It was standing room only at Dessa Hockley's entertaining seminar about how to determine your horse's personality. Based on her popular book, Is Your Horse a Rock Star? Understanding Your Horse's Personality, Hockley outlined 16 different personality types for horses.
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Dessa Hockley gave a lively presentation Saturday about determining your horse's personality.
Photo: Sherry Butt
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"This personality test for your horse is modelled after the Myers-Briggs test for humans," said Hockley.
To determine your horse's personality you choose four of eight character traits — dominant (D) or submissive (S); energetic (E) or lazy (L); curious (C) or afraid (A); and friendly (F) or aloof (A) — then combine them to get your personality type.
By looking at how much control your horse needs in the world will help you decide whether he's dominant or submissive. Whether your horse is energetic or lazy is based on how much effort he puts into what he's doing. How your horse approaches life will determine whether he is curious or afraid and what motivates your horse will determine whether he is friendly or aloof.
"Don't think of any of these traits as negative," said Hockley. All of the traits have both positive and negative qualities. For example, while a friendly horse enjoys your company, he is used to having friends around and could be quite needy. The challenge with an aloof horse, said Hockley, is how to get him to want to be with you. "What the aloof horse needs from us is a job."
Figuring out your horse's personality can be a great tool to help you better understand things such as your horse's needs, what motivates him, what sport or activities to pursue and how to approach his training to name a few.
Here are Hockley's 16 different personality types:
DECF — Rock Star
DECA — Macho Man
DEAF — Wild Card
DEAA — Boss
DLCF — Reluctant Rock Star
DLCA — Prize Fighter
DLAF — Accountant
DLAA — Skeptic
SECF — Goddess
SECA — Worker Bee
SEAF — People Pleaser
SEAA — Perfectionist
SLCF — Steady Eddy
SLCA — Solo Artist
SLAF — Wallflower
SLAA — Lone Wolf