Once upon a time I dabbled in hospitality and ran a small catering business. We’re talking late 1980’s/early 1990s, I’d just come back from living in France for three years through work, and came back to the UK with no job but a determination to feed us Brits like the French. I’ve always been a foodie, and the French cuisine (not to mention their fabulous wines) had taken my palate to another level.

After retrieving my house from a long-term tenant, I decided to buy myself a small van and go round the local industrial estates with baskets of yummy French-style baguettes and pastries, cheerfully accessorised with the typical red-checked french bistro-style gingham. I loved it - it went down a storm with the clients, and have to say it was the easiest money I’ve ever earned.

I called my little van ‘Froggie’s Deli’, reason being that the company I worked for previously who’d sent me to France also had a Carol in Germany, so as I was the Carol in France everyone called me Carol-Frog (which became ‘Froggie’), while the Carol in Germany (who’s still a great pal some 30-years on) was called Carol-Kraut, with the 'Carol' name eventually dropped - Frog and Kraut we became, and to this day we're still Frog and Kraut in that same circle of long-term friends. All probably very un-PC these days and no doubt the woke mob would have a field-day with me. Different times ... sigh ...

I digress. Over time, and as my client base grew and grew, I started to get interested in the importance of nutrition and started doing a bit of swatting; cue adding yummy salad cartons to my baskets. Then one day one of my client's receptionist, not dissimilar to Hyacinth Bouquet (remember her?!), and I say that with affection, asked me for some nutrition help – she was carrying a little more weight than she wanted and had started dining on my salad cartons. “Leave it with me,” I said, enthused, and went back home and put together a dietary programme for her.

Typical me, of course I wanted to explain all the ‘Why’ behind it all, and I still remember very vividly going in to see her the next day with my gingham-checked baskets on my arms, beaming a huge smile at her and presenting the printed toils of my all-things-nutrition studies to her with a flourish.

She beamed back at me, took it gratefully, read the document title, then swiftly averted her eyes while a huge red flush of embarrassment swept over her face. Suddenly focusing intently on her ringing phone with no eye-contact, she crisply thanked me through tight lips before getting very involved with desk-stuff. I’m a fairly sensitive soul so was cut to the core; really worried that I’d done something wrong but equally a bit peeved because I’d spent hours on that document and thought it was pretty impressive.

It was only with a bit of afterthought and re-looking at what little she’d read that I finally understood her embarrassment.

The  title was: “The secret to a healthy life is a healthy colon; it’s all about how we poo!”

Doh! Bang head on brick wall, rinse, repeat. Of courrrrrse! Poor Hyacinth - there was no earthly way that Ms Bouquet would ever have said the word ‘poo’; no doubt didn't even acknowledge the stuff. It was the late 1980s after all, and apart from us horse-folk who dealt with poo on a daily basis, middle-class Britain back then was generally a very reserved lot who didn't talk about such vulgarities. And there I was, shoving the dreaded 'poo' word at her in Big Bold Type.

I can’t recall seeing her at her reception desk thereafter – probably saw my van arrive and had an urgent need to suddenly deliver memos around the building (yes, for those of you who weren't around then, back in the day with no internet or emails, inter-office messages were typed up on IBM golf-ball electric typewriters by secretaries, stuffed in envelopes (oddly with holes punched in them), then hand delivered to desks). No doubt to Hyacinth's great relief, the company also relocated not long after so that was the end of them on my gourmet round.

Apologies for the fairly typical Carol-style intro ramble, but the clue is all right there in the details – the secret to a healthy life really is a healthy colon, and poo quality tells us everything we need to know about what's going on inside us, whether human or horse.

Thankfully we’ve moved on a few decades since my encounter with Hyacinth, and I think we can safely say that certainly for us horse folk the word ‘poo’ and its various derivatives is second-nature for us all 😉. And thanks to the last decade or so being the era of the microbiome – and getting it tested - for both humans and our horses, we’re all now much more well-versed in the importance of a healthy microbiome, and more easily able to connect various equine whole-body metabolic disorders with microbiome disruption.

Although … just to put a fly in the ointment, we should perhaps be mindful when getting our horse’s biome tested as to what type of test we’re getting. Some labs only analyse the types of bacteria and ignore the complex interaction between the other microorganisms such as fungi or viruses. This may well mean that we’ll not necessarily get a comprehensive picture of whether our horse’s gut biome is actually healthy or not.

