This study focuses on theorising owners’ relationships to their horses in equestrian leisure culture in Switzerland and examines how horses are entangled symbolically in constructed perceptions. While environmental and eco-nomic implications of the evolving status of equids have been researched, the everyday practices by which rela-tionships with equids are formed through equestrian leisure have received little scientific attention. This explorative study draws on 11 interviews with leisure horse owners in 2022 and on responses to a questionnaire distributed to 1,800 Swiss equid owners. The results highlight two ways in which humans build friendships with horses. By de-scribing horses as herd animals, the participants discussed that the otherness of equids shapes their friendships with them. Some conceptualised friendship as a dominant–dominated relationship. Others recognised the individ-ual agentivity of horses as necessary to create a friendship. The coexistence of these two concepts in Swiss equestrian leisure culture creates tensions and unstable contexts that may allow changes toward mutually empow-ering relations between humans and horses. Key words: horse relation; care work; Switzerland; interspecies relation; friendship
