Are you counting down the days to autumn hunting? Dying for your horse’s holiday to come to an end? Sounds like you’re missing the hunting season…
1. You’ve made a calendar of the days left until autumn hunting starts and you eagerly cross them off each morning.
2. You’ve already asked your huntsman (three times) when hound exercise on horses starts, and are really disappointed when he looks horrified and tells you not until the end of this month. But they have started on bikes, and you’re there, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, at 6am. You’ll have thighs of steel by the time the season starts.
3. Your hunting kit is clean, polished, mended — and ready to go. Similarly your horse’s tack.
4. You’ve booked days off work for all the major hound shows and are mentally planning your picnic for the Festival of Hunting at Peterborough — even if all of these now aren’t happening until 2021 due to coronavirus, you’re still looking forward to them.
5. Your horse won’t come anywhere near you in the field — he thinks you have an unnecessarily keen look in your eye and he wants a holiday, thank you very much. Past years have taught him it won’t be long; in a couple of week’s time he will be plonking round the roads, and by the beginning of September he’ll be nearly fit enough to go round Burghley, let alone cope with a morning’s autumn hunting.
Continued below…
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6. You find yourself looking at hedges out hacking and while driving, and imagining how you would jump them — the real thing can’t come soon enough…
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