“Grace” with Carmen Theobald and Kris Arnold Season 4 Episode 4

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to another episode of Just Ust and Justice and
other things. I am Scott Jones here with my baby
brother Dan Jones, and we have a dual threat guest
package here for us today, which is going to be great.
These two, well, Carmen Theobald, we met in I hope
I said your last name right, I met in Niagara
Falls at the Invisible Wounds Conference. And Chris Arnold, we

(00:22):
didn't actually meet until just now, but you had a
video clip that was so tremendously powerful which we'll hopefully
get to talk about here that we actually went up
and spoke to Carmen after her presentation and said what
a powerful statement that was. So we are very honored
for both of you to be here today with us
and very excited for this conversation.

Speaker 2 (00:41):
Thank you, Thank glad to be here.

Speaker 1 (00:43):
So let's start with because again everybody knows we don't
prepare anything, So let's start with Carmen and kind of
just start wherever you want to start about your kind
of background history and then how you came to be
I guess presenting probably all across the Canada, but how
in that particular answers that the Invisible Wounds Conference.

Speaker 3 (01:03):
Absolutely I'm so happy to be here on this podcast
because it was such a pleasure to also be listening
to your recordings gotten Dan during that conference. I've shared
that podcast with many people I know, so my background
so I'm the founder and director of horse Since North.
We have a farm between Brooks Falls and mcdanawhan and Ontario,
also known as the traditional territory of the Nishnavic and mississagnations,

(01:27):
and we do different kinds of work with people with
horses and also without horses in the field of personal growth,
leadership and team development and trauma recovery.

Speaker 2 (01:36):
And how I.

Speaker 3 (01:37):
Got to this work is I actually grew up in
Montreal and I was studying social services at the time
and some really big life changing events took place. One
in particular that I think is important to mention, especially
on this podcast, speaking to the three of you live
and whoever else might be listening. While I was at
Dawson College. This is a part where whoever's listening please

(02:00):
take care because it can be a little bit difficult.
I won't go into too much detail, but there was
a school shooting that took place and I would not
be alive today if it weren't for first.

Speaker 2 (02:11):
Responders, public safety personnel, and.

Speaker 3 (02:13):
Specifically police, because there was just no chance that I
was making out of there unless exactly what took place happened,
which was that many lives were saved because of very
brave and courageous actions that were taken, as well as
incredible working together amongst all the first responders.

Speaker 2 (02:28):
See. So what happened in my life was.

Speaker 3 (02:31):
That that experience completely shifted how I approached everything in
my world, where I felt suddenly way more courageous because
if life was that short, potentially, why was I wasting
any time? And so I listened to my heart, which
actually meant leaving school and going to a farm, getting

(02:52):
out of the city, getting away from as many humans
as possible. I was really trying to leave the world
of humans behind. And what happened is that I kind
of did that. I ended up working on a farm
for a while, and then I found a way to
work with horses very intensively, and I've now worked with
thousands of horses and working with thousands of horses in
this capacity where I'm taking care of their feet the

(03:14):
other hat that I wear. I've been a farrier for
the last seventeen years, so it's kind of like a
blacksmith foot doctor for horses. And they really led me
in a horseshoe ironically, back around to the world of
people and back around to people because with horses working
with them in such an intense way, the most important
tool in my toolkit, so to speak, was relationship building

(03:38):
and what that really meant was re building with myself
and healing with myself.

Speaker 2 (03:43):
And I really needed to find a way to.

Speaker 3 (03:45):
Bridge the worlds of horses and humans so that I
could offer others safe experiences to do similar kinds of
transformative healing work without the school of hard knocks that
I'd personally gone through. So that's how I kind of
created Horsemense North in a very short way, and that's
also what led me to meet Chris and I'm just
so grateful to have an opportunity to be on this

(04:08):
podcast with her today.

Speaker 2 (04:09):
It's incredibly meaningful.

Speaker 3 (04:12):
In part because I think she's just one of the
most amazing humans I've ever met, but also because the
work that we do at Horse and So North we
do serve everyone. However, we have a particular focus on
working with public safety personnel and we have a program
specifically for first responders, military veterans, and others in that community.
So that's one of the ways that I was very

(04:32):
fortunate to be able to meet Chris and get to
know her in many other ways ever since.

Speaker 1 (04:37):
Awesome. I will for sure have questions to fall, but
let's go over to Chris first so we can kind
of get your story.

Speaker 2 (04:44):
Yes, thank you.

Speaker 4 (04:46):
So the constellation of things that had to happen for
me to be in front of Carmen is just like outstanding.

Speaker 5 (04:53):
For Carmen to have the experiences that Carmen.

Speaker 2 (04:56):
Had and for me to have the experiences.

Speaker 5 (04:58):
I had that led me to be on the far
is It's surreal.

Speaker 4 (05:04):
So I am a twenty four year we'll call it
veteran of in policing.

Speaker 6 (05:11):
I work as a senior officer in a large police
service in the Greater Toronto area in Ontario, and around
February of twenty twenty two is when I really started
to take a downward spiral. I was working in an
area where I was highly trained to manage critical incidences.

Speaker 5 (05:35):
I was working shiftwork. I was dealing with a lot of.

Speaker 6 (05:42):
Trauma in my home life with an adopted son, with
my partner at the time, and I didn't feel like
I had any opportunity with everything was going on to
really decompress.

Speaker 2 (05:56):
I didn't have a safe space. And it was around
that time that I really crashed.

Speaker 4 (06:03):
And it's funny because I can now looking back see
all the little flags that were dropped in my life.

Speaker 5 (06:11):
Oh what's that hill that happened up my back?

Speaker 2 (06:14):
It's nothing.

Speaker 5 (06:15):
Why am I feeling this heaviness of my chest? So
I had all the hallmark.

Speaker 4 (06:20):
Signs, but none of the knowledge to back up what
was happening to me.

Speaker 2 (06:24):
And so my body just completely shut down on me.

Speaker 5 (06:27):
So which meant not leaving my bedroom, not leaving.

Speaker 4 (06:30):
My house, not being able to really do much, scared
of everything, hypervigilance, everything that you can think of, just
kind of crushed me until I really.

Speaker 6 (06:41):
Had to stop and take a look at how I
was living my life onto that I was using alcohol
as a crutch or my days.

Speaker 2 (06:49):
Off to feel.

Speaker 4 (06:52):
Kind of like an equalizer. So when I was out
with my friends, who are, you know, not police officers,
I could get to their level of like, you know,
just kind of beabopping around and not have I guess
the hypervigilance.

Speaker 6 (07:06):
That I would would have twenty four to seven. I
thought I was helping with the anxiety, but it surely wasn't.

Speaker 2 (07:17):
I was.

Speaker 5 (07:18):
I decided that.

Speaker 4 (07:19):
I was going to take that knowledge that I had
at work of managing critical incidences.

Speaker 2 (07:24):
And make my life a critical incident that I was going.

Speaker 6 (07:27):
To have to manage because I was also rubbing up
against that pressure point of I will I cannot live
my life like this in the way that I was
with the darkness, My heart felt like it was black.
I had no interest in doing anything, and so that's

(07:49):
when those thoughts of would it be better if I
wasn't even in this world? And that's when I knew
there's a there's a there's a problem problem. I'm a
critical incident now.

Speaker 2 (08:00):
So through a variety of different.

Speaker 5 (08:04):
Avenues, I was able to get myself to a.

Speaker 6 (08:08):
Recovery center up in vala Greenstone Recovery Center and.

Speaker 5 (08:14):
To strictly focus on the trauma side of things.

Speaker 6 (08:18):
And while I was there, I was offered an opportunity
to be the last person.

Speaker 2 (08:23):
They had one more spot.

Speaker 5 (08:25):
It was at the morning group and they said we
have one more spot.

Speaker 6 (08:28):
For someone to go to horse Sense North to do
some at Quine assisted healing I'll call it.

Speaker 5 (08:35):
And I literally like legtated from my chair to get in.

Speaker 2 (08:38):
Front of that person to say I need to go
to this.

Speaker 5 (08:42):
And it was a life changing experience, it really was.

Speaker 2 (08:46):
So that's how I.

Speaker 6 (08:47):
Met Carmen, and I'm very grateful for my time with
Carmen on the farm, but we have a blossoming friendship
as well.

Speaker 5 (08:54):
And I will fly the flag.

Speaker 4 (08:56):
For Horse Sense North all day long outside of the
normal and I talk about this a lot. The narrow
mindset of medication and talk therapy, which I've done thousands
of hours of talk therapy, we need.

Speaker 5 (09:14):
This sort of assisted healing with the horses.

Speaker 6 (09:19):
It one hundred percent changed my life, and I would
like to see some changes when it comes to WSIB
and how our organizational wellness unit looks at it, because
it's necessary. And so I had an experience there with
a particular horse named Grace, And if you would like

(09:40):
me too, I can get into that, but I'll also
maybe Carmen wants to say something and I can take
a breath.

Speaker 1 (09:46):
Sure, I'm going to go back to Karmen, just because
when you kind of brushed over the ferrier part of
it there, that's most people are going to go. I
don't know what that is beyond Blacksmith, but the inherent
danger in Danny and I grew up around horses when
we were kids. We were not farriers. But if you
can just kind of talk about the amount of risk,
I mean, probably the number of times you have injury

(10:07):
from doing that work, because I think that it's going
to land in my opinion, a bit of a credibility
to you who are helping first responders who have been
through dangerous situations.

Speaker 2 (10:19):
Is high high risk, high.