Plus, and this is the bit that's really fascinating me now, and also the point of this Blog - there’s new thinking that it’s actually a whole bigger picture than just a test; maybe now we should be thinking about what ‘type’ of horse we have too, and take into account its genetic ancestry. Don’t worry – before you start getting brain freeze, this blog will gently lead us to this eye-opening stuff as we go.

Before that though, let’s just stay with the gut bugs for a bit longer …

How do we tell what microbes are good or bad?

What we do know at this stage in our science is that certain feeding patterns create dis-ease, and in our horse world our old friend lactic-acid bacteria seems to be at the root of many metabolic problems. So, it’s fair to say we can lump LA bacteria in the ‘bad’ category’, as we know its presence lowers the pH value to acidic in the GI tract, which is never a good thing (the GI tract should always remain at a neutral pH).

What we also know, without question, is that the cellulose fibre-fermenting bacteria in the hindgut are definitely good guys. Fact is, the overall health of our horse completely depends on the hindgut bugs. The better the fibre fermentation, the better the production of the vital metabolites, i.e. the B-vits (in their activated form), certain amino acids and the vital volatile fatty acids which produce our horse’s energy.

Quick digress - hence why there’s some thinking out there not to recommend feeding probiotics containing forms of LA bacteria (i.e lactobacillus) to our horses, not that I'm personally comfortable feeding probiotics anyway, as currently there’s no probiotic available that truly mimics any of the equine microbiome bacterial colonies. Even with prebiotics, the most important prebiotic fibre for the hindgut is 'cellulose', sourced from stemmy hay, with the current thinking now being about feeding more ‘probiotically’ - i.e. provided the appropriate prebiotic diet is fed to our horse (cellulose/hemi-cellulose fibre from stemmy hay), there may be no need to feed a probiotic. At least that’s what the scientists are saying (a ton of source material on this particular link). Sept'22 - Edited to add: we've since written a blog based on new research on this very subject - Prebiotic Foods for Postbiotic Abundance).

Back to it, and nor should we be feeding haylage which is a haven for LA bacteria during the fermenting process of the wrapped cut grass into haylage (any plastic-wrapped grass for that matter - wrap it, and it'll ferment, full stop). And we certainly shouldn’t be feeding certain manufactured feedbags which contain the buffet of junk food full of completely equine-inappropriate C.R.A.P. (stands for Carbs, Refined, Artificial, Processed) which do nothing but feed the many bad bugs, including LA bacteria in the GI tract, allowing them to multiply their populations by the gazillions while crowding out the good guys that do the actual job of proper digestion.

That aside, now to throw another fly in the ointment. Not too massive a fly, but certainly something for us all to think about, because all this new (and very wonderful) science is showing that – the balance of bacteria within the gut and throughout the body is as unique as a fingerprint from horse to horse. And especially when it comes to genetic ancestry ...

In other words, no horse (or human) will ‘read’ the same in any analysis, and here’s another sticky fly … Different feeds, different breeds, and different ‘types’ of horses from different continents, are all going to have a different biome to each other.

Depending on where a horse is originally from, it’s microbiome is going to be different to a horse from another continent, based on how it's been raised as a foal and continued to be fed. How and why? Because different soil types around the world mean different forage types which means different biomes. So, perhaps there’s a bit of open-minded thinking in here for us all along the lines of ... for all this wonderful testing, is blanket-comparing one horse's microbiome to another the right way to go? Should we perhaps be taking into account where a horse is from, how it was raised, and what forage type was it fed? Horses for courses perhaps?

No question, we all know now that everything starts with the gut, but everything begins in the microbiome. And then last year, 2021, I attended an intensive training workshop with Dr Christina Fritz, where in the final module of Part II she explained about the different 'primal types' of horses. I found it absolutely fascinating, took a ton of notes, and finally after several months have untangled them to produce this blog, and here's where possibly the whole big genetic ancestry picture not only comes together, but could also be a missing part in the great what's-going-on-with-my-horse jigsaw. So, here we go.

Genetic Ancestry - what 'type' of horse have you got?

