A load of horse

I think that there are better ways to describe myself than that – but of course I am not the one at the keyboard but merely the subject of this woman’s blog. You see my name is Neopolitan Nima and I am one of the world famous Lippizaner Stallions and I currently reside in Vienna. And yes – we are a bit of a tourist attraction so naturally on days when we are not performing our arses off (literally) we stand in our stables while lines of humans walk past us taking photos. It is hard not to get bored – here is my bored face.

Of course we are such magnificent bunch of lads that everyone wants to pet us – as if we were some sort of donkey. But the guides never let the public touch us. They know we don’t like it – unless of course they happen to sneak in a sugar cube or something. But alas, athletes like us are kept on a very strict diet and that seldom happens.

Now I want to stress that me and my performing mates are all virile young horses and as such it can get a bit rowdy in our stables – especially when we haven’t been mated for a while. But there is a limit to everything and we do expect the fellows in our team to show some restraint. Just the other day there was a large tour group coming through and Conversano Culo let the side down by displaying his ….mmmm well let’s just say his “masculinity” for all and sundry to gawk at. I even heard one of the tourists say “Well he looks happy to see us” and then they all had a good laugh. Shocking. I explained to Conversano that this really wasn’t a good image for our stables. Even though we are called the Spanish Riding School (God knows where that came from) we don’t act like the Spanish. We are more Austrian and exercise restraint and present ourselves with just the right amount of aloof pride – except when someone has a sugar lump.

I do feel sorry for Conversano – he probably is getting close to his “date”. Every so often when one of the mares is in her “productive” time we get a day off to go and muck about and maybe make a new baby Lipp to join the club. We are all usually quite excited about this but the last couple of times I got stuck with that bloody awful female – you know who I mean – so bad-tempered which is really not our style at all. It put me in a bad mood so when I got back to the stable the guys were all puzzled. “What’s up Nima?” they asked when I stomped back in. I just shook my head and angrily pawed the floor with my hoof – I like doing that. It drives the stable hands crazy.

“Oh I know” said one bright spark. “I bet you go the donkey for your date today”. Everyone had a good laugh over that and I kicked the one stable wall in frustration – but it is true. She does look like a donkey. And I look like a champion. You would think we could choose our own mates and she is just not my type.

I wish we could choose our own mates. Wouldn’t that be amazing. There is the one mare there who is really cute. She has big soft eyes and long eyelashes. We could get together and run away to the hills and make beautiful babies and I would teach them the Lippizaner moves and they would become famous all over the world and we could start our own show, run by us. Oh my goodness, I think I just wrote the new script for the next Disney hit!