My own involvement with horses was more on the manure end, shoveling horse crap for a stable of fifty to seventy horses being my major employment in high school (the moment when Nixon announced his resignation over the radio I was double clutching an old Ford dump truck back into the woods to add to the manure pile). I wasn't batty about horses like my sisters, but I have thrown a leg across one quite a few times.

The creaking from my saddle is a metallic creak, about like the sound from the springs of an old camp bed at a biological field station in college when two of us college kids snuck off for a short period of time, but quieter than that.

Also, my regular B17 on my other bike has always been pretty quiet.