Evolutionary-speaking, our ancient horses originated elsewhere, until humans started shipping them around the world. So, historically our ancient horses were born, raised and fed in different climates and environments (i.e. steppe, tundra, swamp, desert), with different styles of keeping, and different feeding and forage types, everything from scrubland to lush meadows. And we only have to look at how many imported horses we have today with the same factors - born in different climates and environments, with different feeding and forage types, and different medication protocols unique to that country – all will have an effect in establishing that horse’s biome at birth to how it’s then fed and kept as it gets older.

Then along come us humans and ship said horse raised in, say, Spain or Iceland, over to the UK. Now imagine the effect of how that dramatic change in environment and climate, not to mention the change in forage type/pasture composition, is going to have on that imported horse’s gut biome as it tries to adjust. Is it any wonder that a horse imported from Spain to the colder northern reaches of say, Scandinavia, might have a hard time adjusting? (I hear this often from very lovely and well-meaning clients - most recently, "My Lusitano who I saw in Spain and was calm and beautifully trained, has turned into a stressed mega-spooky riding nightmare since arriving here.")

Maybe we also need to factor in the different ‘primal types’ of horses out there, and take into account the very constitution of the horse in front of us. Then again, what’s a ‘normal’ horse these days? Take a typical mixed herd that we all see today in various livery yards, where during summer with most veering on the chubby side, we all know this isn’t necessarily ‘normal’. Or is it, depending on the 'type' of horse? (Keep reading - the answer to this is further on 😉). Alternatively, if all the horses looked underweight, would a ‘normal’ horse seem fat? Quick note here - lest we forget, muscle is heavier than fat - a fat horse may weigh less than a well-exercised muscular horse so looks may be deceiving 😉.

These days the overweight horse seems more normal in our perception, especially in the show world which demands a bit more chub. These days we have the body condition score so we have certain parameters to determine ‘normal’, but the problem here is that it’s basically set towards the WB horse. What about our regular horses and everything in between – from 80cm-high minis to the shire at over 2-meters?!

And just to throw more in the mix to think about, there’s the multiple different breeds out there carefully created by mankind for all the different jobs back in the day. A fast horse was bred with long legs and a slim body, with fine muscles and no bulk; for heavy work, i.e. the carriage or the plough, we needed strong muscles with power, wide front legs to give a really broad shoulder but not necessarily speed.

Then there’s the height v. body-type comparison - take the arabian horse versus the welsh cob; both the same height, but different 'types'. Put them next to each other and you’ll think the welsh was overweight, but is it?

So where did this all start?

Equine ancestry shows us 4 original types –

- Primal pony

- Primal tundra horse

- Primal steppe horse

- Arab desert horse

All different, all developed in different regions, climates and landscapes, all with different feeding patterns based on what available forage there was, each adapting to their own environment, climate, the mileage they had to cover, and with the modern horse of today reflecting these different types, breeds and metabolisms, all created on breeding requirements over the centuries which has resulted in many different mixes.

Take the haffy as an example, originally a mountain workhorse, an original tundra horse type (explained further on), yet the modern sports haffy has been bred more like a steppe – same breed, no other blood lines crossed in, still the pure haffy genetics, but bred for different parameters/aspects in the conformation.

Our horses of today generally have all four ‘types’ in their genetics, depending on how they’ve been bred over the centuries for different confirmation or appearance, which create different microbiomes and as a result different metabolic health issues. What makes it interesting, for me at least, is that as a result there are reasons why different metabolic conditions exist between various pony/working breeds and sport horses, and it’s all to do with the original primal 'type' which has then been messed up by mankind's earlier breeding goals.

Let’s look at each original ‘type’ in turn.

The Primal Pony

Many of us will recognise the primal pony - think Thelwell! Developed in regions similar to Europe with long summers of lush green pasture so plenty of summer feed, hence summer weight gain (!), followed by long, harsh winters with lots of snow where finding feed underneath the snow was tough. This meant they went hungry through winter, aka ‘the hungry gap’, so that fat storage in summer was then utilised during winters due to sparse winter forage supply.

This gave them a pretty constant high-calorie sugar feed during summer, which easily laid down fat from the starch in their forage. We all recognise our modern day pony equivalent – I’ve got two of them! Highly sensitive to sugar so easily gaining weight (which for the record is the hardest weight to lose) and prone to building fat, so it’s all about exercise exercise exercise, otherwise cue one EMS pony.

