Sweet Itch & The Archers (just for fun)

little_critter said:
Realistic horse noises:
Farting loudly as you lead them out of the stable.
Kicking the door as you prepare breakfast (“oi, shuttup”)
Squeeling mare as you lead her boyfriend past
“Gaah, gettoff, that’s my foooot”
Much muttering of “where’s my bleedin’ hoofpick”
…sound of running water “did you have to, Ive only just mucked out”
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My horse is a total weirdo and actually neighs. Shes quite chatty. Ive never met a horse that neighs like they do on TV before.

I was standing on the opposite side of the hedge once and two walkers came up I said hello, walkers said hello, horse neighs hello from behind the hedge, walkers look confused 😅 I say hello D.

I found most of what Paul got up to at work general unprofessional 😅
 
Cloball said:
My horse is a total weirdo and actually neighs. Shes quite chatty. Ive never met a horse that neighs like they do on TV before.

I was standing on the opposite side of the hedge once and two walkers came up I said hello, walkers said hello, horse neighs hello from behind the hedge, walkers look confused 😅 I say hello D.

I found most of what Paul got up to at work general unprofessional 😅
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I will admit mine neigh (demand) at me too.
When mine used to have breakfast before being turned out T had a specific ‘Ive finished breakfast now turn me OUT’ neigh
 
I am not an Archers listener, but they get horses wrong in about 99.99999% of media.

Most of the horse scenes in 'All Creatures Great and Small' have me teetering between staring at the television, utterly baffled, and giggling like a maniac. It's usually one or the other.

My personal favourite, out of all of them, is the episode where Sigfried diagnosed a horse with PTSD (after it had been rearing and bucking people off), and then he did exactly what I'd expect of any vet. He jumped on the horse bareback, shot out of the arena gate, and galloped over the Yorkshire Moors. Why not? I am sure Gamebird and all of the other equine vets have done this exact same thing. Nothing says, lets gallop over the moorland like a horse standing straight up on its hindlegs in an arena.
 
And…on horsey memes like the endless neighing - what is it about riders getting on horses and setting straight off at a gallop from the yard, often taking in a gate or wall or 2.

Is all that careful warming up we do all a waste of time 🤣?
 
I was amused by the Doctor Who episode where humans on foot were being chased by er...cheetah-people on horseback (don't ask...it was doing Doctor Who things), and the film horses were very well-educated, collecting the canter to the point where it looked like the guys on foot actually had a chance of outrunning them. As anyone who has ever tried to catch a reluctant horse knows, a horse doing a normal canter or gallop will be a lot faster than you.

Then this Fifth Doctor episode had this chap:

Ride and drive cob gelding. Bombproof. Literally. Can be driven by novices, including green reptilian aliens with megalomaniac tendencies. Not spooked by explosions, collapsing buildings, gunshots, or materialising/dematerialising TARDISes. Stands for vet, farrier, and Time Lords. Perfect horse for a mother-daughter share, novice carriage drivers, or anyone worried about extraterrestrial invasions.


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Caol Ila said:
I was amused by the Doctor Who episode where humans on foot were being chased by er...cheetah-people on horseback (don't ask...it was doing Doctor Who things), and the film horses were very well-educated, collecting the canter to the point where it looked like the guys on foot actually had a chance of outrunning them. As anyone who has ever tried to catch a reluctant horse knows, a horse doing a normal canter or gallop will be a lot faster than you.

Then this Fifth Doctor episode had this chap:

Ride and drive cob gelding. Bombproof. Literally. Can be driven by novices, including green reptilian aliens with megalomaniac tendencies. Not spooked by explosions, collapsing buildings, gunshots, or materialising/dematerialising TARDISes. Stands for vet, farrier, and Time Lords. Perfect horse for a mother-daughter share, novice carriage drivers, or anyone worried about extraterrestrial invasions.


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absolutely brilliant - I’ll take two of those, thank you!
 
Nancykitt said:
Those who listen to the Archers may well have been cringeing at last night's episode, where Alice - supposedly a very experienced horsewoman - calls in the vet because the mare she is riding seems 'a little irritable'.
The vet suggests sweet itch. Alice says 'isn't it a bit early'? but is told that it does happen in March. Apparently the horse has been rubbing and has bare patches.
Vet suggests medicated shampoo, which he is only too happy to sell to her, and a lotion such as benzyl benzoate. Alice says 'would a sweet itch rug help?' Vet says yes.
The possibility of the 'irritability' being something other than sweet itch isn't even raised.


Who is advising the scriptwriters on this stuff? Given that Alice had heard of sweet itch, did she really need to pay a vet to diagnose it? All she needed to do was a H&H forum search to get the very latest info!

So, a few questions...

- Has anyone on here got horses with sweet itch just yet? I know it's different up here in Scotland, but today it's 6 degrees, torrential rain/hail and gale force winds. Even if it got really warm tomorrow (which it won't), it'd take a while for midges to hatch and get geared up for attack. When I lived in Lancs and had a sweet itch pony he never had any signs until at least April, but perhaps some of you are seeing midges already. I used to get Finn rugged up and Z-itch applied in late March if it was warm enough just to be ahead of the game, but we often got frost/snow in March so no midges.

- Would any experienced horseperson really call a vet out to confirm sweet itch if all the symptoms are there (assuming that the horse is known as a sweet itch sufferer)?
- Does anyone buy medicated horse shampoo from the vet ("I'll add it to your bill" - yes, I'm sure you will...)
- Would an experienced horseperson not be a bit more clued up about treatments and rugs?

And finally...
- Does anyone still use the term 'loose box' - last night's episode was the first time I'd heard that phrase in about 20 years.

