26/01/2026
A must read from Shelly Appleton.
Superman, Kryptonite, and Why We Keep Freaking Horses Out🦸♂️
Let’s start with Superman.
Superman is absurdly strong. Faster than a speeding bullet, etc. But the thing that brings him undone is not a bigger punch or a clever argument. It is kryptonite. A very specific weakness that targets the very thing that makes him powerful.
If you want to destabilise any organism, you do not attack what it is bad at. You attack what it relies on most.
Humans understand this instinctively. Our superpower is our mind. We plan, imagine, remember, anticipate, narrate, catastrophise. So if you want to break a human, you target their thinking. Trap them in situations they cannot reason their way out of. Haunt them with stories. Keep them awake with anxiety about the future or replay the past until it corrodes the present.
We get this. Entire industries exist around it.
What we consistently fail to grasp is that horses are not humans with hooves.
A horse’s superpower is not cognition. It is athleticism. Movement. Balance. The ability to organise their body at speed, under load, against gravity, with extraordinary precision.
And that is exactly where their kryptonite lives.
For a horse to move with power and agility, their body must function across three frames of movement. Side-to-side bending. Flexion and extension of the spine. And the one almost nobody talks about, rotation of the barrel left and right.
Those three frames are constantly adjusting, even when the horse is standing still. Micro-adjustments to stay upright. To distribute force. To manage load as each hoof meets the ground. This is not optional. This is survival physics.
So what freaks a horse out?
Anything that restricts those frames.😱
Joint restriction. Pain. Tissue breakdown. Loss of load-bearing capacity. Subtle asymmetries that reduce how force can be absorbed and redirected. You might not see it. They might still gallop in the paddock. Just like a person can laugh while struggling with anxiety.
Horses are exceptional compensators. Four legs buy them options. They reorganise constantly. They cope.
Until we show up.
Then we sit on their backs. Add load from above. Ask them to move on a line, in a posture, at a tempo they did not choose. And we are often oblivious to the fact that we are demanding precision from a body that is already negotiating kryptonite.
We would never deliberately terrorise a human with words or psychological pressure and call it kindness. Yet we routinely destabilise a horse’s balance, restrict their movement, and then moralise their behaviour when they struggle.😑
Here is the uncomfortable bit.
Much of what gets labelled as trauma in horses is not narrative. It is physical. It lives in the frames.
Yes, horses form associations. But they do not ruminate on identity, meaning, or consent. Their nervous system is organised around movement and balance. When those are compromised, everything else deteriorates.
So no, honouring a horse’s “no” is not the solution. Waiting for consent is not insight. Granting agency without restoring physical capacity is not ethical. It is projection.
If you want to help a horse, give them back their movement. Restore their frames. Train gymnastic function.
Examine how your management, riding, and expectations create the very kryptonite you claim to be protecting them from.
Stop confusing human psychological reality with equine biological reality.
Because until you understand what actually destabilises a horse, your compassion is just well-intentioned interference dressed up as virtue.
Collectable Advice 137/365.
Share it. Save it. Quote it with attribution. ❤
Steal it, repackage it, or AI-wash it and call it yours, and that will be your kryptonite.🤥
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Acknowledgements: Tami Elkayam Equine Bodywork for helping me see krytonite 🙏