How do we recognise the primal pony? Simple – they typically look like three rounds balls 😉. Small shoulder ball, larger tummy ball, with a smaller bum ball, and a wedge shaped head. A rounded ribcage so they always look ‘round’, even at normal weight. Short legs, lots of mane/tail and a thick coat, brilliantly protective against summer insects and extra thick in winter. No insect ever bites our Cookie, while my connie and TB go nuts, and come winter Cookie turns into a polar bear.

The shetland is a perfect example of the primal pony; this is the typical genetic heritage found in shetlands as well as our stocky working horses, but not with too much height so we’re talking haffies, freisians, the QH, plus would you believe the Spanish/baroque/PRE, which I had no idea but were all former cattle horses.

The Primal Tundra horse

These developed in open ‘tundra’ landscapes, typically high-latitude landmasses. A harsh environment due to very dry, freezing winters with temps getting down to –50deg-C, but oddly not much snow so they could usually find enough feed in winter for energy, albeit very low in nutritive levels.

During summer though, tundra regions can become swamplike, so the tundra horse developed really large hooves – think the Camargue horses. Move a Camargue horse to a different area and their hooves shrink – move them back to their swamp and their hooves grow into dinner plates again 😉.

In summer the tundra horse would move to the hills where it was constant wind and coarse grasslands, so they were used to low starch roughage all year round, hence they evolved with a very low tolerance to sugar/starch.

Here’s where it gets interesting metabolic-wise – because of this very low sugar/starch tolerance they don’t build fat tissue (unlike the primal pony type), but if we feed them starch their body builds glycogen from the sugar, depositing it into the connective tissue which leads to water retention. So, while this may look like fat deposits, it’s actually lymph build-up. Long and short, the tundra-type horse becomes lymphatic, not fat.

The typical tundra horse has a large head with small eyes and a roman nose (think Barbara Streisand); a large body like a rectangle, oval ribcage and wide girth, so generally a huge body with thick column-like, heavy feathered lower legs with plates for hooves. Their legs had to be protected against the constant higher altitude wind, so they developed hairy legs with thick summer and winter coats as protection to the tundra winds and insects.

Typical tundra type horses are our small/large drafts – huge heads but apparently these days that concave nose has pretty much been bred out of them. Then there’s the Icelandic – again apparently most with the original features now bred out. Then there are our stocky working horses – the haffy, QH, and Spanish – PRE and lusitanos who no longer look much like they used to, and some of the baroque, i.e. Lippizana.

With these horses we need to take a different feeding approach as if they’re fed a high sugar/starch diet they’ll develop lymph pads, not fat. Keep carbs low but not calories as it’s not laying down fat that’s their issue – in other words, don’t starve the tundra horse slim! If you skinny down the calorie/energy intake, their body will hold onto even more lymph so they’ll seem like they’re actually putting on weight, so they need a completely different approach to feeding, hence super low starch/sugar, i.e. major restriction of green grass and plenty of coarse, stemmy hay as their forage.

It’s also about focusing on maintaining a healthy lymphatic system (which relies on healthy liver/kidney function) to prevent lymph buildup in the connective tissues. Get the feed right and typically you’ll have a horse where you can - and should be able to - count every rib 😉.

The Primal Steppe Horse

Steppe landscapes are more the grassland and shrubland plans with few trees apart from near water, typically eastern Europe through central Asia, as well as the western United States and west Canada. They’re more temperate, not too cold, don’t really have much of a winter, and have a short span of lush grass during or after a rain season.

Outside of this it’s very dry with constant coarse fibrous grasses with little nutrition but readily available, as well as plentiful nuts, fruits, seeds and berries if forage is less available – the steppe horse will take what it can find. They’re not that particular about what they feed on so long as they get energy from it – they can tolerate high nutrition (starch, protein, fat) without showing metabolic symptoms.

Typical steppe landscapes also mean extremely long distances between water sources so the steppe horse can move for miles at low energy consumption.

(Quick digress for a bit of trivia - during WWI the military selected this type of horse because the logistics of transporting bulky hay for 2-million+ horses moving around countries was very difficult; concentrates were easier to transport and easy to store, and provided high nutritional value.)

Because of the scarce water supplies, steppe horse had to have long lean legs to cover the miles to find it – we’re talking 30-60 miles/day, plus the steppe territory had many unfriendly predators so the steppe horse also had to be able to run seriously fast to outrun them.

