Only a few animals are regularly ridden by humans. Despite the rarity of the riding relationship, the fact that humans ride horses remains arguably the most taken for granted aspect of the human-horse relationship. e riding relationship presents a valuable area of research into the embodied dimensions of human-animal communication because it requires and encourages the harmonisation of human and animal bodies in space and time. e archetypal metaphor for the achievement of harmony between horse and rider is the mythical centaur with the upper body of a human and the lower body of a horse. In this paper, I demonstrate the ways in which the centaur metaphor conveys the transformative and generative nature of the rider-horse relationship. In so doing, I suggest that there is an inherent centaurability in the rider-horse relationship. e centaur metaphor has been used by Victor Turner (1974, 253) as a ‘classical prototype’of liminal duality, not quite human yet not quite horse. However, liminality in Turner’s sense refers to an ambiguous and dangerous state between two human states. In this context of ritual, the centaur metaphor is essentially transitional and anthropocentric. at is, a human half-way house. However, in this paper I suggest that the centaur metaphor can be used more substantively to refer to a desired or achieved state of something more than human-plus-horse. To discuss these generative and transformative