The Disconnected-Faithful Personality Quadrant
If you are here for this training, it is because you have identified your horse as being in the Disconnected-Faithful Quadrant.
Before we go into this behaviour quadrant, we first want to share with you why we have put these quadrants together. When Katie is first invited out to work with a horse, she needs to make a really quick assessment of that horse to determine the best way to move forward. And that is based on 2 factors – their default confidence, and their default responsiveness level.
These quadrants aren’t designed so that you can label a behaviour and just say “this is my horse”. It is also not to “fix” our horses, because we need to recognise that the behaviours they are showing are an expression of their personality and what they are feeling in that moment based on their experience and their environment.
The reason we want to know these behaviour quadrant that your horse is currently fits inside of is to know exactly how to approach their interactions, and what they need most from us in the horse-human interaction. That goes for both Katie, as the professional trainer, or yourself, as the owner and day-to-day handler.
These default quadrants, what we call the Trainability Scale, is about taking you from a place where you and your horse are working with conflict, whether that friction looks like fear, aggression, stubbornness, frustration or massive loss of trust, and to take you both to a place where you can work together as a harmonious team – to become The Powerfully Connected Equestrian Team.
Regarding the default confidence spectrum, we can have horses range from confident in their own body while insecure in their environment or interactions, to horses that are sensitive and lack confidence in their self, their environment and interactions. Then with our responsiveness level, they can default to either passive and ignorant, to hypervigilent and hyperactive.
I bet right now, just knowing those facts, you can already see where your horse has a tendency to sit. If you can’t, don’t worry. Our horses can toggle through any of these quadrants based on the stimulation they are under, historical interactions with people, unheard pain, herd dynamics, or even maturity, but by understanding how to interact with the behaviour quadrant they are displaying the most at this point in time is going to help you reduce that conflict you may be feeling at times. This is the principle behind the holistic horse handling method.
The ultimate goal the holistic horse handling method is to work with our horses not at the extreme ends of either their default confidence or responsiveness, but in the center – with calm confidence in themselves and us, and a responsiveness that is willing and engaged but not over excited. You can see by the coloured rings that we are aiming for the green zone, which is the region our horses will most comfortably flourish in their human interactions, but very often we will see behaviours more indicative or the amber or red zone – and this is where you will really find yourself in conflict with your interactions with your horse.
So with that understanding in mind, let’s discuss the quadrant you have identified your horse to fit into most:
The Disconnected-Faithful Quadrant
Our horses that fit into the Faithful Quadrant are one of the best horses we have, and often go unrecognised as needing support. Because they lack confidence in themselves as well as their environment and horse-human interactions, AND significantly more passive, they have a tendency to “submit” real quickly to what is happening to them – they go into FREEZE mode in the fight/flight/freeze survival mechanism. This is what makes them seem really well-behaved.
If your results have lead you to this quadrant, chances are you have a horse that is really well behaved – most of the time. They are the horse you can do anything to, and almost anything with.
But you also might be experiencing:
· Some of the more subtle behaviours, like not giving you eye contact
· Or some of the more occasional behaviours like shying, bucking and bolting, pushiness or occasionally lashing out
Regarding some of the more extreme behaviours, you might even be wondering where the hell that just came from, because it seems to have come out of nowhere.
Maybe you are just feeling like you can’t make a connection.
For our horses that fit into the this quadrant, these are the signs they are not coping well with our interactions. But because they lack confidence in themselves AND us, and they tend towards passiveness, their default reaction is to internalise. Their behaviours will tend to be extremely subtle and so often missed – that is, until they are pushed to the point of no more coping, which is where they seem to “explode out of no-where”.
These horses do have a tendency to be great for beginner or intermediate riders when they are within their coping threshold, because they do have that tendency to be less reactive and will cope with a lot due to their own inability to set their own boundaries. It is funny how the equestrian world of the past has made these horses the example of the “well-behaved horse”. But when those bigger behaviours start to crop up out of the blue, you won’t know how to support your horse or reduce it occurring, because you have a very limited idea of why it happened, if any idea at all. This is likely to make you become more afraid and confused around them, which will in turn escalate their own behaviour, especially towards the spookiness.
To start working with these horses as part of a powerfully connected team, we need to be able to start building their trust in us and confidence in their own self. These horses really thrive off psychological safety – once they know that they can trust us, they let the walls down and really want to partner with us.
Our biggest challenge is not to manage these big behaviours, but to identify the tension your horse is holding through the handling and learning process, so that they don’t have to escalate to that point of not coping.
The process to build psychological safety works on a number of different key pillars we outline inside the Holistic Horse Handling Method, but most important to note for these horses are consent, connection and secure attachment.
When you have that psychological safety, and you have the horse having trust and confidence in you, knowing you are it’s advocate and guide, and that is when you will have earned this horses faithfulness and become a Powerfully Connected Equestrian Team. And once that occurs, you will have a horse that:
eagerly responds to your lead
wants to be near you, even if it is just chilling in the paddock
looks to you when they feel unceratin
communicates when they need more support
This video is a snippet from the training on the Faithful Personality we provide inside the Holistic Horse Handling Program.
We hope that you have enjoyed this training and learnt a little more about your horse. If you have any questions or feedback, feel free to pop a comment below, or join our free Stronger Bond Facebook Community.