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Partner Up, 5553 Blackwater Spruce Road, Quesnel, BC (2025)

02/08/2025

This post is very near and dear to my heart. I have spent my life giving horses a voice. They arrive so dysregulated they are labelled as dangerous, unsuitable, and unusable.

No, I am not a horse trainer.

I am skilled at giving a voice where there is no voice or a voice that no longer matches the situation. Once they understand the power of a voice, mine and theirs, I call that getting the head back in the game.

From there it becomes about clear boundaries, clear consistency and super active listening, so their system has a chance to feel safe and begin to regulate. Each and every horse is unique and that is why I have never liked models or training methods that do not take into consideration the unique needs of the individual horse so that it may become the best it can be without becoming a robot with no voice.

Most humans have no idea what their horse is saying or what it means to give the horse a voice, even though they think they do.

That is in essence what the Partner Up Program is all about. It gives the human the skills, knowledge and awareness so that the horse they have becomes everything they have always wanted and more.

As humans we need to be able to hear what is said with a curiosity mindset rather than taking it personally.

If you have ever wondered, how can I be better for my horse, pm me for a free private consultation.

I don’t think people realize just how many horses out there carry trauma with them.

With that, I don’t even mean severely abused horses that have been starved, or beaten heavily. There are plenty of those around, and those usually cause a lot of outrage (as they should).

What I am talking about though, is the horses whose trauma is never really recognized as such. The ones who tolerate humans and their requests, but never learned to trust them. Those who get extremely obsessive about food which are labelled as “bossy” or ”dominant”. Those who deal with severe Separation anxiety, which are said to be “dramatic”. Those who cannot self-regulate, or co-regulate and constantly carry tension. Those who try to express their pain, which get punished for it because “just a mare”.
Those who are “perfect” until they finally get a choice.

Between Unethical weaning practices, unsuitable welfare, constantly moving homes & and ownership, and aversive training/handling approaches, most horses at some point experience trauma. And this trauma can present itself in a variety of ways. Some are more subtle than others.
Trauma doesn’t have to be this huge explosive reaction. Just like people, horses can carry trauma and move on with their lives fairly normally. It can shape their personality just like it can shape ours.
However, that doesn’t mean doing so is healthy.

The horse that has been in 6+ homes before the age of 10, and thus can’t cope with changes. That is Trauma.
The horse that has never had consistent companionship and becomes obsessive with certain herd mates. That is Trauma
The horse that has only known corrections when they tried to express their confusion, fear, or dislike, and turns from “a perfect beginner’s horse” to “Don’t touch me” the moment you stop using corrections. That is Trauma.
The horse that never had a chance to learn from other horses or connect with people and thus can’t trust people to make good choices for them, can’t self-regulate or co-regulate, and can’t think their way through a situation. That is Trauma.
The horse who was only ever fed 2 times a day and was left without food for 6 hours each night, and has thus become food-aggressive. That is Trauma.
The horse who experienced highly aversive training techniques, and thus now gets frustrated, tense and severely stressed out anytime they are handled in a similar manner. That. Is. Trauma.

Sometimes, awareness of this can be a frustration and defeating realization. I think as equestrians we are often blind to this reality, because sadly, it’s just so common to see horses like that.
It’s not until you work with young, untraumatized horses, or rehabilitated horses, that you realize: “Oh! This is how it should be!”

01/27/2025

Well said, exceptionally well explained. This is not magic but awareness at a level that most never experience. This is why so much of my Partner Up Program is aimed at increasing awareness. Connection is so much more than a one dimensional relationship.

In Hand Tai Chi
In Tai Chi, the arms and the body always move together. If the arms move separately, the movement fails. The body integrity applies to the rider. We feel many variations in the horse’s contact on the bit with the fingers, but if we respond with the hands and arms, we fail the horse. The horse feels our whole physique, and our body integrity is primordial in managing forces. When we are told to look in the direction we want the horse to go, we are told a gesture that makes us lose the integrity of our body and our capacity to channel the forces in the direction we like to go. We should been told to face the direction we would like the horse to go with our shoulders, sternum, and pelvis, understanding that the horse turns efficiently, bending the thoracic spine, which we influence with our upper thighs. But, if we act with the upper thighs independently of our body, we fail to bend the horse’s thoracic spine. Efficiency demands that the horse feels through our upper thighs, the direction of our whole body tone.