Speaker 1 (10:20):
High risk, like you make the wrong decision, you go
to jail that day, or somebody dies or both. Yes,
that kind of risk. Yeah, So Carbon, if you can
talk a little bit about what a farrier.

Speaker 2 (10:29):
Does and is absolutely thank you for that question.

Speaker 3 (10:33):
So a farrier is a person who takes care of horses,
who's we're the professional that sees the horse the most
often in their life. So I'll see horses every four
to six weeks, especially in this part of the world.

Speaker 2 (10:45):
Some areas have less frequent ferrier visits.

Speaker 3 (10:48):
But the kind of care that horses need for their
jobs and for the foot in here requires very frequent interaction.

Speaker 2 (10:55):
And what that is is picking up the horse's leg.

Speaker 3 (10:57):
I'm trimming their foot kind of like a massive nail.
Sometimes putting shoes on the horse, or different kinds of
polymers or this or that. But the risk factor there
is that I'm actually putting this horse's like through my
own underneath the horse and kind of crouched underneath the horse.

Speaker 2 (11:12):
The horse is very often leaning on me, hooking me in.

Speaker 3 (11:15):
I have to really have a relationship of a partnership
with them to be able to get their feet done.

Speaker 2 (11:20):
These are one thousand.

Speaker 3 (11:21):
Pounds, twelve hundred pounds, fifteen hundred pounds, sometimes two twenty
five hundred pound horses who don't always want to have
that done, and they don't necessarily know how. I'm sometimes
working with babies or you know, foals, young horses, horses
with a lot of trauma in their background, horses who
don't feel safe in their environment, Horses who the last

(11:43):
farrier or professional was really terrible and maybe even abusive
to them.

Speaker 2 (11:48):
They're in pain for whatever reason.

Speaker 3 (11:49):
So there's lots of reasons why my job makes them
not very happy, and so what that ultimately translates to
is I'm in a lot of risk if they they
choose that they don't want this done, and they want
to tell me that in a way that is kind
of forceful, or they're not even thinking about where I am.
These are big animals that move very fast. Are one

(12:10):
of the fastest moving animals on the planet. To put
in context, our insurance rates are rated the same as
military because I can literally get kicked out of the
business and kicked out of life anytime. And so it's
been seventeen years of working with them in this very
intensive way that I wouldn't change a thing. I also

(12:32):
would never hope it for anyone else, and I'm very
grateful for the kind of learning that I got to
experience with them, with broken bones and scars and dislocations
to prove it. Not that I want to, but unfortunately
that's also part of the job. And it's not a
matter of if you'll get hurt, it's when, because you're
just in a risky situation every day, all the time,

(12:53):
and with things that can just happen totally unexpectedly out
of the blue. So very different of course than your
role it's a first responder. But I appreciate that you're
making a little bit of a link there that there's
an element of like navigating and managing risk in a
very different way, but also having a really high level
of awareness and situational awareness and kind of attunement to
the energy that's happening, and really being able to respond

(13:14):
very quickly and problem solved very quickly, and you know,
and just deal with the risk factor.

Speaker 2 (13:19):
On a regular basis. That's very much be a part
of my reality there.

Speaker 3 (13:22):
The other part that might be helpful to share is
that I'm also a self defense instructor, and I've been
practicing that intensive street fighting since I'm between twelve and sixteen,
and then kept it up in kind of less intensive
ways for the rest of my life, and then became
an instructor a few years ago because in part, I
also have a background that made it very obvious how

(13:44):
important that was.

Speaker 2 (13:45):
Coming from a home with a lot of different kinds
of abuse.

Speaker 3 (13:48):
Although I didn't have to defend myself physically at home,
there was that feeling of not being safe, and that
I also experienced in many other ways in my world,
in my reality and with many people I knew, so
just that kind of constant hypervigilance, that constant awareness of
the world is not safe. The world does not feel safe.
I have to do things to protect myself in a

(14:08):
bunch of different ways. So when I left Montreal, I
wasn't just leaving because of the shooting.

Speaker 2 (14:13):
To be honest, that.

Speaker 3 (14:14):
Was maybe the easiest trauma for me to overcome because
it just helped get things really clear for me.

Speaker 2 (14:21):
Of I didn't want to put up with the rest
of it anymore.

Speaker 3 (14:24):
And so that sanctuary trauma, that organizational or home based
trauma that I think is very relatable to first responders
world as well, is something that I understand at a
visceral level, even if it's from a different less.

Speaker 1 (14:37):
I love the cognitive dissonance of how you are physically,
and I mean not necessarily even stature, but when you've resented,
you have such a calmness about you and not soft spoken,
but kind of a gentle like you could probably do
meditation tapes and people would really like that. And then
when you say you're basically like a hired killer with
your self offensive. I love when those two things get

(14:57):
butted up against each other.

Speaker 7 (14:58):
It's awesome me too. It's actually funny.

Speaker 5 (15:02):
She's got a wicked handshake, dude.

Speaker 2 (15:04):
Her right arm is very strong.

Speaker 8 (15:07):
So my martial arts instructor when I so I started
doing Mars Arsmen I was about ten or eleven until
I was nineteen, and my mart arts instructor her name
was Margie Hilbig.

Speaker 7 (15:17):
And she was a tiny, little.

Speaker 8 (15:22):
Hundred pound woman who you would never in a million
years know that she trained with Bruce Lee and Chuck
Norris and fought full contact around the world. And she
was actually did some modeling when she was a kid.
And so I love I love that too. I just
when those things come together and it's it's that it's yeah,
it's it's kind of the grace and power of it
all that I think is beautiful totally.

Speaker 3 (15:43):
And it's actually such a theme in the work that
we do with the horses and the people, and that's
like the theme it feels like of my life in
some ways that I'm doing my best to bring to
the world, whether it's speaking engagements, whether it's working directly
with people and horse on the farm, whatever context I
might be, and having this like intensive dojo of my
life and all these differ and forms of how to
practice and live and embody it to the best of
my ability, which is basically what you just said. This grace, empower,

(16:06):
this gentleness and strength is strength and vulnerability, all of
those seemingly opposing concepts about how necessary and healing it
is to actually bring them together at the same time.

Speaker 8 (16:17):
Well, there's a great quote that says, you have no
idea how much violence I had to endure to become
this gentle.

Speaker 2 (16:24):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (16:24):
Yeah, So back to you, Chris, and you obviously saw
Danny and I nodding along as you were kind of
telling us summary because we all could have done an
ai thing and change voices, and we have said all
of those not all those same words, but very similar
themes with how things got to be. How it kind
of snuck up on you. But then in hindsight, being

(16:44):
twenty twenty, you're like, well, of course I'm feeling disdisregulated.
So that story really resonated and no one need to
go necessarily a lot of detail here, But in your experience,
was it like grains of sand of small tea traumas
or was there a big trauma or a combo thereOH
that kind of led to you being dysregulated.

Speaker 2 (17:06):
A bit of both.

Speaker 6 (17:07):
To tell you the truth, it was like that, you know,
the bucket with the drops of water going in the
bucket until there's an overflow.

Speaker 4 (17:15):
So I had the drops, but then I had a
big splash and it was I won't get into a
lot of detail, but I was working night shift.

Speaker 5 (17:22):
I was on my way to work and I came
across the car crash.

Speaker 2 (17:26):
That was you know, you know how you go into.

Speaker 6 (17:28):
Work mode and you builter all the feelings out and
you're just you're in your logical mind and you're dealing
with things, and then dealt with that. Unfortunately, someone passed
away in that accident, went directly another ten minutes down
the road to work, to the high risk calls, to.

Speaker 2 (17:47):
Managing a bunch of things, and.

Speaker 6 (17:51):
Within a week I was I was having not processed
all the things around the accident.

Speaker 2 (17:59):
I I I can't even think of another word of it.
I just crashed. My body locked up on me.

Speaker 6 (18:06):
I I was, uh, you know, crying all the time.
I didn't want to be around people. I can remember
being in a car with my friend or just driving
to lunch is something we did all the time, and
thinking I gotta get out of this car, which she
stops at the next stop sign.

Speaker 2 (18:22):
I I gotta get out. I can't go.

Speaker 5 (18:24):
I I was just so I can't even.

Speaker 4 (18:27):
You know, people talk about it, but until you experience
it for yourself, it is such an out of body experience.

Speaker 6 (18:34):
It was like I was watching myself go through this
and I didn't know how to stop it. And medication
was not working, alcohol was not working, talk therapy was
working to a point, and I needed to do something radical.
And that's how I ended up at Greenstone in Vala

(18:54):
and did the most incredible work that I've ever done.

Speaker 2 (18:58):
On myself and healing. And I don't know if you
guys have experienced this, but I didn't have a spiritual
bone in my body. I didn't believe in the gray areas.
Facts show me.

Speaker 5 (19:11):
Facts until I started having these.

Speaker 2 (19:15):
Experiences. And the biggest one was the one I had
with Grace.

Speaker 5 (19:20):
Of course, that's North on the farm.

Speaker 4 (19:22):
And again I go back to that constellation of things
that had to happen, like all of Carmen's training and
everything that Carmen did in her lifetime got her to
be able to be in front of Grace and to
build up, to build a rapport and be a safe
person for Grace so that Grace could end up on
the farm. And that's another thing I would love Carmen

(19:43):
if we have time for you to share that piece
because it is so important because I wouldn't have been
able to work with Grace if Grace didn't believe enough
in what Carmen was doing to get in front of me.

Speaker 2 (19:56):
And so maybe that's a good time.

Speaker 4 (19:58):
I don't know if it might be giving away too
much of where Grace came from.