I have to remember, though, that this same person called a vet out just to confirm that a pony she'd bought for her daughter was overweight.
('I think he might be a bit overweight...' 'Yeah, he's fat. That'll be £100 please.')
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What’s wrong with loose box? I have 3 horses, they all have a loose box.
 
A place that I worked at had both stalls and loose boxes. They were all called stables. The day horses were put in the stalls and the full time/overnighters were in the loose boxes.
 
My husband’s father died very young so he and his brother took over the farm. His mother, of the generation and class that meant you did not help in any way, was an avid Archers fan.
She used to phone him and say ‘why aren’t you spraying/drilling/ploughing whatever. He’d say it was blowing a gale/pouring with rain/midwinter, whichever was appropriate. She’d always reply ‘well you are wrong, they are doing it in the Archers’.
I supposed she had started listening to it when it was an advisory programme.
 
Mari said:
What’s wrong with loose box? I have 3 horses, they all have a loose box.
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Nothing's wrong with it, it's just that it's a term I've not heard for a very long time. When we were in Lancs our horses had 'loose boxes' but neither I nor anyone else ever referred to them as anything but 'stables'.
rabatsa said:
A place that I worked at had both stalls and loose boxes. They were all called stables. The day horses were put in the stalls and the full time/overnighters were in the loose boxes.
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This took me way back to my days at the riding school where lots of horses were lined up in stalls. It seemed very common in those days.
I fear that some were in there for much longer than they should have been...
 
I’m weeks behind on The Archers and only just come to Oliver’s horse rearing (not shying, rearing!) at a rabbit - described as a ‘blip’. This horse is about to retire. I think they should fact check all horse related stories with us 😆
 
Nancykitt said:
Nothing's wrong with it, it's just that it's a term I've not heard for a very long time. When we were in Lancs our horses had 'loose boxes' but neither I nor anyone else ever referred to them as anything but 'stables'.

This took me way back to my days at the riding school where lots of horses were lined up in stalls. It seemed very common in those days.
I fear that some were in there for much longer than they should have been...
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The riding school (I use the term loosely), I first went to (mid 80s) you had to wade through metres of ankle deep mud to get to your poor, sad, generally ancient, pony. They would be stood there all day, tied to trees, fully tacked up.

Thought of it now makes me shudder.
 
Burnerbee said:
The riding school (I use the term loosely), I first went to (mid 80s) you had to wade through metres of ankle deep mud to get to your poor, sad, generally ancient, pony. They would be stood there all day, tied to trees, fully tacked up.

Thought of it now makes me shudder.
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OH tells me that when he was a child there was a bloke who had a number of ponies in a field, all tacked up at the start of every day.
Unsupervised kids would hand over cash to said bloke.
This would then enable them to go into the field and 'catch' the pony they had been directed to.

😲

OH said that his brother once approached the resident Shetland in order to catch it, but the Shettie ended up chasing the brother around the field for a short while.
 
Burnerbee said:
I’m weeks behind on The Archers and only just come to Oliver’s horse rearing (not shying, rearing!) at a rabbit - described as a ‘blip’. This horse is about to retire. I think they should fact check all horse related stories with us 😆
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Probably because people who only watch horses on TV see them rearing at things when they get a fright, rather than the more typical manner in which actual horses spook.

I suspect this is because rearing (a) looks dramatic, (b) is easier to train than the sideways teleport or light-speed 180 (c) rears are probably easier and safer than teleportation or 180s for stunt riders to manage a controlled fall from, should the script ask for that, and (d) more interesting to watch than just planting or tanking off.
 
Caol Ila said:
Probably because people who only watch horses on TV see them rearing at things when they get a fright, rather than the more typical manner in which actual horses spook.

I suspect this is because rearing (a) looks dramatic, (b) is easier to train than the sideways teleport or light-speed 180 (c) rears are probably easier and safer than teleportation or 180s for stunt riders to manage a controlled fall from, should the script ask for that, and (d) more interesting to watch than just planting or tanking off.
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agreed…but this is radio!!

Also, thought just in, a rabbit on a roadside verge in the middle of the day? Was it even alive one has to wonder
 
Burnerbee said:
I’m weeks behind on The Archers and only just come to Oliver’s horse rearing (not shying, rearing!) at a rabbit - described as a ‘blip’. This horse is about to retire. I think they should fact check all horse related stories with us 😆
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We have a horse coming up to retirement. If he reared at something out on a hack, my first thought would be 'Blimey, that joint supplement seems to be working...'

Also agree about rearing being over-used in TV shows, along with excessive horse noise/loud whinnying, which drives me mad. Bridgerton is one of the worst for this. Every single time a horse is on screen there's constant horse noise.
 
Burnerbee said:
agreed…but this is radio!!

Also, thought just in, a rabbit on a roadside verge in the middle of the day? Was it even alive one has to wonder
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I still feel a bit guilty that years ago my pony killed a rabbit on a roadside verge in the middle of the day. Stood on it at a canter rather than rearing at the sight.
 
Come to think of it, the story about Oliver's old horse rearing at a rabbit was a bit odd. Not just because rearing would be unusual in that situation, but because it then moved into a discussion about whether or not Oliver, who is presumably a very experienced rider, should give up riding.
After the storyline about Bartleby ('the world's oldest horse'), I would have liked a nice story about Oliver and Duke plodding about enjoying their time together...

(Just realised that I'm taking it all a bit too seriously. But yes, the scriptwriters should definitely consult us. Frequently. And we should be credited - 'The equine advisers for this episode were the H&H forum hivemind')
 
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