What is the lore project?

The Lore Project is a long-term, relationship-based initiative within Liberty Equine Assisted Program (LEAP) focused on the intentional development of exceptional therapeutic riding and program horses. It is also a deeply experiential learning pathway for participants who are ready to engage in sustained, responsible partnership with a horse over time.

Unlike short-term programs or skills-based trainings, the Lore Project centers the slow, relational work required to help a horse truly become suited for therapeutic environments—emotionally regulated, adaptable, and trustworthy in the presence of vulnerable humans.

This work cannot be rushed, outsourced, or achieved through technique alone. It requires consistency, attunement, and the willingness to stay present through uncertainty and growth—for both the horse and the human involved.

Demi Duc Lore was born in 2001. At seventeen, he was donated to a therapeutic riding program in Kentucky. By conventional standards, he should have been an ideal candidate: elegant, intelligent, physically capable. But Lore did not fit easily into expectations.

The first time I laid eyes on him, I knew he was meant for me.

Lore was fast, stubborn, bull-headed, and deeply opinionated. He failed therapy horse training twice because those who believed in him refused to give up on him. He was considered too much—too reactive, too strong-willed, too difficult to mold into what the program required. What was labeled failure was, in truth, misalignment.

Lore came with me instead.

Over the years, he traveled across the country by my side, teaching me more about patience, communication, horsemanship, and listening than any horse ever has. He demanded clarity, consistency, and honesty. He could not be rushed, coerced, or managed through force. He required relationship.

Lore did not become mentally ready for therapy work until he was twenty-two years old.

By then, he had shaped me as much as I had shaped him.

Lore was a Canadian Horse, a critically endangered breed known for its hardiness, intelligence, elegance, and unyielding loyalty—known as the "Little Iron Horse" for their devotion and adaptability. Part of the Lore Project exists to honor this breed and increase awareness of its extraordinary capabilities, particularly in therapeutic and service-oriented work.

In his early 20's, Lore was diagnosed with EPM, a neurological disease that ultimately crippled him. Paradoxically, this diagnosis became a turning point. Physical limitation slowed the work, forcing a different pace—one rooted in listening rather than expectation.

In learning to work with Lore as he needed to be worked with, I was required to confront my own nervous system—one long caught in fight-or-flight. As I learned to regulate myself, to soften, to respond rather than push, Lore responded in kind. Ancient trauma—both his and mine—began to heal through presence, consistency, and trust.

In this space, Lore became an exceptional therapy horse.

Lore died suddenly on November 9, 2025, after nearly a decade of memories together. He was laid to rest at LEAP, where his presence continues to shape the land and the work carried out upon it.

And yet, his legacy is alive—in the horses who are given time rather than timelines, in the people who are allowed to arrive without being fixed, and in the community that continues to gather in the space he helped create. Lore reminds us that readiness is not a race, and that becoming often happens later—and deeper—than anyone expects.