Speaker 2 (20:02):
But.

Speaker 5 (20:05):
Maybe do it after Carmen.

Speaker 2 (20:06):
What do you think, Well, it's up to you'sc gotten down.

Speaker 1 (20:08):
Does this feel like, okay, this is your You guys
are the talent, We're just here to sit in the background.
What's all? Would you guys talk about whatever? What do
you mean have to keep talking? You guys have a
conversation and it'll still be awesome.

Speaker 2 (20:19):
I would love free to participate. Okay, I'm like it,
just just to kind of like preface it. I was
only able to.

Speaker 4 (20:29):
Have the experience that I did with Grace because Grace
and I had so many connections.

Speaker 5 (20:38):
Throughout our work together and then in our in our.

Speaker 4 (20:41):
I'll call it our work lives or work life, my
work life.

Speaker 6 (20:48):
Yeah, it's just beyond incredible the things that we shared
in common.

Speaker 2 (20:53):
And I never thought in a million years that I
would have such.

Speaker 4 (20:56):
A connection with a horse and now Grace as a
driving force in my life, my decisions I make, you know,
I think about Grace and the lessons that she taught
me a lot all the time.

Speaker 5 (21:09):
And so the Krudo's Department for recognizing such.

Speaker 2 (21:13):
A wonderful uh Herd member and a wonderful spirit. So
now I'll leave it at that.

Speaker 8 (21:20):
When you say the name Grace, my my wife's grandmother
was named Grace, who I was super close to, so
I anytime I hear the name Grace, it just I
I actually get emotional.

Speaker 3 (21:30):
Yeah, yeah, I appreciate that a very very quick sidebar.
I was speaking at a conference in California at the
end of October, and I shared about Grace cause I
tried to share about her as often as I possibly can.
And it turns out that there are like six other
Graces that people were talking about in presentations.

Speaker 1 (21:53):
HM.

Speaker 3 (21:53):
And it's as if there's this real theme of Grace
happening in this moment, which maybe that's just in my
own little world.

Speaker 2 (22:01):
But I love hearing the connection with you as well,
and I just wish.

Speaker 3 (22:06):
For more grace for everyone in this world, so that
gives me a little bit of an extra motivation to
share about her.

Speaker 1 (22:11):
Yeah, so if you can tell us, then what's like whatever,
however much you want to share about what is Grace's story,
Because again I think, like you said, yeah, it was
weird being or not my words, not yours at this
conference already saying the word grace. But I think as
we get back to whether it's spirituality or whatever, is
just kind of noticing when of the universe is putting
you in places and around people and around creatures that

(22:32):
you're obviously meant to be. But I think most of
the time, certainly as cops, there was none of that, right, Like,
you go to work, you do your thing, you fucking
put the bad guy in jail, and blah blah blah,
that kind of stuff, and then eventually you started going, well,
I was weird that I did that interview with that
homicide accused and I quite liked them. Like I'm having
a little bit of a back to that cognitive dissonance

(22:53):
of I'm not supposed to like the murderer, but I
actually quite liked talking to this person who committed a murder.
But it's just that pain intention to these little micro
signs that again make for your life to be a
little more fulfilling I think.

Speaker 2 (23:05):
So.

Speaker 1 (23:05):
Yeah, on that little segue, if you can tell us
what Grace, I'd begreed.

Speaker 2 (23:09):
Oh thanks for that. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (23:11):
So Grace's backstory, As Chris mentioned, she ended up becoming
this incredible partner in the therapeutic work that we do,
but she definitely did not start there, and she actually
started in the first responder world.

Speaker 2 (23:29):
She grew up in the RCMP Musical Ride.

Speaker 3 (23:32):
That's a program that is different than partnering with horses
for policing work.

Speaker 2 (23:38):
These horses never patrol.

Speaker 3 (23:40):
They are only for show, and so they have a
whole breeding and training and riding program specifically to tour
across Canada doing these like synchronized dance movements sort of
to you know, with big a large group of them,
all with RCMP riders, and you know, it's it's made
to be this like big show and it's supposed be
very beautiful and all these things. Now, to a very

(24:02):
untrained eye or even slightly untrained I it can look
like that because they're majestic, they're huge, they're these big, black,
beautiful horses. They're doing things in synchronating with each other.
Obviously it's taken a ton of work to get the
whole show together, et cetera, et cetera.

Speaker 2 (24:19):
But to those who really see.

Speaker 3 (24:21):
Horses and no more, they will also see that there
is a huge amount of very intensive gear that forces
the horses into.

Speaker 2 (24:30):
These kinds of movements.

Speaker 3 (24:32):
And for those who are in the world enough to
hear some of the back end stories, there is a
lot of report of abuse that goes on, and there
was actually a big exposure with a lot of evidence
that was brought to the news networks, and.

Speaker 2 (24:51):
Shortly after Grace came into my.

Speaker 3 (24:53):
Life, that was actually a big exposed news piece about
how the RCMP in that program has done some really
terrible things in the coal foundation of the way that
they train and so for example, there's only there's a
three year timeline on people who can do that ride.
They actually don't want a lot of people who have
horse experience going into it, so that they can really

(25:13):
kind of mold people to have this very heavy handed approach,
and by the time they really get to know the
horses and can ride a little bit better than they're out.
So the horses are constantly having new riders, constantly having
a lot of very heavy handed approach to how they're
being worked with. And honestly, I didn't have to know
any of this backstory to know it because I met Grace,
and so a client of mine purchased Grace from this auction.

(25:37):
They were kicking her out of the program because they
called her the witch.

Speaker 2 (25:41):
They called her, you.

Speaker 3 (25:41):
Know, she was crazy all these things. She was very dangerous.
She was known as being incredibly dangerous. Dangerous too. She
had to be sedated and drugged to get any kind
of like vet work done, ferrier work done. She had
such a strong fight response that she just gave the
big fu to any one who was trying to work
with her. Now, from a lens of not really having like,

(26:05):
you know, seeing it from their view, it would be like, Okay,
she's just misbehaving, she's bad, But what's actually happening is
she feels incredibly unsafe, she feels unseen, unheard, mistreated, abused,
and she's going absolutely not, you cannot touch me, you
cannot do these things. And she's got a super strong spirit,
and so they gave her the boot.

Speaker 2 (26:27):
My client purchased her.

Speaker 3 (26:29):
I met her for the first time as a farrier
and I was given lots of warnings because apparently to
get her feet done, as I was mentioning, she had
to be drugged. They didn't have many drugs on board.
They're like, let's just see how it goes. And I
knew from the moment that I met her that she.

Speaker 2 (26:44):
Was a really wise being.

Speaker 3 (26:48):
And she just needed time and respect. So I took
my time approaching her. I didn't just walk right into
her space. I acknowledged her, I said hello. I attuned
to her energy and waited for her to give me
some kind of subtle permission to approach, and then that's
when I did. And I never had a problem doing
her feet. She cooperated the whole time for the two

(27:08):
years that I was doing her feet in that way,
and every time I would go, I just had this
really lovely feeling with her. I just kind of sensed
that she was a really beautiful being in her spirit,
and that she was so strong, and that she was
such an incredible leader. And I was also hearing stories
about her from my client about how she was in

(27:28):
these different herds of horses and how she was truly
a magnificent leader for other horses, where if she would
leave the herd. She would go back and touch noses
with every single horse every time, and that she would
not put up with anything. She wouldn't let the other
horses get away with any bad behavior. But she also
would be the first one to share her hay, she'd

(27:50):
be the first one to share the water. She really
like supported this good energy every chance she got. So
I'm saying this because we can also add this to
the picture of like part of her motivation potentially to
fight so hard is when you have a responsibility for others,
you're less likely to you know, put that to the backside.

(28:10):
So I really believe that part of Grace's big fight
response is because she felt responsible for the other herd
members and she couldn't put it down. She couldn't put
it down. And so my client was moving to Florida,
and you heard just as a fairer rule for those
couple of years. But as I mentioned earlier, I see
horses really regularly. That way, I've seeing her every four
to six weeks. I really have a relationship built with her.

(28:33):
And so my fairier client says to me, well, I'm moving,
but actually I don't want to take her with me.
Do you want her which is very kind, but also
something that I have conditioned myself to say no to,
because as a.

Speaker 2 (28:46):
Ferrier, I can offer horses frequently.

Speaker 3 (28:48):
I'm humbled by this, but I would also be bankrupt
many times over if I said yes.

Speaker 2 (28:53):
And so I had actually never had a horse on
my own at that point.

Speaker 3 (28:55):
This is over ten years ago, eleven years ago now,
and I was just working with other people's horses, and
so I said no. But he said, okay, well why
don't you come work with her? Anyway, I had already
worked with horses at his farm. I loved riding all
these different horses. I love working for all these different horses.
But I was also given the warning working with her.
He said, she's a lot better than what she used

(29:15):
to be. And to give a context, when he picked
her up from the auction, she was rearing so on
her back legs, standing up, striking and biting the three
RCNP officers just trying to put the most basic piece
of horse equipment for a halter, just trying to put
her halter on. And she was literally flinging the officers
up against the wall.

Speaker 2 (29:34):
So that's the horse that we started with.

Speaker 3 (29:36):
And although she was not doing that, kind of thing
she would if she was cornered, and she would still
have very aggressive behaviors if she was loose in an area,
had a tendency to charge at people. If she was
in a confined area, like in a stall or something
like that, she would try to knock the door down.
She didn't want to be touched, she didn't want to
be caught. It got better, but there was a lot

(29:56):
of resistance. Still, there was a lot of not feeling comfortable,
not feeling safe, and that would show up in these
kinds of behaviors.

