March 7, 2025 
There’s something different about losing a horse. Horses don’t just take up space in our lives; they shape our days, our routines, and our identities. We have hopes and dreams for our partnerships with them. They see us through phases of our lives, and while we may feel swept away by change, they remain steady.
And when they go, it can feel like a part of us goes with them.
Grief is a strange thing in the horse world. We honor the horses we lose, but we rarely talk about what happens to us when they’re gone. How the barn feels too quiet. How muscle memory still expects them to be there when you walk down the aisle. How you reach for a halter that no longer has a horse to wear it.
That’s why I wanted to have a real conversation about grief on the Horse Person Podcast and I couldn’t think of a better person to have this conversation with than Dr. Jenny Susser, a renowned sport psychologist and equestrian who has helped elite athletes, including Olympians, navigate the highest-pressure moments of their careers.
But in this episode, Dr. Jenny isn’t just an expert; she’s grieving the loss of her own two horses, only weeks apart, and she shares that experience with us. Talking about grief and witnessing it are two very different levels of vulnerability, and this conversation was a true honor.
This episode is supported by WeRideTogether.today.
We talked about the things we don’t always give ourselves permission to feel:
– The weight of anticipatory grief—the knowing that goodbye is coming but feeling helpless to stop it.
– The way grief affects our energy and physiology—how it seeps into our rides, our relationships, our bodies.
– The language of loss—how we struggle to talk about grief and what it means to say goodbye.
-The complexity of anger in grief—because sometimes we’re not just sad; we’re mad at the unfairness of it all.
– And most of all, the importance of giving ourselves permission to grieve—to feel it fully, without guilt or apology.
This episode isn’t just about loss. It’s about love, because the depth of our grief is a reflection of the depth of our connection. If you’ve ever lost a horse, if you’re facing that loss now, or if you just want to better understand the emotional side of this life we share with them—this conversation is for you.
Listen to the full episode here, and if this resonates with you, I hope you’ll share it with someone who might need to hear it, too. Because grief feels lonely, but we’re never alone in it.
