Susan Kayne with Miss Kitty, the star of Our Dark Horse

I have been in love with horses from the moment they first laid eyes on me. The feel of that first velvety muzzle against my cheek is forever embedded in my heart.

I was a little girl in an old gray felt coat, on a freezing day, waiting for a pony I had been promised. A trailer pulled in. She stepped out. I smiled a smile that felt like it wrapped around my whole body and held all the happiness my six years of life could contain. The saddle was set on her back and I was set on top of the saddle. She turned her head and found my eye. I had just met someone.

Snowflakes fell on us both. That is how she got her name.

Every day in the decades since, I have walked in awe. Through the show ring. Through the racing world and the breeding barns. Through decades inside a world most people only glimpse from a distance. And what I found there,  what the industry conceals, eventually demanded everything I had. It asked me to let go of everything I thought I was, to discover not what horses are. I knew that. But who they are.

Their intelligence. Their emotional depth. Their social complexity. Their capacity for friendship and trust. I call this their whoness — and I have dedicated the remainder of my days to bringing that understanding into the world.

In 2004, I founded Unbridled Thoroughbred Foundation, which, on its 20th anniversary in 2024, became Unbridled Sanctuary. Because once you have truly seen a horse, not as livestock, not as a vehicle for profit, but as someone, love no longer permits you to look away.

Today, I write from within the lives of the horses of Unbridled. Through my weekly newspaper column, Horses of Unbridled, and my Substack, I share their individual stories — their friendships, their fears, their preferences, their resilience, and the truths of what they have endured at human hands. Some stories are tender. Others are difficult to tell. All are grounded in lives I have witnessed, and in my conviction that every horse has a life of their own, worthy of our attention and moral consideration.

I invite you to meet them. Not simply to learn what happened to them, but to discover who they are. Perhaps, as happened to a little girl in an old gray felt coat on a snowy day, you, too, will discover that you have just met someone.​
Susan Kayne

BEFORE ALL OF THIS, THERE WAS SNOWFLAKE.

A little brown pony who entered my life when I was six years old. I could not have known then how profoundly she would shape

the grown-up person I would become, or the questions I would spend a lifetime asking about horses, love, and what we owe them.

The story of Snowflake → SUBSTACK