Speaker 2 (30:02):
If she couldn't get away easily, she would fight. So
I was given this this warning, and.

Speaker 3 (30:09):
I said, Okay, that's fine, but I still want to
work with her in an open space because my favorite
way to get to know horses and people is when
we're free. And I kind of feel like Haman's and
horses were kind of living in captivity at the time.
So you know, it's a hard one to figure out,
but at least to kind of give some semblance of
more voice and choice, some semblance of more agency, and
that meant being with her in an open, wide area.

(30:32):
And so I took the liability to put my feruyer
hat on to you know, have the coverage. And I
went into work with her in this big, open area,
and she seemed to be kind of ignoring me. She
was at the far end of the ring, maybe two
hundred feet away, but I knew she was really paying attention.
Of course, they're paying attention to everything all the time.
And I just stood there and waited, and then she

(30:55):
turned and looked at me and took off at a gallop,
heading straight toward me.

Speaker 2 (31:02):
And Grace is huge.

Speaker 3 (31:03):
Just to put this again in context, Grace is about
fifteen hundred pounds. For those who know horses, she's seventeen
to three. She's a big girl, and every footfall it's
like thunder.

Speaker 2 (31:12):
On the ground. It's not the first time I've been.

Speaker 3 (31:15):
Charged, But luckily I did have all this other horse
experience to kind of assess the meaning, assess the feeling,
and trust my instincts and trust my knowing, which allowed
me to know that Grace was charging me, not to
hurt me, even though she could and she maybe would,
But her real intention was to test me, to say,
who are you?

Speaker 2 (31:36):
Can I trust you? Can I be safe with you?

Speaker 3 (31:39):
And the only way that I can understand the answer
to those questions is if I really put you to
the test to see if you could be both strong
and vulnerable at the same time, to be powerful and
gentle at the same time, which meant holding my ground,
not yielding, but also not closing my heart making her

(32:00):
wrong for her response, not shaming her, not getting angry,
not having any aggressiveness, just having this like grounded confidence
with an open heart.

Speaker 2 (32:13):
So I breathed.

Speaker 3 (32:15):
I stood there, and I put up my hands and
I said whoa, and she kind of played a game
of chicken, and then screeched to a halt inches from
my face.

Speaker 2 (32:29):
And from that moment we were really bonded. If I
would walk, she would walk. If I would breathe, she
would breathe, like she was just super in sync.

Speaker 3 (32:38):
And then, of course I had to find a way
to take her into my family because I'm like and
then I was completely under her spell.

Speaker 2 (32:43):
I had no hope anymore.

Speaker 3 (32:45):
And I had this incredible, magical experience with her that
just blew all my other horse experiences out.

Speaker 2 (32:51):
Of the water.

Speaker 3 (32:52):
And yet even though she became my horse and we
worked together, and I even hate that language, but I
became her human that really we were together for life.

Speaker 2 (33:01):
Now.

Speaker 3 (33:04):
If someone had asked me in those first few years
that I had her, if she would become a safe
therapy partner for others, or even any kind of partner
for anyone else, and be like, I don't think. So,
that's like a beautiful idea, but that's not gonna happen.

Speaker 2 (33:18):
But that's exactly what happened.

Speaker 3 (33:21):
After years, in many cycles of healing, Grace became the
safest therapy partner and the most dedicated therapy partner I
have ever known.

Speaker 2 (33:34):
When we had.

Speaker 3 (33:34):
First responders, Chris is a perfect example on site for
any kind of program, whether it was through Greenstone, whether
it's our five day program, whether it was an individual session,
she just had this intense desire to work with these people.

Speaker 2 (33:49):
Where there's no riding at her farm. Everything is done
on the.

Speaker 3 (33:51):
Ground at liberty loose, where the horse has their full
voice and choice as well. And also the horses choose
who they work with. We don't pick who the horses are,
so the horses volunteer. They say, this is my client
I'm working today, And Grace would insist on working, especially
with law enforcement. And I really believe it's because she
had done so much growth in healing herself that she

(34:13):
knew and understood and related deeply from a shared background,
if you will, and also really wanted to offer that
kind of energy and hope that healing is possible for others.

Speaker 2 (34:25):
And she did it with so much grace.

Speaker 3 (34:29):
And I'm so grateful that Chris had opportunities to get
to know her.

Speaker 8 (34:33):
Right, That's just I just want to say something because
there's gonna be a lot of people on this listening
to this podcasts who don't know horses and the amount
of the brilliance that horses have and the knowledge that
they have. And I had a horse when I was
a kid.

Speaker 7 (34:49):
His name was Rambo. He was a Purchering quarter horse cross.
He was a late yeld, so.

Speaker 8 (34:53):
Some of those behaviors that Grace had, he had because
he thought he was a sad to the point where
he ripped. We were lead training him, and the way
my uncle Lee train was put a retire on the
fence and time to lead until he tires him up
because he broke the tire. So he was this crazy
like he he was this crazy.

Speaker 1 (35:12):
Horse that.

Speaker 8 (35:15):
In the end I was the only person who could
ride him, and I was only there three to five
weeks a year, and no one could put get on
his back, no one could touch him, and he would
literally I'd come into the yard and he'd hear my
voice from somewhere in the field and he'd run over
to the fence and he I could pet that boy's head.
And I don't think people understand how relational these animals are.

(35:36):
And I think for non verse people, people that haven't
been around him, or haven't had the you know, the
the fortunate closeness to an animal like that, I think
it's hard for people to comprehend their like.

Speaker 7 (35:50):
But they're a horse like they.

Speaker 8 (35:51):
Ride right, and you ride them, and you take they
work for cows and they race them. But they're also
this gentle, huge animal that is so relational and so
comprehends human emotion. And I don't think people understand that
if they've never been around horses.

Speaker 1 (36:08):
You guys bothered because you also think you're a stud
and you're not.

Speaker 7 (36:10):
That's true.

Speaker 1 (36:11):
Yeah, So back to Chris, So, when you're listening to
and this is not me trying to tugget emotions, but
I'm going to get I don't know you, but again,
your statement at that conference was very powerful. The description
that Carmen gives of Grace is that, like, I'm going

(36:32):
to guess that to you, and again kind of putting
in a plug here, you are a senior officer, a
female senior officer, which right away is difficult. There's a
whole bunch of areas that would have had to overcome.

Speaker 4 (36:43):
Oh, Grace and I have so many parallels, and that's
why it's magic what happened between Grace and I and
with Carmen's help.

Speaker 2 (36:52):
And so I had no.

Speaker 6 (36:55):
Understanding of what I was going to do on the farm.
Going three years back, I landed.

Speaker 2 (37:03):
There, I was with other clients. We were in a group.

Speaker 5 (37:07):
I was very lucky to be a part of that group.

Speaker 2 (37:10):
And oh, I mean the ride there.

Speaker 6 (37:13):
We were listening to music, we were all just kind
of chit chatting, and as soon as we.

Speaker 2 (37:16):
Got on the farm, I.

Speaker 4 (37:19):
Was blooded and I did not know where it was
coming from, but I was very quickly going to find out.
And so we worked a little bit in the morning
with some things with Carmen, which led to the group
going out to the fields where the herd was and
immediately I.

Speaker 2 (37:37):
Just my eyes locked on this.

Speaker 6 (37:40):
So I didn't have any understanding or appreciation of Grace's
backstory that Carmen just explained. I was just on a
farm with horses, but this black horse, for.

Speaker 2 (37:51):
Whatever reason, I was feeling her energy. I was flooded.
I was holding back tears the whole time. I just
had no understanding what was going on.

Speaker 4 (38:02):
And so the other clients, we're feeding treats to.

Speaker 2 (38:05):
The herd, and this black horse was kind of.

Speaker 4 (38:09):
Just standing off, and it felt to me like she
was protecting the herd. And I felt that right away
that matriarchal the power, the caregiver, the protector.

Speaker 5 (38:20):
And I was just like, like this.

Speaker 4 (38:23):
And she's huge, and I don't have a lot of
horse experience, I could say, next to none, And so
I stood back from the fence because this energy I
was getting from her was actually felt a little scary
to me, but only because it was a reflection of myself.

Speaker 2 (38:38):
This is the meat knew me thinking about it now.

Speaker 6 (38:40):
Right, And I remember saying to Carmon, I said, and
so my first question, I said, is that horse out there,
the black.

Speaker 5 (38:49):
One to rescue? And Carman said, yes, it's yes, she is.
And it's interesting that you asked that, And I said,
what is what is the horse's name?

Speaker 2 (38:58):
And she said Grace, and I was like, Okay, here
we go.

Speaker 4 (39:03):
So the first connection was that we're both caregivers.

Speaker 6 (39:07):
We're policing, we're watchers. We're protecting that her. I'm protecting
my people.

Speaker 2 (39:12):
At work and my family and things like that. So
fast forward to.

Speaker 5 (39:20):
We're in Carman's arena.

Speaker 2 (39:22):
Which is where we're doing the majority of.

Speaker 4 (39:24):
Our horsework, where the horses are choosing to come in
to work with the clients, and a couple of clients
are working with another horse that was there, and I'm
like waiting for my turn, going please don't bring that
big black horse Grace in here.

Speaker 2 (39:38):
I can't because.

Speaker 4 (39:39):
I was just like overcome with something flooded and I'm like,
I just don't want to work with that big black horse.

Speaker 5 (39:47):
And so during lunch, I couldn't even eat.

