‘The horses never asked me any questions,’ says trans equestrian ride

Jay Robinson loves animals.

His diabetic alert dog, Sage, is a constant companion. He lives with his girlfriend, along with two cats (Mustache and Sully) and two dogs (Sage and Sesame). He works as a specialist in lifesaving and care in the kitten nursery at Best Friends Animal Society in Los Angeles. And in college he was an equestrian athlete with a strong bond with his horses.

In his journey coming out as a trans man, it was his horse companions whom he felt most comfortable with.

“The horses were the one thing that never asked me any questions,” Robinson said in an installment of the Outsports Being Out series. “I didn’t feel that pressure that I felt everywhere else. I was just gonna show up, I was gonna ride. I was gonna just exist as myself. I just felt more free. I laughed easier. I smiled easier. I didn’t feel like I wanted to cry all the time.”

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Robinson loves horses and riding and in his 2020 coming out story, he wrote movingly about his interaction with his horse when he was transitioning.

“The barn was the one place I found solace,” he wrote. “I wasn’t sure if my horse would even recognize me once I began to physically transition, but when I poked my head through the bars of his stall, he looked at me the same way he always had.

“Numerous studies have shared that horses are capable of reading human emotion by observing facial expressions. Horses remember a person’s mood and there’s no doubt in my mind that he noticed an easement emanating from my smile that he had never witnessed previously.”

Related

For trans college equestrian rider, barn was his safe space
‘Horses don’t understand concepts such as orientation, or gender identity,’ says college equestrian rider Jay Robinson. ‘The only thing that a horse really cares about is how the person in the tack makes them feel.’

Robinson doesn’t ride horses as much these days due to the high cost of keeping horses in a city like Los Angeles. Instead, he is now running on his two feet and in 2025 ran his first marathon.

“This is stuff I never thought in a million years that I would be doing,” Robinson said. “Now, here we are, and I’m like, oh gosh, I’m running a marathon. I don’t know why I thought that was a good idea. Someone tells me I can’t do something, or I tell myself I can’t do something and I’m like, let me see if I can prove to myself that I can.”

While not helping rescued kittens in his day job or training for his next race, Robinson is also writing about trans issues for Outsports, since he has a lot to say on an issue that has become a flashpoint in society.

For Robinson, though, his sense of confidence and security with himself goes back to his days riding horses competitively and a feeling of freedom he describes in his video.

“For me to ride completely and truly as myself is just the most freeing feeling in the entire world, aside from the fact that it literally feels like you’re flying when you’re going around the ring on a horse. It’s like feeling weightless, like nothing is holding me down anymore. And I’ve come this far. I’ve done this much. There is no limit for me. Why not keep going?”

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