Horsenality

Everyone thinks England is the place for rain... but believe me, Colorado (USA) gets a fair share of rain too! We've had 2 beautiful weeks of blue skies and sun, but the past few days have been rainy and stormy! On one morning, playing with horses in the storms was far less attractive than sitting indoors with hot chocolate and Parelli coaches at hand! One of our coaches, Carmen Zuluaf, gave us a mind-boggling presentation, where she spoke about Horsenality and the misconceptions that go with it.

A couple of years ago, the Parelli's came up with something called Horsenality. Horsenality is basically a tool that helps humans to explode the code, and understand their horse's individual personality/traits. This helps when trying to communicate with the horse. First seek to understand (horsenality) and then seek to be understood (communicate). I'm talking about horses, but its funny how relevant this all is too humans!

Carmen said that any horsenality can be a nightmare or a dream. And, like humans, horsenalities change. Our overall goal as horsemen, is to produce confident horses (and humans!) that are not limited by excuses such as 'Its in my nature to be scared/controlling/unmotivated/unfocused...' Horsenality is not meant to categorize, limit, or box the horse. Carmen spoke about how our belief in our horses determines what they'll be. We need to believe that our horses are capable of being who they're meant to be.

She also spoke about focusing on the goal or end result in your horse. A right brained horse needs to become more calm and confident, whereas a left brained horse may need to become more willing and motivated. She said that instead of focusing on what horsenality the horse is, we should focus on which one of these four aspects is missing. If we're asking ourselves "Does my horse need to be more willing? More confident? Motivated?" we can adjust to fit each moment, and won't be limited by their innate horsenality.

Me and Fast Track friends