This practice-led research thesis consists of a memoir about my lifetime experiences of working with horses and an exegesis espousing an underlying phenomenological ontology. In this thesis I aim to problematise utilitarian instrumental valuing of horses, with its underlying positivist-Cartesian ontology, in relation to equine welfare—due to its relationship with ‘learned helplessness’— and worker occlusion within the horseracing industries of Australia and New Zealand. In the creative work, Something Else, vignettes detailing lived experience are combined with theoretical inclusions, hybridising the memoir form to provide myriad external perspectives of ethical considerations pertinent to horse-human relationships within working, equestrian, and racing contexts. More particularly, the memoir, through its inherent requirement for subjectivity, both reflects and supports situated and tacit knowledges further explored in its exegetical counterpart. Methodologically, I draw on practice-led research and the intersectionality of feminist theory and animal studies to facilitate a contestation of the horseracing industry’s backstage hierarchal structure, which marginalises horses and humans as commodities. Life phenomenology informs both the memoir and exegesis to support a more nuanced understanding of interspecies intersubjectivity and equine agency.