They typically have long elegant heads with a roman nose, and a lean tube-like body - they often look slim no matter how much they feed, and never look fat. They have an unremarkable mane/tail, with a thin silky coat because by rarely experiencing severe cold it never evolved further.

Many horses we see today are steppe types, their genetic heritage being typically TBs, TBxWBs and sporthorses, i.e. Hanoverian, Bavarian. It’s almost impossible to feed them either fat or lymphatic – they usually look slim to normal; no matter what we feed them they still look okay, and can tolerate and compensate for most feeding mistakes on our part.

That said, if we have a WB with sweet itch or a TB with mud fever, we need to seriously ring the alarm bells because their body has compensated to the near-point of no return where it’s potentially too late to get them back on track. See our KPU page for more info.

The Primal Arab Horse

We find this type in many breeds we see today, developed in even more dry landscapes than the steppe – half-desert and sometimes going without rain for years, sometimes blossoming after rain then barren again for several years. Hot days, cold nights, and long stretches with little food, only coarse scrub or succulents as they’re happy to eat thorny plants. Oasis feed provided very lush green with seeds and fruits so again like the steppe horse they can tolerate high nutrition.

They have a high tolerance for sugar/starch but will lay down fat as stored energy for famine stretches and long walks to next waterhole - they don’t lay down lymph.

We all recognise the arab-type head - small with a concave dished nose and large eyes, slender body with slim legs as they haven’t evolved to carry weight – they’re more endurance athletes able to run for miles. Relatively little mane as no cover was needed against the cold, with an agile tail to swish against flies but with little reaction to flying insects.

Genetic heritage is of course found in the berber Arabian horse, some TBs and some Spanish. When they first came to Europe people were fascinated by the arabian-style horse – depending on breeding goals many breeds were refined with arabian bloodstock, i.e. the Trachener and some WBs, so there’s a lot of arabian blood in many of today’s breeds.

Interestingly breeders tried to cross-breed the haffy with the arabian to get a more elegant haffy type, but this idea was soon shelved as it changed the haffy character, and not for the better – not good for a stoic haffy to have a heap of arabian temperament!

These days?

Pretty much most horses carry a degree of all four primal types in its genes, but when we look at a horse we should try to take into account what their dominant type is, to be mindful of their potential metabolism and microbiome type. A tundra type will be different to a steppe type, even though they’re the same height; a gypsy cob and an arab may be the same height but have completely different weight and confirmations – it doesn’t mean the gypsy cob’s fat just because it’s different to the arabian.

So what ‘type’ of horse do we have? Once we’ve got a feel for this then we can start being mindful of what metabolism – and microbiome - fits our horse. And remember, some horses will be the type to lay down fat; others will store lymph which can so easily be mistaken for fat. Whatever the type, they may need managing in a different way.

Is it fat or lymph?

So, how do we distinguish muscle from fat or lymph storage – we want to have a well muscled horse, but of course we don’t want to see either fat or lymph storage. Let’s take a closer look at what we find where, and how we interpret the neckline and hind region of the horse to know if our horse is prone to laying down fat, storing lymph, or simply well-muscled.

First up, fat is stored in muscle – a ‘fat’ horse will lay it down above the tail and above the neck (think crest). A ‘lymph’ horse will lay it down in the connective tissue, so the ‘saddle bag’ area behind where the saddle goes; take the saddle off after riding and you’ll see saddle pressure marks.

Also, the lymph horse will develop a thick neck below the top of the neck – this is a soft-tissue ligament region so if the neck changes overnight you can be sure it’s lymph (apparently it’s said that if the neck swells and gets hot, lami is on the way in 3-days-ish). When this horse type looks swollen this is known as ‘psuedo-EMS’, when lymph is in the connective tissue and not muscle fat. Real EMS shows as the final stage of the neck crest above the neck and with bum bags above the tail.

It’s vital we distinguish between the two different types because the therapeutic approach is completely different between the two. When a horse is fat, there’s too much energy in its feed which isn’t being used up via exercise, so we have to reduce the energy and increase exercise so the horse will use up the fat deposit and slim down.

