BalanceWork is all about making sure your horse can use every body part correctly without restrictions or pain and stay that way.
BalanceWork is not a form of chiropractic.
It's a unique method of gentle bodywork that addresses both muscle and bone balance.
BalanceWork was created and developed by Mandy Mankin (formerly Mandy Hagler). Mandy was raised on a cattle ranch in Gillette, Wyoming. Growing up, she spent most of her days on a horse, either moving cattle or practicing in the arena. She competed in many disciplines, including Western pleasure, trail, showmanship, reining, cutting, English, jumping, barrel racing, pole bending, goat tying, breakaway roping, and team roping. In high school, she focused on rodeo. Mandy entered every event a girl could enter, winning many state individual and all-around championships. Her senior year, she was the 1991 National High School Breakaway Roping Champion, which helped secure a full-ride scholarship to the University of Wyoming. She was part of the UW Women's National Championship Team at the CNFR in 1993.
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While in high school and college, Mandy spent a lot of time learning how to help horses her father purchased to sell that had "issues." Some were bad at the gate and some were not working at all up to their potential. She learned a lot about how to read a horse and what their body language meant in order to get the horse working well again and sell them to a good home.
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She credits long-time friend and mentor, Bill Hackett, from Recluse, Wyoming, for encouraging her to start working on horses. He was generous enough to share his knowledge, and continued to do so on a regular basis until his passing in 2023. Without his renowned expertise and teaching, BalanceWork would not exist.
Mandy learned quickly, however, that she did not possess the same talents that he did. Bill could watch a horse travel and tell you a lot about what was happening in their body by the way they moved. Mandy felt she did not have his ability to "see" what was going on. So, she started using her ability with body language to ask the horses questions and get responses that made sense to her. Anywhere the horse would show soreness, she would try to figure out (through Bill's shared knowledge, courses she'd taken, certifications, books, and research), what the cause of that soreness could be.
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She is quick to say, no matter what she thinks is going on in the horse's body, she always goes by what each individual horse tells her through body language. That's also how she finds out for sure whether or not every issue has been corrected.
