Mild Or Bitter?

News just in from Q and very not good news at that. They have strangles.

Need I say more? Well, perhaps if you are not a person of horse. To the non-equestrian let me explain then.

For a livery yard to have to announce to the world - and telling the world is the only choice - that it has strangles among its horses is equivalent to a shopkeeper needing to inform his customers that, regrettably, bubonic plague has been discovered about the place, and would therefore all persons mind awfully keeping their considerable distance for the foreseeable future. Hoping to re-open for business in a few weeks, Yours etc....

Strangles is indeed the equine world's bubonic plague - a fast-spreading and generally lethal contagion of the airways and, when advanced, quite literally strangling the life out of the beast. (Not then the most imaginative of names, but like so much in the world of horse direct, blunt and straight to the point.)

The strictest isolation of the horse and quarantine for the yard: immediate treatment given to the infected animal, vaccinations for the rest and no one in and no one out for weeks. Prayers and curses in equal measure will be heard from behind the barricades.

Any vague association with a yard that has had strangles say any time since the ending of the Civil War and people are likely to step swiftly back and away: "Dinner next Wednesday? How perfectly splendid. Sadly rather booked for about the next three hundred years. Ciao."

We, it must at once be said, have never been to Q; though we were due there next weekend for a show. (No show, no how, not now, no fear.) But we do know someone who has been but some two weeks ago. We will telephone them to warn them of the risk. They will not need further advising that their mare is not to come within a mile of ours until she has been vaccinated and shown symptom free for at least three months.

One does of course feel desperately sorry for Q and, as the plague-cursed shop, one wishes them well in recovering their business in time. They say their strangles is 'mild'. Oh dear no. Try saying 'a mild dose of plague' and you will see how bitter is the sound.