Speaker 6 (39:50):
I went out into the out of the arena and
I was looking for the for Grace.

Speaker 5 (39:56):
I didn't see her, and then all of a sudden,
she comes.

Speaker 4 (39:58):
Around the barn and she gets herself into a spot
that is the closest corner of the paddock. She couldn't
be any closer to me, and she just locks eyes
with me. There's no one else around.

Speaker 5 (40:10):
And she's just looking at me like I.

Speaker 2 (40:11):
See you, like you can't escape me.

Speaker 6 (40:13):
And I'm looking at her, going I see you too,
can you just like I can't. I need a moment
to myself. No, she kept blocking eyes. So I go
back in. It's getting to be my turn to work
with one of the horses, and I hear one of
the other clients say, oh, they're bringing the big black
horse in next, and I'm like, oh.

Speaker 2 (40:34):
No, no, no, no.

Speaker 6 (40:36):
But what that actually was was Grace choosing to come
in and work with me, even though I did not
want that, and I just couldn't under I couldn't fully
appreciate why.

Speaker 5 (40:48):
I know now.

Speaker 2 (40:51):
And we'll get to that.

Speaker 6 (40:52):
So when Grace comes into the arena, Grace, like herman
explained earlier, you feel her.

Speaker 2 (41:00):
It's like the ground tremors.

Speaker 6 (41:01):
She's a presence, she has so much energy to her
and she came in and just at that moment, I
heard someone ask Carmen where Grace was from.

Speaker 2 (41:15):
And Carmen, and this is the first time I heard it, Carmen.

Speaker 6 (41:18):
Said, oh, she's she was in the RCMP, and I
was like, oh my god.

Speaker 4 (41:23):
That's part of this synchronicity we'll call it. This is
what's happening is because she's she's a police officer.

Speaker 6 (41:32):
So I was like, Okay, here we go, and I'm
going to describe Grace coming in and going into the
arena as having some intensity to her too. Carmen can
explain better, but it seemed to me like Grace had

(41:53):
something to show us. So she was kind of huffing
and galloping.

Speaker 5 (41:58):
And didn't feel very settled.

Speaker 2 (42:00):
And I said to Karmen, I think that she's doing
that because of the idea want me to leave.

Speaker 4 (42:07):
And so Carmen said, let's let's try and do some
over the fence to work with her, and we do
some grounding exercises before we go in.

Speaker 2 (42:18):
And that was really hard for me to do.

Speaker 6 (42:20):
Just doing some body checking, doing some emotions checking. And
when I was finished doing that, tears strewing down my eyes.

Speaker 4 (42:27):
I was asked to turn and look at Grace, and
I didn't know where she was, but she was when
I turned.

Speaker 2 (42:33):
She was over my shoulder. She was there waiting for me.

Speaker 4 (42:37):
And the over the fence work started with me putting
hands on her, and my.

Speaker 2 (42:43):
Hand went immediately to her.

Speaker 6 (42:45):
I could feel it in my body right now, was
talking about it. My hands went immediately to her left cheek,
and as.

Speaker 4 (42:52):
I touched her cheek, I remember Carmen saying something that
is interesting that she's letting me touch her there because
she cared is trauma in her face.

Speaker 2 (43:01):
It's a place where she had some physical trauma.

Speaker 6 (43:06):
And being that it was her left side, it was
another connection because I had come into the program that
I was in having had some surgery on my left
side of my.

Speaker 2 (43:16):
Face to remove some cancer.

Speaker 5 (43:18):
And I was just like, there's another thing that's a
connection for us.

Speaker 4 (43:23):
And so.

Speaker 5 (43:27):
Hesitantly I made my way into the ring.

Speaker 2 (43:31):
And again there's no safety issues.

Speaker 6 (43:33):
It was all about me and my anxiety and this
flooding that was going on, and this horse was seeing
me and it was driving me absolutely crazy, and I
knew I needed to be.

Speaker 2 (43:42):
There with her.

Speaker 6 (43:43):
And I also knew that this is the underlying being
for my work with Grace, is that I could feel
my hands shaking right down.

Speaker 2 (43:52):
If Grace can't.

Speaker 4 (43:55):
Experience the trauma that she did at her workplace and
in other areas of her life, and Grace can heal
her heart, which is eight to ten times bigger than
mine than I can too. And so I went into
the arena and I worked with Grace and the purpose
of being.

Speaker 6 (44:14):
In there with her is to be heart centered, to
communicate with her with emotion, and for her to communicate
back because she give us some language or she's no bullshit.

Speaker 2 (44:28):
If you don't take that mask.

Speaker 4 (44:29):
And that armor off, she's not gonna She's not gonna.

Speaker 6 (44:34):
I don't want to say she's not gonna work with you,
but you're not gonna get the best that Grace can
give you. Or maybe she will work with you. But
I knew I had to just be if I had emotions,
if I was being a flooded anxiety or whatever, I
needed to show that. And I did, and we worked together,
and she walked with me, and she was very kind
with me, and I spent some time with her in there,

(44:59):
and the other clients able to watch this kind of
evolve into kind of just being together, came.

Speaker 5 (45:05):
Out of the ring and sat down in my chair.

Speaker 6 (45:08):
There was another client who was gonna work with Grace
as well. Grace was choosing to work with him, and
her intensity started back up again, and I saw her
kind of go to the other side at the arena
and run back and keep putting her head over the
fence where I was directly at me, not we other
clients were and stare at me, and she'd go and

(45:30):
do the same thing again. And I've had to do
some work with Carmen about what was that lesson that
was happening. And in my words, what was happening was
Grace was showing me how she releases her anxiety, so.

Speaker 5 (45:47):
Just how she releases that energy, and that was a huge.

Speaker 2 (45:51):
Huge lesson for me.

Speaker 6 (45:52):
So since then, I've worked with Grace a lot and
she's always always chosen to come in for me. And
I was lucky enough to go back up to the
farm and be a part of the Above and Beyond
program the Carman has first responders and work a lot
with Grace.

Speaker 2 (46:13):
And yeah, I mean, I.

Speaker 5 (46:19):
Know you guys have said I heard me say this
about our jobs.

Speaker 6 (46:23):
Should not the jobs that we give our lives to,
should not be the reason why.

Speaker 2 (46:27):
We end our lives.

Speaker 4 (46:28):
And I can tell you wholeheartedly that Grace is a
part of my efforts to stay alive and to keep
working on my yealing and now to be an ambassador
for all things worse since north.

Speaker 5 (46:44):
One thing I do want.

Speaker 2 (46:45):
To show you, guys, And I know that.

Speaker 4 (46:47):
People won't be able to see this, but literally two
years before I worked with Grace, I went to a
workshop where you take a plaster mold of your face.

Speaker 2 (46:56):
And this is probably the most this is a big
connection here.

Speaker 4 (47:02):
So the workshop you make a poster molde of your
face once it just dried.

Speaker 6 (47:06):
It was part of our organizational Illness unit in an
effort for officers to show on this poster.

Speaker 5 (47:13):
Mold the face that we show people and the.

Speaker 2 (47:17):
Other half of the faces the things we hide.

Speaker 5 (47:20):
And a connection I made after.

Speaker 4 (47:22):
Meeting Grace and with her name. I know you said
that the name Grace can.

Speaker 2 (47:26):
Make you emotional. Well I came back and I looked
at the mask that I made, and Grace was not
a word or a name that's in my life.

Speaker 5 (47:37):
But I can tell you that when I made this mask,
I can't.

Speaker 4 (47:41):
See it, but see right here across the mouth the
word Grace.

Speaker 5 (47:47):
And so just the number of connections.

Speaker 4 (47:51):
That Grace and I had and her willingness to work
with me has.

Speaker 5 (47:56):
Been a big, big, big help in my.

Speaker 2 (48:01):
Healing path and my personal growth.

Speaker 4 (48:04):
Yeah, So my thanks to Carmen and everyone at Horse
since North because it's it's a game changer.

Speaker 1 (48:11):
So cool, Thanks so much, Chris. So back to Carmen,
and you know this is not getting into your trade secrets,
but it's obviously more than go pet the pony and
then you feel better. There's that's very understated, right, Like
it's just and it probably would help for some people.
Going petting the pony would make you feel better. But
what kind of because you did such a beautiful job
of and why your presentation resonated with me because you

(48:32):
started using like polyvagel terms and you're talking about vegas
nerve and like, all that's my jam. So can you
kind of tie that into like are you also a
therapist in addition to that or like how does that
all kind of come together into a coherent program?

Speaker 2 (48:48):
Yeah, great question. So I'm a coach and facilitator.

Speaker 3 (48:51):
I've been certified in both those in a bunch of
different forms to do specifically the work that I do
and combine it with other life experiences and horse experiences.

Speaker 2 (48:59):
For our unique programming. And we work a lot with
other mental health professionals.

Speaker 3 (49:06):
We have a lot of therapists that kind of collaborate
with us for different things. The program, the Above and
Bound program, we always run it with a therapist alongside, uh,
everything we're doing. And regardless of who the humans are,
the horses are really uh you know. For those listening,

(49:28):
this may sound kind of woo woo, and bear with.

Speaker 2 (49:30):
Me for a second, but it they really do have
a lot of intention.

Speaker 3 (49:34):
Around how they're helping us and why, and Chris is
such a beautiful example and role model of that. I
also just want to slide in here that I've never
seen Grace work with any client quite like she worked
with Chris in the consistency of showing up for Chris
in the way that she was with Chris, And I

(49:55):
really believe that it's because Grace saw such a mirrored,
our full, graceful leader in Chris as she was herself.

