Monday, January 30, 2012

Horse Personality Test

Just for funnsies I decided to "test" Bacardi and Guinness.  There are two horse personality type tests I enjoy doing.  One is Parelli's Horse-Analities wheel and the other is from Hockley's Is Your Horse a Rock Star? book.  Here are the results...


Bacardi 
According to Parelli, Bacardi is a Right Brain Extrovert. The interesting thing for me is I had instinctively done the exercises with her that are calming.  Parelli writes,
"This horse constantly needs reassurance.  he gets confused easily and then gets afraid, so he needs you to keep things simple, which will help him relax; especially since that is not something that comes easily for him around humans."
 According to Dessa Hockley, Bacardi is "The Boss".  Hockley writes,
" Do: Find them a job.  Show them respect.  Show them leadership.  Work in the box.  Build a solid foundation.  Don't: Skip training steps.  Pamper and fuss over them.  Be emotional.  Fight with them.  Play with them."  
I can see these traits in her.  Her biggest downfall is that her early training wasn't at an excellent standard.  She has gaping holes in what she knows and is able to do.  Steps were quite clearly skipped.  I've gone back to basics and have been retraining a lot of concepts and she's made major improvements.

Guinness is a bit young to get a firm idea about his personality.  For example I don't know yet if he's social or independent.  Right now he appears social but is still a baby and prone to baby things.

Guinness:
Parelli - my best guess is that he's a Left Brain Extrovert.

"This horse is a playful character that needs interesting things to do.  He is obsessed with learning and needs variety and new things to keep it fun." 
Hockley - my best guess is that he's a Rock Star.  (Dominant, Energetic, Curious, Friendly)  *The only personality factor I could see being different is if he'd be Submissive instead of Dominant which would make him a "The Goddess".  Here's what Hockley has to say about Rock Stars,
"Rock Stars are confident and charismatic.  They are expressive and strong minded.  They love to show you what they know but are hard to get to focus on the small details of the task.  They are found in many competitive arenas, usually at the top of their field."
For me, the fun part is seeing if this is indeed who Guinness is going to be.  The other thing I wonder is if it's nature vs nurture.  Is Guinness who he is because of his upbringing?  And is Bacardi who she is because of hers?  Interesting thoughts.  
 
 
 

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Hi Andrea, just saw you gave me an award. Thanks so much, i love reading your blog too, when i actually get afast enough internet connnection to read anything!!

I havnt actually done much research or reading inot horse personalities, but they defintly do differ in the way you work with them, intorvert opose to extrovert. Something your very aware of as a trainer. il have to read some of parelli's stuff on this one of these days...ive got freinds who swear by it

MTWaggin said...

Now a really fun thing is to let someone else test them and see if you come to the same conclusions - someone that doesn't really know them or their past. I find that my version of my dogs personalities sometimes aren't at ALL what others see in them.