For a year, I worked with Lafayette in hand to rehabilitate him from a fracture of the right hind leg coffin bone. The bone was remodeled with stall rest, but the deep digital and superficial flexor had shrunk, and Lafayette could not place his hind hoof flat on the ground. I restored the proper function of the right hind leg, coordinating Lafayette’s whole physique for greater balance control. Many lesions, including arthritis, result from improper forces loading the structure. The diagnostic tools allowing us to identify the lesion are useful, but the cure relies on our ability to identify and correct the dysfunction stressing the structure. It is not a progressive number of minutes at the walk or trot that rehabilitates a horse; it is the quality of the walk and trot. I walked by Lafayette’s side one step at a time at first to recreate each stride, the body coordination allowing the lift of the trunk between the forelegs, flexe the thoracic spine, and dorsoventral rotation of the pelvis allowing a heel first impact of the right hind legs and a flat contact of the hoof during the stance. The whole body coordination, including the flat contact of the hoff during the stance, recreated stride after stride elasticity of the geep digital and superficial flexor tendon and adequate fetlock dorsiflexion.
It is the coordination of Lafayette whole physique that restored soundness. If I had walked a progressive number of minutes with corrective shoeing, as I was advised, Lafayerre would not have recovered. I had to evolve from linear thinking to lift Lafayette’s trunk between the shoulder blades and ensure the thoracolumbar spine’s flexion and the pelvis’s dorsoventral rotation allowing proper hoof placement. Step after step, I realized that I had to think in three dimensions. I could not create adequate balance control and sound hind legs’ kinematics without channeling the forces forward through Lafayette’s thoracolumbar spine more efficiently. My classical education told me about straightness, but the straightness I needed to refine was dynamics straightness. Maintaining his shoulders in front of his haunches was easy, but I needed Lafayette to channel the forces forward through his thoracolumbar spine in a narrow corridor. At this time, I was unaware that balance was centering the forces around the center of mass. I had a traditional linear concept of balance, which was insufficient. Without knowing it, I channeled the forces above and around Lafayette’s center of mass.
All the work was done in hand. Lafayette was not in shape to carry a rider. No book was talking about this work, not even any scientific study. I adventured in the unknown, and it was a blessing as the dynamic relationship that I explored with Lafayette was different than everything I knew, and I did not try to compare it with anything I learned from my classical education. The vet who helped me with Lafayette’s rehabilitation was supportive but also told me the chances of success were not more than one in ten thousand.
I was alone in the Virginia countryside, walking by Lafayette’s side, animated by the strong desire to help him. I knew the body coordination I needed to create, but I did not have the tools I was familiar with: leg pressure, hand actions, and body movements. We had a tensegrity relation, and I learned to control the lateral shifts of Lafayette’s shoulders and haunches. Once the shoulder had shifted. I could not replace it. I had to halt Lafayette and restart straight. I learned to feel through his body motion, the direction of the forces, and to react before they shifted the shoulders or the haunches sideway. The importance of the frequency was a point that surprised me. If I reacted too fast, I altered our dynamic relation. It was an entirely new world for me. Instead of the gesture, I had to concentrate on the force that the gesture would have suggested. Lafayette was very comfortable in this dynamic relation; energy looked familiar to him. He acted as if I was clearer in my dialogue, as if the absence of gestures allowed him to feel better my nuances in muscle tone.
Lafayette became sound, as you know and we did numerous presentations in hand. A great part of Lafayette’s rehabilitation was intuitive. Biotensegrity is the best explanation so far. Mechanical thinking could not explain the relation Lafayette and I developed during this experience. Even today, reductionists try to mimic what we did, remaining at the stimulus-response level. I always talk about a new dimension, another world, but now, an advanced understanding of the human and equine body function allows us to describe better and explain. Betsy did a similar “Impossible” recovery with her mare suffering from a severe club foot issue. Betsy did it entirely in hand and succeeded beyond what the veterinary world is ready to accept. Betsy asked her farrier to balance the hoof properly, but no corrective shoeing. We try to understand and explain it in our respective fields of expertise.
There is a new world, a world where each of us can do better than through the traditional approach, but there is an important move to make. Tradition is the peer pressure of dead people. Are you ready to move on?
Jean Luc

12/30/2024

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At Partner Up, we believe that true harmony stems from a genuine commitment to self-awareness and growth. Our program isn't just about understanding your equine companion—it's about fostering a deeper connection and fulfilling their unique needs. Through dedicated support, interactive assignments,...

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5553 Blackwater Spruce Road
Quesnel, BC
V2J7J2

Opening Hours

Tuesday	9am - 4:45pm
Wednesday	9am - 5pm
Thursday	9am - 5pm
Friday	9am - 5pm

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+17784031504

Website

https://berkanafarm.ca/partner-up-program/

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