We’ve all had a tumble off a horse, sometimes a spectacular one. And we’ve all been there to witness our fellow riders suffer the same fate (and thanks to cell phones, capture the moment for all eternity). Our horses often drive us bonkers for a variety of reasons, and sometimes in life, all you can do is laugh. And that’s what one group of horsemen and women have done in England.
The online group “shiteventersunite” (SEU) was started in 2019 on Facebook by UK-based rider, Cressida Kitchin-Townshend for people to “share their crapness without judgement.” The group grew in popularity but without warning or reason given, Facebook took the group’s page down (Zucc’d in modern terms) this summer. In an interview with Horse & Hound, Kitchin-Townshend said the group never got an answer about why the social media giant did it, although the bad language police, ie Facebook bots, may have been the culprits.
“We know the group’s not for everyone, but it’s not in any way promoting bad horsemanship; we may call our horses names but we love them, and would do anything for them,” Cressida told H&H. “We know that if horses play up there’s a problem, and people are much better at hearing what their horses are telling them. But what does happen when you’re around horses is that things go wrong, and it’s ok to laugh when they do.”
With its language cleaned up, the group has been relaunched on Facebook and is as popular as ever, with 142,000 members and counting, and with an added bonus: the group is selling merchandise and calendars highlighting spills and thrills for the equine charity World Horse Welfare which works to improve the lives of horses and the horse-human partnership. SEU has already well surpassed their original ₤5,000 target.
The calendar, which the group will ship to Canada and the US, has a dozen hilarious images of horse-and-rider fails that will definitely make you giggle every day. And these days, with all the bad news in the world, laughter is more important than ever!
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