Speaker 2 (50:05):
And I really feel like Grace was communicating.

Speaker 3 (50:07):
That in the best way she possibly could, that she
was very motivated to choose to help Chris in particular,
And so I feel like Grace kind of brought us
together in our friendship as well. Beyond trying to work together,
she kind of coordinated a bunch of the stuff.

Speaker 2 (50:20):
So for those who think that sounds way too. We
would take away with green of selt throat out the window.
That's fine, but I had to put that out there
here too.

Speaker 1 (50:27):
No, And you know what, it's our podcast. We can
talk all we want, so people don't. We don't actually
really care if anybody listens to it at all, So
let people do. It's just a bonus.

Speaker 2 (50:36):
But for those who want some science here, it is so.

Speaker 3 (50:39):
Our work in addition to these magical elements that I
don't think science has just caught up for. It's not
to say science won't prove some of these things, it's
just science is also limited. But we're also in this
really exciting time where science is catching up with some
of the things that are happening, and it's giving some
validation to the things that those of us who are
in that world of horses have known for a long time,

(50:59):
and now it's giving us some tools to really explain
it with different language.

Speaker 2 (51:03):
A big one, and this is a big.

Speaker 3 (51:04):
Foundation of the work that I've done, is through polyvagel
theory and connecting that with horses. So I was even
part of some research in Arizona as a participant in that,
allowing that getting deeper learning through that process with doctor
Ian Baldwin and the University of Arizona that was also
collaborating with the Heart Math Institute, and so looking at

(51:27):
how our physiology when we're in certain kinds of states,
impacts the horse, and how the horse impacts us, and
from this level of understanding our nervous systems as well,
so when we're in a calm and regulated state, how
that impacts the horses, and how when the horses are
in a calm and regulated state, how that impacts us,

(51:47):
But also when we're not, and how do we learn
and build relationship with each other when the horse is dysregulated,
when we're dysregulated, so we're feeling stressed, if we're feeling anxious, scared, angry,
whatever that might be, and learning how to identify different
sensations in the body and create a deeper sense of calm,

(52:09):
and even beyond that, a sense of being at home
in ourselves, a sense of really taking the mask off
and really being who we are, and that is reflected
in our nervous system, but there's those steps beyond it
as well, and then vice versa. When the horse is
feeling a certain way, maybe not feeling super calm, themselves,

(52:32):
how do we support them? And so it's always this
reciprocal relationship that we're learning to build with them, where
it's not about anyone being more important than the other.
It's that we're just two beings in the same space
at the same time, and how do we build mutually
respectful relationship, especially looking at it from this lens of
what's happening in our body, what's happening.

Speaker 2 (52:53):
In our nervous system.

Speaker 3 (52:55):
And so the more that we can build kind of
some muscle mass, so to speak, in the tool that
support our ability to go from stress to calm, and
the more we can build the muscle mass and the
tools that help us do that with others, the more
we're going to be able to do that in other
ways in our life. And so we can practice all
kinds of regulation tools alone, but it's not enough. We

(53:18):
are actually relational beings. We are meant to be in
relationship with others. We are meant to heal in relationship.
There's a wonderful quote by a person named Prentice Hendpill,
and they say that relational wounds require relational healing. And
I think that the horse experiences it's not just about
taking a horse through an obstacle course or you know,

(53:38):
petting the horse because and like you say, those things
can have benefit, riding horses that all that can have benefit,
But it's very different than being in a space with
a horse who has their full voice and choice, where
there's agency, where we're showing up as beings who get
to make choices of how we're engaging together, where there's
no other kind of tool to force anything to happen.

(53:58):
We just have to simply rely on what it means
to be in the moment together and there doesn't have
to be any particular way that that looks.

Speaker 2 (54:06):
There's no right or wrong.

Speaker 3 (54:07):
It's just an unfolding of what is that relationship and
there's so much learning to be had, and that's I
think where a lot of the relational healing takes place,
because now we're really learning about how we show up
in relationship and how we respond to another being who's
showing up a relationship without all the human story, without
all the talk about the trauma, without all the ways

(54:32):
that our brain can get in a way of taking
over the show, and so that we can really land
more deeply in how our body is responding and have
that as our primary mother tongue as our first language
that we're learning to speak again because it's actually our
first language of babies, the language of the nervous system.
Knowing whether we're feeling okay, whether we're not feeling okay,

(54:54):
and really trusting our bodies' responses as our main cues
of how to move through life. And so that doesn't
mean to trust when we're hypervigual, that we always have
to be hyper vigilant, but to trust that our body
also has wisdom and we can do a lot of
healing to help our body access that wisdom and that
place of keep knowing in that sense of home in
who we are. And so that's I think, you know,

(55:16):
in this moment, the best way I can kind of
describe that the horse work we're doing is really about
that relational healing from a level of looking at the
body and the nervous system.

Speaker 1 (55:25):
Yeah, that's such a great way to put it. I
took a course through Shift adapt and they had a
quote and there, your body tells the truth, your mind
will tell a story. And back to you, Chris with
grace showing you and she's literally eyeballing the whole time,
Like basically saying, dude, you can't just sit there and
think your way out of it. You've got to do
some shit. Watch me, and I'm going to race around.
And because we're meant as human beings, we're still creatures.
But unfortunately our big brain gets in the way and

(55:46):
things we can think out of it. And I know
in my path here to regulate my nervous system, that
was the problem. My brain, because I'm smart, and I
think I'm smarter than I probably am, was getting in
the way of actually doing the work. And the work
is go get sunlight on your eyes, maybe go to
deal with the horse, go in cold water, go for
a walk, all the things that we actually are meant

(56:07):
to do from a physiological level. But we try to
sit here and maybe if I just scroll a little
bit more or have my fourth bourbon, I can make
myself feel better. And of course those are not strategies.
They're gonna be successful.

Speaker 4 (56:19):
Yes, well, I of the one of the biggest lessons
Grace taught me was about abandonment. So I went into
the arena with an abandonment issue, a wound from feeling
abandoned by work, feeling abandoned by people in my life,
and Grace was wonderful at teaching me a great lesson

(56:40):
that you know, I was really trying to lean into
or connect with her, and she couldn't have been any
further way from me in that ring, and I was
literally begging with heart and soul and voice, Grace, please
come over here and be with me, and the lesson
there was no.

Speaker 2 (56:58):
You are strong enough on your own. If I come over.

Speaker 6 (57:01):
There right now, I'm going to be teaching you that
you need me and you need.

Speaker 2 (57:06):
People to get you up on your feet. And she
and the moment that I realized that in the ring
that this is.

Speaker 4 (57:12):
Not her ignoring me and being to me or whatever
all these things that were going through my brain, it was.

Speaker 6 (57:17):
Her showing me you are strong enough on your own
stand up. And after I realized.

Speaker 2 (57:24):
That, when when it was time to come out of
the arena, she came over.

Speaker 6 (57:28):
She came over to me and she put her head
down over my chest, near my heart, and it was
kind of like a I know, you know what we
just did in here, and it's like.

Speaker 4 (57:41):
You know, we're in policing. We can be very much
facts over feelings. The feelings part of me is well.

Speaker 2 (57:50):
Above the fact side now it is like.

Speaker 5 (57:54):
We were talking about work when we first came on here.

Speaker 6 (57:58):
I would love to go back in time and reduce
some of the interviews that I did in homicide as
the new me right now. I think that the connection
that I can make with people knowing that you know,
I'm an m path but this is new to me.
I didn't know Carmen's introduced me to, you know, my
mpath side.

Speaker 2 (58:15):
But I think I could do some of the interviews
that I.

Speaker 5 (58:18):
Did when I was leaning into facts and not feelings.

Speaker 6 (58:22):
Could probably do a way better interview these days than
I did back then.

Speaker 5 (58:27):
And it's, you know, because Grace led me down this
path of feeling.

Speaker 2 (58:31):
And being heart met and this being in my power.

Speaker 1 (58:38):
Right but kind of speaking for myself. And I've had
those same thoughts like, oh, I wish I knew this earlier.
I wouldn't have been ready for it earlier. I wouldn't
have fucking listened to it earlier. When I go do
presentations to a room full of cops and let's say
there's fifty people in there, forty five eventually will kind
of come onto my side. Andy'll be okay, Well, I
don't necessarily buy everything you're saying, but most of it

(58:58):
five will be. They might as well have their things.
You're up telling me to go fuck myself, but I'm
the five, Like they don't know that what I'm talking about.
I'm actually talking to them like I'm talking to me,
because I would have been that guy who had been like,
I don't want to hear your wellness bullshit. I'm not
hearing about talk about breathing and poly bagel.

Speaker 7 (59:12):
Fuck off.

Speaker 1 (59:13):
I need to go arrest a murderer. Right, Like when
we were a homicide together and some of the best
work we ever did, but the most toxic environment, like
we were and I actively participated. We were awful to
each other. Like I said, we were like sled dogs
who if we're not busy enough, we're biting each other,
and if we're too busy, we're biting each other. You
have to have this perfect amount of work so we
could wear ourselves out. But I wouldn't have been ready.

(59:35):
So I've kind of been able to go, well, I'm
just gonna ditch that because it's nothing I could do
with it anyway.

Speaker 4 (59:40):
And now it's funny to say that about the homicide piece,
and that I can probably attribute this to some other
places I worked in.

Speaker 2 (59:47):
I have a lot of.

Speaker 4 (59:48):
Shame around the way I operated as my old self
in there, and the way I created little mes to say,
and the expectations that I had, and.