With lymph pads, it’s not stored energy, it’s stored waste products – sorry, but yes we’re talking toxins. So, if you think it’s fat and reduce the fed energy intake and exercise more, the horse won’t lose any weight. Au contraire – they’ll gain weight because they’re producing even more waste product that the body is struggling to excrete, and these toxins have got to be stored somewhere, so the liver sends them back out into the bloodsteam to be stored in the soft tissue. By reducing fed energy their energy demands will start to turn on themself, breaking down muscle tissue to gain energy from the proteins stored in the muscles, which ultimately reduces muscle mass. Absolutely not the right way to treat the lymphatic horse.

NB - we’re actually talking a multi-detoxification disorder from the gut:liver:kidneys pathway – this is a whole other subject as there’s every likelihood that we have a KPU candidate – see our KPU page for the full story.

For the lymphatic horse we need to feed enough energy for the intake needs of the horse and get the liver/kidneys functioning again so the whole biotransformation and excretion process can be reestablished. How? By reducing crap feeds - toxins, sugar, starch, fat, proteins in the feed which is currently overloading the metabolism. Clean up the gut function, detox the liver/kidneys, and feed adlib hay only, 24/7, so the metabolism resets and the liver biotransformation process starts running properly again. Over time the stored toxins in the connective tissue will eventually be drained off into a cleaned-up lymphatic system and excreted out via the kidneys.

Gradually you’ll see your horse start to lose that apparent ‘weight’ despite feeding adlib, because the body’s starting to shift out all the toxins it’s been storing in the connective tissue.

It’s different for ‘fat’ horses though - if our 600kg should normally weigh 500g, that’s 100kg of fat we need to shift, so no ‘extra’ feed – no concentrates/feedbags, just hay plus exercise! Interval training – pick up the pace as long as horse can manage then back to walk till the breathing settles, then pick up pace again. And weigh the hay out into small-holed nets – 1.5-2kg / 100kg bodyweight.

How can we tell? 4 Belly types

• Pear-shaped/pregnant – this is an overfilled colon full of gas (emitted as the waste product from those unfriendly gut bacteria, i.e. LA bacteria), with poor stomach muscles, so restart peristalsis and build up the hind quarter muscle strength – movement enhances motility of keeping the food moving along in the gut. This is also when size matters - seriously. The initial chewing process mechanically breaks down the forage in the mouth into tiny pieces of between 2-5mm - this length is vitally important as the whole digestive process, including peristalsis motility, takes place through a very long - and thin - tube, the intestines to be exact, from start to finish, so an effective digestive process is entirely governed by the chewed length of the fibre. See our Gut System page for the full story on how a horse digests.

• Peach – way too much fat in the muscle above the hip joints and on the ribs, unless it’s a chunky hind-end worker, i.e. a carriage puller or woodland log puller, in which case it's likely to be muscle.

• Strawberry – not much muscle around the ribs or above the vertebral column, with lymph pads that drift to the sides, i.e. saddle bags.

• Oval – normal horse!

Pulling this altogether

By being more mindful of the ‘type’ of horse we have, we could be more mindful of their microbiome and the correct feeding approach. So ...

• What type of horse do we have?
• What type of belly do we have?
• Is our horse a fat-prone or lymph-prone?

Food for thought indeed 😉

Trivia-time again ...

It was only when proof-reading my wordery above that I got curious about the phrase ‘fly in the ointment’, as in, where did it come from? I find some of our old sayings fascinating, i.e. 'Paid through the nose', which horrifyingly originated from the Danes in the 9th century conquering Ireland and imposing a "Nose Tax." Excessive taxes were imposed on each “nose” (bit bonkers? Would love to know that reason!). Accordingly, one had to 'pay through the nose', and if someone failed to pay their nose tax, it was said that they had their noses slit in punishment. Yikes ...

Back to the sticky fly, and I looked it up. Courtesy of Wiki, “In English, the phrase 'fly in the ointment' is an idiomatic expression for a drawback, especially one that was not at first apparent, for example: "We had a cookstove, beans, and plates; the fly in the ointment was the lack of a can opener."

The likely source is a phrase in the King James Bible - "Dead flies cause the ointment of the apothecary to send forth a stinking savour." (Ecclesiastes 10:1)

For four centuries, a fly in the ointment has meant "a small defect that spoils something valuable or is a source of annoyance. The modern version thus suggests that something unpleasant may come or has come to light in a proposition or condition that is almost too pleasing; that there is something wrong hidden, unexpected somewhere."

Who knew?!

Originally posted 30.4.22