Late last summer, one of our riding students said she was worried about starting middle school. Her classes would be full of unfamiliar faces, she’d told her mom, and making friends is hard. 

When mother reminded daughter of a recent barn event where she’d connected quickly with another young rider, the girl replied, “But mom, horse friends are different.”

I’m in my early 40s, and that statement still holds true. My life’s most enduring and vital friendships—both those carried from childhood and those made as an adult—are those forged around horses. 

Of the few friendships that remain from my youth, most were built at the barn. One friend, we joke, I’ve known since she was a fetus. Her mother was my instructor, and I watched her newborn self in the barn lounge so her mom could nurse between lessons. Both adults now, we talked on the phone just yesterday during chores at our respective farms. Another boarder at that barn was a mother of three little ones when I was a teen; I watched her kids, too. Despite a 20-year age difference, we’ve remained friends through the decades. When I had my son, she sent him a plush rocking horse with my late gelding’s name engraved on its wooden rocker. 

Another friend from that barn—despite the four-year age gap that would have hindered most childhood friendships (when we met, I was 12 and she was 8)—has become a true ride-or-die. She was there on my 15th birthday when my parents gifted me my first horse, a dream come true. And she was the one I called in tears, 23 years later, when I had to make the toughest call to let him go.  

As an adult, making friends is hard. Time is in short supply as life tugs us from one obligation to the next. And it’s awkward, isn’t it, to broach asking a potential new friend to join you for a coffee or a drink? No wonder it’s barn friendships that feel most fulfilling, genuine and natural. 

Sometimes lines blur when colleagues or professionals become friends, but it’s a risk I’m willing to take. The woman I hired to teach some lessons at my farm has become my business partner and most cherished friend. Our farm’s first teenage stall-cleaner is now in her early 20s and one of my favorite people to spend time with, in or out of the barn. My favorite vet has become a ski and horse show buddy, and we recently dragged our husbands out to join us for dinner where the talk centered, you guessed it, around horses. 

At the barn is where I feel most connected to myself. So it makes sense that it’s with horse friends, even when we venture away from the stables, that I feel most at home. There is just something different about horse friends.

And there’s something different when you lose one. Recently, our little Pittsburgh horse community lost one of our own. For over a decade, my friend Sarah Gosch managed Hidden Oaks Farm, a boarding facility north of Pittsburgh. When I first started volunteering at a local horse rescue 10 years ago, her farm housed the half-dozen horses in the rescue’s care. Sarah was witty and sarcastic and smart; her conscientiousness for the horses under her watch was unmatched. And her heart—for people, sure, but especially for animals—was enormous. 

Sarah and I stayed in touch over the years, and when I bought my farm, she selflessly helped me navigate those early challenges: Who delivers shavings in bulk? What’s the best local feed store? What do I do with all this poop? Despite being eight years her senior, I knew she was the expert, and I was grateful for the generosity with which she shared her knowledge.

One night, early into keeping horses at home, I realized that I didn’t have a basic medication on hand (I can’t even remember now what it was… Bute? Banamine? A tube of omeprazole?). Embarrassed, I called Sarah to see if she had any to spare; the vet clinic had closed for the night. She offered to bring it over on her way home, judgement-free. 

When I got pregnant, somehow she and I started on the topic of maternity photos–I hated pregnancy and didn’t want any taken. So she started sending me outrageous images she’d find online: a husband dunking his wife’s swollen stomach in a basketball hoop; a flower-laden, pregnant belly floating in some kind of mossy green lake. These photos became a shared joke and just this past fall, after a phone call about two donkeys she thought needed the rescue’s help, she sent me several awkward family Christmas card memes. She’d expect a card like this from my family, she’d said. Or else. 

Then a few months later, she was gone. 

In late December, she fell from a young horse. It wasn’t nasty but she hit the mounting block coming off, tweaking her knee and bruising her calf. For two weeks she nursed the injury, still going to work and doing her thing. But—long story short—a silent clot was growing in the bruise on her calf, and in early January it traveled to her lung, causing respiratory then cardiac arrest. For a week she hovered between life and death. She was given every chance to rest and heal, but scans a week later showed there was no hope. Deprived of oxygen for too long, her brain could not recover. 

That horrendous week of waiting, one of Sarah’s friends created a group chat on Facebook to disseminate information and organize the helpers: Who could walk her dog? Who could take a meal to her husband, exhausted from long days at the hospital? Who could check in on Mike, her barn’s septuagenarian owner, who was more like Sarah’s dad than her boss?

One by one, friends added friends, and I was invited to the group. Some faces in the chat belonged to strangers. But several I recognized: Kendra, a former Hidden Oaks boarder who now lived in the Carolinas. Ali, a former Hidden Oaks employee whose husband’s businesses poured the concrete in the aisle of my barn. Dr. Jane, my horse’s first vet back in the ’90s, who cared for the horses at Sarah’s farm.

In the group chat, Sarah’s closest friends shared medical updates. Those nearby offered physical support, grooming her horses or taking her dog to the park. The out-of-towners brainstormed ideas to support Sarah and her husband financially while she was out of work. One cold night, I took a pot of chili to Mike and we sat together in the lounge above the indoor, remembering horses and people from long ago.

When the devastating news came that Sarah wouldn’t survive, the chat became a support group. Sarah was an organ donor, and for an agonizing few days her body was kept alive on life support while recipients were found. During that time, members of the group shared stories and photos and memes and took turns sharing our disbelief that this was even real. We encouraged each other through those difficult days, processing the tragedy through computer screens, together. 

At the funeral home, people introduced themselves: “I’m Kellie, from the chat” and “I’m Kate, from Facebook.” 

The morning of her service, Dr. Jane saw me crying in the aisle of the church and stepped out from her pew to wrap me in a hug, guiding me into the pew next to her. When I sensed her own struggles halfway through the mass, I put an arm around her, squeezing her shoulder until we stood for the sign of peace. 

After the service, two-dozen horse friends of Sarah’s—to me, both familiar and new—met at a nearby restaurant for lunch. We laughed and cried and laughed again, our talk alternating from our connections to Sarah to our own lives, then back. Every conversation centered around horses; fitting, as it was Sarah’s love of all things equine that had brought our motley crew together.

That same group of Facebook-chat-horse-friends is now working together to plan a memorial fundraiser for the spring. The event will raise money to support the lifelong care of her older gelding who—bred by Mike nearly two decades ago and cared for by Dr. Jane since he was conceived—will live out his days at Hidden Oaks, the only place he’s ever known. 

Deaths—especially when unexpected or far too soon—tend to offer those left behind a the smallest of silver linings: a reminder of what, in life, really matters in the end. 

In Sarah’s honor, I will carve out some time for those horse friends who are both my greatest cheerleaders and my strongest grounding forces, even if it means the laundry or the dishes sit for another day. And if you have horse friends in your life who you wouldn’t want to live without, for my friend Sarah, please take this as a reminder to do the same.

Sarah K. Susa is the owner of Black Dog Stables just north of Pittsburgh, where she resides with her husband and young son. She has a B.A. in English and Creative Writing from Allegheny College and an M.Ed. from The University of Pennsylvania. She teaches high school English full-time, teaches riding lessons and facilitates educational programs at Black Dog Stables, and has no idea what you mean by the concept of free time.