Speaker 2 (01:00:03):
The you know, look at this picture.

Speaker 4 (01:00:05):
This is so gross like that. I wish I could
go back in time and change it.

Speaker 5 (01:00:10):
I know I can't. I when you know better, you
do better.

Speaker 2 (01:00:14):
Right. Yeah, So I will be going back to work.

Speaker 4 (01:00:17):
I will be leaning more into the wu who side,
if you want to call it.

Speaker 2 (01:00:23):
That, I totally believe in it.

Speaker 5 (01:00:25):
I'll be leaning more into like how are people feeling?

Speaker 6 (01:00:30):
Yeah, it's going to be interesting this next journey of mine,
going back after having done all this work that I've
done and doing a lot of it with Corse.

Speaker 1 (01:00:39):
Since you'll be such a powerful voice in that space though,
like again being a senior officer, having been there, done that,
with working the homicide, working critical and something like that's yeah,
against credibility, say those two things. You don't have to
tell any stories. Oh you're working on homesite cool. I
will listen to what you tell me. More about what
you have to say right there. You don't need to
the old way of policing seems to be I'm gonna
give you my resume, show you all these pictures of

(01:01:01):
this horrible shit that I dealt with, and that's how
I'm established credibility. That doesn't work anymore. And I think
cops are sick and tired of going to probably all
first responders going to a conference or whatever, and someone
up there is just puking trauma all over the room
because they haven't really healed themselves. And I think people
are kind of like, I can't fucking do that anymore.
It's not doing me any good, and I feel worse
when I leave that room.

Speaker 2 (01:01:22):
Yeah, And.

Speaker 4 (01:01:24):
I do want to say going back to that point
about you know, therapy, Therapy is great. I would love
it if everyone had a therapist that they loved and
could tell everything too. And medications is also key, but
it's just medication.

Speaker 2 (01:01:46):
Think of it as being in a hole and there's
a ladder.

Speaker 6 (01:01:49):
Medication is a couple of the rungs on the ladder,
but the rest of the rungs is the work that
you have to do, and you have to find those
things that work for you.

Speaker 4 (01:01:57):
I would love to see, you know, echline wellness be
opened up because I think talking specifically about w s
I V, I don't think they know what to do
with people with psychological trauma.

Speaker 2 (01:02:10):
To be honest, I.

Speaker 5 (01:02:13):
W s IV is workplace safety and Insurance boards.

Speaker 6 (01:02:17):
So when let's say an officer, for example, is off
work long term, they can make a claim for post
traumatic injury to ws I.

Speaker 2 (01:02:26):
B tie it back to work, and they will.

Speaker 6 (01:02:29):
Get the benefit of their support to get.

Speaker 2 (01:02:33):
Back to work.

Speaker 6 (01:02:34):
Unfortunately, uh, we're not people with post psychological trauma where
we don't have a broken lag or a broken foot.
Each person needs something specific. And so when when you
make me ask for EQUI assisted wellness, the answer for

(01:02:55):
me was no, But I.

Speaker 2 (01:02:56):
Knew that worked for me.

Speaker 6 (01:02:58):
So we need to kind of widen our scope and thinking.

Speaker 5 (01:03:04):
That there's more out there for officers to heal.

Speaker 2 (01:03:07):
And there's safe spaces.

Speaker 4 (01:03:09):
Like I'm inherently suspicious because of my job. So when
I got to Horse Sense North, I'm kind of like,
what's this place all about? But you learn pretty quickly
that you've heard from Carmen's resume, right, She's had her
own traumas, she's dedicated her life's work to first responders. Yeah,

(01:03:34):
I felt so safe up there. My hypervigilance was down.
I felt, I felt heard and seen and listened to.

Speaker 2 (01:03:42):
And yeah, I would love.

Speaker 6 (01:03:45):
For horses to be a bigger part in the healing
for people postumatic stress injury.

Speaker 7 (01:03:50):
Well, for sure.

Speaker 2 (01:03:51):
I so appreciate that, Chris, And I also just want
to say, like, that's where the whole statement of like
facts over feelings, I think.

Speaker 3 (01:03:59):
Is so getting it wrong, because feelings are a form
of facts. The way that the body is sensing things
is part of the facts of life in the sense
that like, when you're in a place that you don't
feel safe, you're just not going to be able to
operate well.

Speaker 2 (01:04:14):
And I think we're seeing.

Speaker 3 (01:04:15):
That so much within the first responder world, where recruitment
and retention is such a major challenge for so many places,
and in our programs working with so many different people
in their different organizations.

Speaker 2 (01:04:30):
We don't have trauma talk.

Speaker 3 (01:04:31):
We don't go into that kind of thing here, even
though we're doing a trauma recovery program.

Speaker 2 (01:04:35):
It's really about the body healing.

Speaker 3 (01:04:37):
That said, what comes up every time, even though we're
like not going into deep stories, but what people cannot
help but go into, especially in a group environment, is
how much sanctuary trauma.

Speaker 2 (01:04:48):
They're really navigating.

Speaker 3 (01:04:49):
How much they just do not feel safe within the
organization that they're part of, with their peers, with their
with people in leadership, you know, having their their feelings
consistently invalidated, having that inner knowing that they were walking
with of not being well, having to hide that and
mask that so desperately because it's not a safe environment

(01:05:11):
to be supported with that for whatever reasons.

Speaker 2 (01:05:13):
So we can carry on with.

Speaker 3 (01:05:15):
Statements like that, but ultimately the facts of that are
coming through that without validating how we actually feel, we're
going to continue to have major, major challenges in all
these different areas. So it's amazing to get to witness
people over and over again within these structures within the
public safety world, leaning into a very different side of

(01:05:37):
themselves without having to let go of everything that makes
them strong and powerful and excellent at their jobs. I
don't think it has to be a trade off. That's
me coming as an outsider's view, but that's also the
feedback and getting from people, And it's really so inspiring
for me to witness healing no matter what world we're
coming from, and I think that that's really what healing means.

(01:05:57):
Is to become whole people, to be whole again, to
integrate who we really are. And if we're trying to
separate and section off this whole section of who we
are because that's that's considered too u woo, or that's
too much feelings or this or that, and we're we
end up being these fractured humans trying to walk around
masking as these whole people, but we're just not.

Speaker 2 (01:06:17):
So how can we become whole again?

Speaker 3 (01:06:19):
And I just whether it's horses, whether it's I spats
like you're saying, well, no matter what the modality, to
just pursue the things that actually help us feel whole.
And I want the organizations and all the structures and
all the insurance companies.

Speaker 2 (01:06:31):
To catch up and make it really really easy.

Speaker 3 (01:06:33):
But I also always want to say, if you're someone
who's listening, who's feeling fractured, pursue the things that make
you feel whole, no matter who's giving you permission to
do it, no matter.

Speaker 2 (01:06:43):
Who's funding you or not.

Speaker 3 (01:06:44):
Find a way, because if we don't, we just become
more and more disconnected from who we are, and then
we get into really dangerous territory.

Speaker 7 (01:06:52):
Yeah, I know what and.

Speaker 8 (01:06:54):
It is when we've said a lots on it, it's
not one thing. It's all things, Like it's horse therapy,
it's EMDR's medication. Potentially, it's going into the forest, it's smudging,
it's going into the sweat ceremonies, like it's.

Speaker 7 (01:07:08):
All of the things.

Speaker 8 (01:07:09):
And so many people in our first responder world think
that wellness is fitness and it's just if I go
through some weights around or I go for a run,
I'm well, you're not well.

Speaker 7 (01:07:18):
You might be in a really great shape.

Speaker 8 (01:07:19):
Your body might be a really great shape, but your
your spirit and your mind are are fractured. And and
and some people you watch I've watched people, and we've
both seen people that over exercise and over and that's
how they're they're trying to run away. It's almost like
they're trying to run away from their trauma rather than
addressing it.

Speaker 7 (01:07:36):
And they're thinking that they can push it out of
their system.

Speaker 8 (01:07:37):
That's not to say we don't need to move, because
we do, but at the same time, we need to
find multiple things to make us well. And and then
also realizing that on your journey and I and this
is just mine.

Speaker 7 (01:07:47):
I'm not a therapist.

Speaker 8 (01:07:47):
Obviously, it's okay to have days where you're not okay, right,
It's okay to have a day like, all of a sudden,
I felt anxious the other day.

Speaker 5 (01:07:55):
I don't know.

Speaker 7 (01:07:55):
I was sitting there, we were watching TV, and all.

Speaker 8 (01:07:58):
Of a sudden, I have this wave of anxiety come
over for me, and my wife's like, what's going on.

Speaker 7 (01:08:01):
I'm like, I have no idea, And it doesn't matter.
It's they know. And then and it's funny.

Speaker 8 (01:08:07):
Because I have a dog who's not he would have been.
He could probably be a true Alma dog, but he's
my trauma dog.

Speaker 7 (01:08:13):
He could not be a trauma dog for me. For
you know, yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:08:16):
There's no other human. He yells at everybody who goes
that's he's gonna trauma.

Speaker 7 (01:08:20):
I was just gonna say he was kind of like
Grace at the beginning.

Speaker 9 (01:08:22):
If you if if down the road, Ash calm down
Mail anyway. But as soon as if any if any
time I had he can be another part of the house.
And if all of a sudden I have a weird
anxiety attack, he just he's right beside me, and it's
it's they and but it's having an animal, having a horse.

Speaker 7 (01:08:40):
I'd love to have a horse, but my back hair
is not pigging out me too.

