiness – or HRH for short.

I’ve been with my new Human for a while now – I think I heard her say something about 9 months the other day..? Well, this is what I think about the whole situation so far..

My new owner is called Kat (strange as I thought they were small feline creatures..) Still, as me and my equine pals always say, there’s just no accounting for the oddness of humans…

I was delivered to Kat in a very cramped box on wheels. It took a very long time and made me very sweaty. It wasn’t pleasant and I was right to pull every trick out of my hairy feathers to refuse climbing on board that evil box!

When we arrived I had no idea where we were, I was just so glad to see daylight and hear the call of some of my equine cousins. There was a lady there (that was Kat, I know this now) who I recognised. She untied me and led me off the lorry. She seemed rather excited and giggly. Strange. Again.

Turns out this Kat woman was my new Human and we’ve been doing all kinds of things together over the last 9 months.

Some good, some okay, some just downright worrying. A fine example of this is the constant chitter-chatter to her human friend about trail riding for 20 miles a day, every day! They get very excited about this.

Kat’s human friend Sara rides Aunty Tilly – well that’s who she is to me. They call her Tilly the Train, which I think is a bit rude.

Tilly and I ponder on these excited babbling human discussions about trail riding and wonder what it entails for us..? All we know so far is we are going on very long rides, up to 10 and 12 miles long. Apparently, we’re in ‘training’. Don’t they know we are capable of wandering for 15 – 20 miles a day, every day, in the wild!?

We should maybe consider staging a protest to all this activity, whilst carrying a human. But, we’re allowed breaks and to sometimes even participate in one of my favourite things – Grassy Munchies! Sometimes I am given a nice treat if I stop and stand nice and still when Kat asks me to.

These are my rewards for being good – they are called Hay Cobs.

I would literally do anything for them – including break through two electric fenced gates, barge through a metal gate, tenaciously open a closed box of the tasty morsels (the secret of how I did this will go with me to my grave..) and happily munch the lot. A lot of the humans were annoyed about this feat. Kat said I was a ‘canny little bugger’ (I think she was secretly impressed with my stealth and cunning).

So anyway, there we are, my story with Kat has begun.

Humans are a strange bunch and probably only about 10% of them seem to truly understand us. The rest somehow imagine we think and feel exactly as they do.

Please! We don’t. We are the opposite.

Our intelligence is a highly refined intuitive connection to ourselves and the natural world around us, in a way humans could barely remember.

We are true sentient creatures, existing only ever in the moment and able to spike and drop our stress levels in 10 seconds flat, simply to save our lives. Unlike humans who seem to keep their stress on high alert 24/7. It really isn’t very good for them!

I’m truly hoping Kat falls into this 10%. I did hear her say the other day she thought horses were actually better and more intelligent than humans. It gave me hope and made me happy.

She also seems very sure there are no Lions behind the hedges waiting to devour me. I need more time to believe her. After all she is a human, I’m a horse and we have a long road ahead of us!

One thing seems certain though – looks like I’m destined to be a Trail Riding Horse! Whatever that really means…

Grassy Munchies until next time!

F x