Parelli Horsenality Dos and Don'ts

It's not confusing if you understand what's going on in the situation....if you are reading the horse correctly and know what you're looking at/for, if you know what to look for in yourself, and if you know without a shadow of a doubt what to do at any given moment when the horse does something unexpected. The Horsenality chart has given me a huge "arrow in my quiver" and has helped me be able to get results with horses ten times quicker.

I have to say, I don't think any one program has THE answer, but it is foolish to dismiss potentially valuable information because you don't like the commercialism of Parelli, or you disagree that horses can be pigeon holed into 4 categories. I have started approaching my horse differently, not because he fit into a neat description a la parelli, but because I figured someone who has trained hundreds if not thousands of horses might have some valuable advice to give. Do I think that Parelli is the only way? No way. Do I think I can learn a new approach and way of thinking about why my horse responds in certain ways? Absolutely. We have made huge progress in a very short time just from me changing my approach. Don't bash something because you think it isn't for you. Everyone you meet can teach you something, even if it is just about the way you DON'T want to be.

My horse is EXTREME left brained extrovert! Except if we didn't give him heck for some of the things he does he'd be WILD. Always willing to learn new ways though, but for now discipline on the ground is my best friend or I'd be a chew toy and the cross-ties would be history.

I can not for the life of me find one of those categories for Diesel. He varies between the four. =/

Ditto for Scout. I went through the whole questionnaire and the circle chart and everything, and he's really evenly spead across all 4 as well.

Lacey is a hardcore left brain extrovert.
I'm not much of a Parelli fan but I do like the idea of figuring out your horses personality and going from there. Just like humans, horses have one or a few learning styles that they use a lot but nobody can get the perfect results from every single learning method.
Even though I don't use Parelli, back when I first started with Lacey I did use the horsenality thing to figure out how to get to her, and after a year I'm seeing major results from not pushing her beyond her boundaries (without the ideas from the chart I feel it would have most likely taken me a year to figure out what she needs). Now she shows me how far I can push and we have a much deeper communication, she looks to me for security, quite literally, and she's figured out how to tell me that I'm pushing too hard without blowing up.

It's helped me get to her which I like but, I also feel that people could seriously misuse it.

Sometimes the horse will have things in each quadrant. That just means you have a more complex horse! If the horse just has dots in one quadrant then the horse isn't very complex, he's pretty darn easy! My warmblood had extreme characteristics in each quadrant of the Horsenality chart when I first got him, and now he only has dots in the two Left Brain areas. That's because through his development in the program he's become more balanced (mentally and emotionally if we are talking about the chart) so his Right Brain tendencies have all but completely dissapeared while his Left Brain characteristics have lessened in intensity and have moved more toward the center of the chart. This is what you want.

Maybe because you simply can't apply human characteristics to animals. It is one of the main failing we tend to do and instead of treating them like the horse they are we have to apply something that we are familiar with to make it easier to understand.

The old horse trainers understood the different nature within the horse without assigning human labeling to them and did just fine. I have no problem either in understanding the possible responses of my horse without assigning a humanized label to him.

However it does sell DVDs etc and put money in someones pockets so someone is gaining something.

Ha ha. Sometimes I give myself a mental smack for giving a horse too much of a human characteristc. Like you said, though, it can make it easier to understand, and I do end up anthropomorphizing a bit, especially when I'm trying to explain to a non-horsey friend or relative what I'm doing.

In a sense, it seems like attaching human labels can almost take away from a horse's "horseyness." Sometimes, I love my horses ten times more than ever, just because they don't think and act like people can!

Pat specifically talks about NOT anthropromorphizing animals. Pat's mentors DID categorize horses this way, they just didn't tell him straight out like Parelli is doing right now. That's why they were so amazing with horses, and that's one of the reasons Pat is so good with horses now.