Speaker 8 (01:08:43):
But yeah, I just and I think that's what everyone's
saying here is it's all the things, and the systems
have to catch up to all the things. Because the
system's number one we all know is medication. That's the
first thing they push and sometimes that works. They haven't
caught up to micro dosing with LSD either, micro dosing
with psilocybin.

Speaker 7 (01:09:00):
They haven't caught up to that, which also works. They
haven't caught up to horse therapy. They haven't caught up.
They're starting to be.

Speaker 8 (01:09:06):
They're better, a little bit better with trauma dogs, right,
So yeah, the systems just needs to shut up and
realize it's not one thing and find what works for people.

Speaker 1 (01:09:15):
And ultimately would be cheaper than having a whole bunch
of people off work for months or years at a
time and then you're having all the resourcing, retention, recruiting
issues that we're having. So there needs to be a
big system shake up with and I'm not saying because
I like horse sense for sure is going to you
have obviously a very robust program. We don't need a

(01:09:37):
fly by night person who may or may not have
horse experience and suddenly they're putting people in dangerous situations.
There has to be and I don't think there is
any regulation there certainly is an Alberta. Pretty much anybody
can just call themselves a horse therapist and away you go.
So there needs to be that kind of body, not
so much that it's so bureaucratic that doesn't happen, but
just to go okay, no, this one's recognized. Here's the testimonials, here,

(01:09:57):
it works. Horse Sense North is now part of the
if it's package. If you want to spend your money there,
go ahead and then hopefully on your journey your wellness.

Speaker 2 (01:10:06):
Yeah. Absolutely, I couldn't agree with you more.

Speaker 3 (01:10:09):
I do get concerned within my industry because there really
is no regulation. So it's good for people to kind
of take away as well that if they were choosing
a place, to make sure it really has the background
that makes them feel safe enough to be there with
those referrals, et cetera.

Speaker 2 (01:10:23):
And I really love what you shared there about.

Speaker 3 (01:10:28):
Not judging when you're having a moment I'm not feeling okay,
like not having to know what it's about even and
just to give a little quick horse analogy of how
important that is. When I was working with Grace and
many other horses who have come from traumatic backgrounds. Actually,
all of our horses here comes from some kind of
traumatic background, as most people have too. Right when I
approach the horse who's maybe having some kind of meltdown.

(01:10:52):
If Grace was having a moment where she was really
stressed and she was really struggling, if I approached her
like I had five minutes to help her resolve it,
it would take all day. If I approached her like
I had all day, it would take five minutes. So
how much are we really making ourselves suffer by trying
to force ourselves to speed up her process when maybe

(01:11:12):
our process is just fine and just perfect as it is.

Speaker 1 (01:11:14):
That's such a great point. Yeah, I only I have
to get dinner ready, kids are blah blah, I gotta
go get to hockey or whatever it is. I got
ten minutes to get Well, that's not gonna happen. That's
just poured gas on that yet. Yeah, that's such a
good point. So I know we're getting long on time here.
Just what's kind of next for you, Chris, Because you've
talked about going back to work. But so how do

(01:11:35):
you what do you do as far as looking after
your well being on a day to day basis, and
how are you preparing for going back to work.

Speaker 4 (01:11:44):
So I I my wellness plan was not good when
I was at work, and my wellness plan going back.

Speaker 2 (01:11:53):
It's me first. It's me first. I will still do
you know, I'm going to do my job the way
that I did before of one hundred percent. But it's
not going to interfere with me.

Speaker 4 (01:12:06):
So it's gonna mean still I still go up to
the farm.

Speaker 5 (01:12:10):
I work with Carmen, I you know, work around the grounds.

Speaker 4 (01:12:14):
I love that I can be near the horses. That's
not gonna stop. Also, I think.

Speaker 5 (01:12:19):
It's it's gonna be real important.

Speaker 2 (01:12:20):
To me, and you touched on it early. I will
be flying the flag when I go back to work.

Speaker 4 (01:12:24):
You know, there's a lot of things that my work
does well as far as wellness goes.

Speaker 2 (01:12:31):
So I'm gonna be tapping into those things.

Speaker 6 (01:12:33):
So I'll still be doing my meditation, I'll be working out.
I mean I've done sweat lodges in the past. I'll
be looking down the road to maybe do it another
one of those I found those to be incredible as well.
But you know, I don't ever foreseeing me being fully
ill from my post traumatic stress injury. It's just it's

(01:12:56):
it's part of my It's part of me now, right.
So I you have those days where our feeling anxiety
and I just know that that's my body telling me
something's coming or something's up, and I need to stop
and listen to that.

Speaker 5 (01:13:07):
So I think that's the biggest takeaway for.

Speaker 6 (01:13:10):
Me, is the listening to my body, right, because I
just didn't.

Speaker 2 (01:13:15):
I missed all those subtle and not subtle cues that
were happening.

Speaker 4 (01:13:21):
But yeah, I have a very robust day in and
day out plant and it does include meditation and.

Speaker 6 (01:13:27):
Working out and staying connected with Horse Sense North and
you know, doing a lot of those spiritual.

Speaker 2 (01:13:33):
Things like the sweat lodges and that.

Speaker 5 (01:13:35):
So yeah, I encourage anybody.

Speaker 2 (01:13:38):
Out there that's kind of just you're not You're finding.

Speaker 4 (01:13:43):
Talk therapy and the medication, it's just not where it's
at for you. I mean, that seems to be the
belt that people wear, but why not wear some where.

Speaker 2 (01:13:54):
Suspenders with that belt. The suspenders could be going to
Horse Thanks North.

Speaker 6 (01:13:57):
Could be doing something spiritual joining us, peer support, meeting
things like that, so the.

Speaker 5 (01:14:03):
People that know who I am can also reach out
and let's talk.

Speaker 1 (01:14:09):
Awesome. Carmen's same question, what's kind of Obviously you have
a very robust program here, what's next sense or next planned?

Speaker 3 (01:14:17):
Well, although we have a robust program, we don't have
robust funding, so that is what we are constantly on
the search for.

Speaker 2 (01:14:24):
I also do more and more upstream.

Speaker 3 (01:14:27):
Work, doing different kinds of leadership training, So I'm really
excited to be doing some of that more these days,
also within some first responder agencies, so trying to take
some of that horse sense, if you will, off of
the farm and doing that with some really neat models
and programming that kind of thing. So really excited to
be getting more opportunities to do that because it also
makes me feel like I'm supporting the people who come

(01:14:48):
here because it's a way of kind of bridging the
world's a little bit. So yeah, working on getting funding,
working on getting that program running again. We've run six
of them so far. We have a lot of individual
sessions and private book workshops that kind of stuff, but
we try to have that one program above and beyond
so that we're not actually charging anyone from the perplex
safety personnel.

Speaker 2 (01:15:07):
World, and it can be fully covered.

Speaker 3 (01:15:09):
But that is a tough thing to figure out, and
we are going to continue figuring it out until the
day that I die, and I will make sure that
we get more programs running soon. So we have a
wait list, but if people are interested, they can always
sign up, because you never know, things could happen quickly
where you have lots of irons in the fire, and
we're just going to keep keep pushing and knocking on
the doors and banging on the doors to find ways

(01:15:32):
to make this happen and make it accessible because I
just really really am super passionate about serving those who
serve others as a member of society, as a member
of my community, as a person who is alive today
because of you. It is so important to me to
do this work, and I thank you all for your service,
and I'm so grateful that I get a chance to
give back.

Speaker 1 (01:15:53):
Thank you so much. Well, don you do a closing here,
but we'll just make sure that you send us information
we'll put on the show notes. They can get a
hold of Horse and s North and the various programs
that are offered so hugely appreciate both you coming. Get
you to hanged off here, not sign off just yet,
but Danny or were just a quick closing here.

Speaker 8 (01:16:10):
I just wanted to just to knowledge that we are
recording this on threety six land, the hold and home
of the Creed, the Dana, the Soto, the Mayan Shnabe
people who have walked across these land time memoriam and
I just want to you know, I when I do
Land acknowledgements, I don't.

Speaker 7 (01:16:27):
Like to read them off.

Speaker 8 (01:16:28):
But this whole conversation made me think of something, because
horses weren't actually on Turtle Island until they just weren't here.

Speaker 7 (01:16:38):
They were brought over.

Speaker 2 (01:16:41):
No, no, that's actually part of the colonizer story. Oh
I did not.

Speaker 7 (01:16:45):
Well, now you're thank you bunked.

Speaker 3 (01:16:47):
And so for example, there's actually these o Jibway spirit
horses that are from this kind of area that we're
having to.

Speaker 2 (01:16:53):
Be kept in secret and bread secretly.

Speaker 3 (01:16:55):
They were saved because I had a very parallel history
to the indigenous people of this area, and there's many
stories of that on Turtle Island, where horses absolutely were
here first, and there's still some lineages here. There just
a lot of them were killed off, a lot of
them were happy to be in secret. But yes, that
is now officially debunked.

Speaker 7 (01:17:11):
Thank you so much. I had not been told them.

Speaker 8 (01:17:13):
I've had many Indigenous people tell me that the horses
were not from Turtle Island, so thank you so much.
Well now I'm gonna even say it again. That makes
it even more important. And the word and Cree for
horses messittim, which means big dog, because a tim is
a dog and messittim is a horse.

Speaker 7 (01:17:29):
And I think that just shows how the indigenous.

Speaker 8 (01:17:32):
People saw that similar connection that those two animals had
with people. And they just are both beautiful animals. And
it was great to have this conversation. So love you,
love it you

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