Wednesday, June 1, 2016

My Horse is Maybe a Rockstar Diva Princess (or not)

So Karen started this thing where you take a fun personality quiz for your horse and then get a cool personality profile. It's like the equine meyers briggs, which is super cool (if you're a raging nerd, which I am).

Anyways. I'm sorry I forget who all has done it since then, but a bunch of people took the quiz and were like "wow look at this great insight I got for training my horse based on an analysis of his personality", which is great.

So I jetted myself off over there to take it.

And was immediately stymied.

Here's question one:

1) At feed time, does your horse eat in the top half of the pecking order?

a) Always
b) Sometimes
c) Never

That's cute. They forgot to include an answer for C. It would go like this:

d) spent whole life in stall--has no concept of social boundaries--banned from herd interactions due to immense risk to human life
these might be in his herd. not sure.
I mean, there was one winter where he lived outside with one other horse for a few months but uh... yeah so he ate his buddy's tail and the lining of his buddies blanket and was completely uncatchable. We have tried him in several different group turnout situations since then with varying levels of fail. He plays like a lunatic, chases the other horses, becomes impossible to catch, oh and the funnest part: when you try to catch his pasture buddies, he will chase them over the top of you because HE'S NOT DONE PLAYING WITH THEM YET.

It's flat dangerous to human life and not worth the risk to anyone. Including him. Because he annoys the hell out of the other horses.
what this pretty boy?

Well ok so that's inconvenient. Let's move on to question two:

2) Is your horse easy to get to go forward?

a) Always
b) Sometimes
c) Never

And then there's C's answer:

d) depends if you mean "move from this spot" (yes easy) or truly go forward (ummmmm depends on the day) and even then, yeah, I guess depends on the day.

I dunno how many questions are on the quiz, but so far there really hasn't been a reliable answer for him. Let's try question three:

3) Is your horse interested in investigating new objects?

a) Always
b) Sometimes
c) Never

Again, I can't really answer this. Sort of? Not really. It depends. I tried introducing the yoga ball this winter and he literally had no interest. I had a tarp blow up in front of him and he didn't even blink. He didn't used to be afraid of judges at dressage shows, but now he sort of is. He's never cared about little white dressage fences... so I wouldn't say he investigates things? Let's just write in another line:

d) Courage does what Courage wants
this one time, he wanted to carry my helmet around


I mean, I could pick "sometimes" but that's literally half-assing it and telling me nothing about my own horse. Ahem. So question four:

4) Does your horse like to be touched, petted, or groomed? 

a) Always
b) Sometimes
c) Never

HOW IS THIS A QUESTION? You'd think they could throw me an easy one somewhere. Courage is a very, very interactive horse--he likes to be up in your face and eat cookies and get attention, for sure. But when it comes to people touching him (vs him touching them), it depends. He's very sensitive, tends to be stand-offish, and has strong opinions (surprise! not!) about by whom and where and for how long and what they're doing. Some days he wants me to scratch his neck for an hour. Some days he wants everyone to go away. The difference between those days is in his mind alone. We'll make a C answer up again:

d) Be the molester, not the molest-ee. 
WHO'S TOUCHING WHOM NOW
I could go on--the quiz likes to ask lots of questions about hierarchy and herd dynamics. I think I already covered that pretty well earlier, but 6 years in a stall does not a socially-well-adjusted horse make. Courage is going through a weird delayed adolescence/something that isn't good or safe for anyone. He doesn't live in a herd. He doesn't know how. Yeah, maybe he could learn how, but I don't keep a horse for the purpose of turning it into a wild mustang and my interest in setting him up for serious herd-induced injury is zero.

And then there are things like "Does your horse need to have a purpose?" to which I say "dear god I hope the only one in this relationship having an existential crisis is me" and "Does your horse like to be controlled?" which is probably the only easy question on the test. HELLZ TO DA NO BITCHEZZZZ.

My best bet for quiz results is just to read through the answers and see which one sounds the most like Courage, but that takes the fun quiz element out of it.

Which is to say.

My horse may or may not be a rockstar. THE WORLD WILL NEVER KNOW.

19 comments:

  1. Possibly your most classic Courage post ever

    ReplyDelete
  2. Courage is way too special for such mainstream quizzes.

    ReplyDelete
  3. This is fantastic, and that quiz was actually SPOT-ON!

    ReplyDelete
  4. ROFL. I had the same trouble with that quiz! I was like... uhm.... maybe? sort of? sometimes? it depends? But then I literally answer every question with B and feel like I cheated.

    ReplyDelete
  5. My recommendation: buy the book. It's worth the few bucks just as entertainment IMO

    I'm not a huge fan of quiz questions with limited multiple choice answers either. The quiz did work better for Kachina than for Courage, but really, it was reading the initial chapters in the book that was the easier way to classify her. I feel like reading those sections would make it pretty obvious where Courage lies on the spectrum. For each personality trait, it describes it in broad strokes and gives examples of real horses. For example, if you make a correction while riding your horse and his reaction is to buck or kick at your let, etc, you may have a dominant horse (is it just me or does that sound like a Courage thing).

    Just from reading your blog, I would guess that Courage is Dominant and Energetic for sure. The other categories are tougher, but my guess would be Curious and Aloof. If I'm correct, Courage might be The Macho Man :)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. http://www.horsepersonality.com/deca-machoman.html

      Hm that does sound suspiciously like him.

      Delete
  6. I had the same trouble as well- Carmen lives in herd of 'two' so how does that work. In the end I read the descriptions and decided she as a Perfectionist. :)

    ReplyDelete
  7. Tucker came up as the People Pleaser and it suits him to a T. Courage is beyond definition. Courage does what Courage wants.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Your posts never fail to crack me up -- Courage sounds like he is one of a kind!

    ReplyDelete
  9. Haha! I got the wild card for Oak... maybe Courage is a wild card too?

    ReplyDelete
  10. Yeah...I had trouble picking an answer on many of them for Emi.

    ReplyDelete
  11. Spider got "The Prizefighter: This horse has opinions and is ready to defend them. It is in your best interest to listen to him. To get the job done you must work with him. He will have numerous rules and requirements. He will also get you to the winner's circle when you have developed a working relationship. Unlike the Rock Star that is there for the glory and recognition, the Prize Fighter is there because they love the sport and the competition." That's actually pretty damn accurate.

    I see a lot of Spider in Courage, the only real difference between them is that I've been working with Spider for 12 years. So, keep your hopes up, only another 10 years before you get something you might be able to work with when he's having a good day and you've met all his demands!

    ReplyDelete
  12. Ha! Boca got: http://www.horsepersonality.com/slcf-steadyeddy.html

    No surprise there. I think there is something to this quiz!

    ReplyDelete
  13. "dear god I hope the only one in this relationship having an existential crisis is me" LOL! I am cracking up at this entire post.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Glad I'm not the only one who thought that was hysterical.

      Delete

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...