#HorsesOfInstagram is a community hashtag that horse owners, riders and equine photographers add to Instagram posts about their horses. It belongs to the family of “-OfInstagram” animal tags alongside #DogsOfInstagram and #CatsOfInstagram, and equestrian magazines have used it as a ready-made source of reader photos.
Origin
No source documents the first post to use #HorsesOfInstagram, so this page does not give a start date. What can be traced is the platform it grew on and its use by horse media:
- 2007: the hashtag convention. According to Wikipedia, the use of hashtags “was first proposed by American blogger and product consultant Chris Messina in a 2007 tweet.”
- October 2010: Instagram launches. Wikipedia’s Instagram article records that “Instagram was launched for iOS in October 2010 by Kevin Systrom and the Brazilian software engineer Mike Krieger,” and that posts on the service can “be organized by hashtags.”
- February 23, 2015: Horse Nation. Kristen Kovatch’s Weekly Instagram Round-Up for Horse Nation featured reader “‘Gram of the Day” posts tagged #horsesofinstagram, including a horse named Toby captioned “Need a little help Toby? #horsenation #horsesofinstagram #escapeartist” and a February post from Arizona tagged #winterinphoenix.
- March 8, 2016: Horse Illustrated. Cari Jorgensen’s article The Best of #HorsesOfInstagram picked “10 of our favorites” from the tag. The staff wrote that “It is a great day when you can spend several minutes (or hours) scouring social media for gorgeous photos of horses and call it research for an article,” and proposed that a horse called “Teabiscuit could be the face of #HorsesOfInstagram.”
How It’s Used
A hashtag on Instagram is a search handle: Wikipedia explains that “a search within Instagram for the hashtag #flowers returns all posts that have been tagged with that term.” Adding #HorsesOfInstagram to a caption therefore drops a horse photo into a shared, searchable pool with every other horse post carrying the tag.
The posts that Horse Illustrated and Horse Nation highlighted show what that pool looks like. They range from a horse that “nailed the art of the selfie” and a pony pair captioned “Perfect Posers” to horses decked out in hats and costumes and a night-sky silhouette shot. Owners use it for everyday barn moments, while equine photographers add it next to professional tags such as #equinephotography.
The tag is rarely used alone. Captions in the Horse Illustrated roundup stack it with a dozen or more related tags, a common way to reach several horse audiences at once. Publications also use it to invite reader content: Horse Illustrated closed its article by asking, “Do you have a #HorsesOfInstagram photo of your own to share?”
Tags Seen Alongside It
The table lists companion tags that appear next to #HorsesOfInstagram in the captions quoted by Horse Illustrated (2016) and Horse Nation (2015). It shows how users layer a general tag with discipline, variant, photography and foreign-language tags.
| Type of tag | Examples seen with #HorsesOfInstagram | What it adds |
|---|---|---|
| Spelling variant | #horses_of_instagram, #instahorse | Catches people following a near-identical tag |
| Sibling “-OfInstagram” tag | #poniesofinstagram, #animalsofinstagram | Reaches pony and general animal audiences |
| Discipline | #dressage, #equestrian, #eventing | Targets riders of a specific sport |
| Photography | #equinephotography, #photooftheday | Signals a photographer’s portfolio shot |
| Other languages | #cheval, #caballo, #pferde, #paard | French, Spanish, German and Dutch words for horse |
| Publication tag | #horsenation | Appears on the reader posts Horse Nation reshared |
See also #Dressage and #Instagood.
Recent Developments
Changes to Instagram’s hashtag pages affect how people browse #HorsesOfInstagram. According to Wikipedia, “In April 2022, Instagram began testing the removal of the ability to see” recent posts on hashtag pages, the change became permanent a year later, and “now hashtags can only be used to see a selection of curated content” from top users. The article adds that “in April 2023 the ability to search recent hashtags was removed entirely.” Wikipedia also notes that platforms may deactivate hashtags that are too generic to be useful, “such as #photography on Instagram.”