Yvonne Barteau - Ride the Right Horse: Understanding the Core Equine Personalities & How to Work with Them

RIDE THE RIGHT HORSE

Understanding the Core Equine Personalities & How to Work with Them

Yvonne Barteau

FOREWORD BY CAROL LAVELL

The mission of Storey Publishing is to serve our customers by
publishing practical information that encourages
personal independence in harmony with the environment.

Edited by Deborah Burns
Art direction and cover design by Cynthia McFarland
Text design by Jen Rork and Jessica Armstrong
Text production by Jessica Armstrong
Cover photographs by Erika Walsh.
Interior photography by: courtesy of Arabian Nights Dinner Theater: 69; Jamie

Barteau: 55; Kim Barteau: 91; Yvonne Barteau: 166; L.A. Photo Works: 25;
Bob Langrish: vii, xi; Terri Miller: 72, 75; Mary Phelps: 100; Tom Tanner:
80; Bob Tarr: 10, 59; Erika Walsh: ii, 41, 132; Jody Woodruff: 63, 162

Illustrations by Jo Anna Rissanen
Indexed by Susan Olason, Indexes & Knowledge Maps

2007 by Yvonne Barteau

The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) is a registered trademark of Consulting Psychologists Press, Inc.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages or reproduce illustrations in a review with appropriate credits; nor may any part of this book be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or other without written permission from the publisher.

The information in this book is true and complete to the best of our knowledge. All recommendations are made without guarantee on the part of the author or Storey Publishing. The author and publisher disclaim any liability in connection with the use of this information. For additional information please contact Storey Publishing, 210 MASS MoCA Way, North Adams, MA 01247.

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Printed in the United States by Versa Press
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Barteau, Yvonne.

Ride the right horse / by Yvonne Barteau.
p. cm.
Includes index.
ISBN-13: 978-1-58017-662-0 (hardcover jacketed : alk. paper)
1. HorsesBehavior. 2. Human-animal communication. 3. Horsemanship. I. Title.

SF281.B36 2007
636.1dc22

2007001579

For all of the horses
who have helped define me.

1. The Four Horse Personalities
Social, Fearful, Aloof, Challenging

7. The Social Mix
Social-Fearful, Social-Aloof, Social-Challenging

8. The Fearful Mix
Fearful-Social, Fearful-Aloof, Fearful-Challenging

9. The Aloof Mix
Aloof-Social, Aloof-Fearful, Aloof-Challenging

10. The Challenging Mix
Challenging-Social, Challenging-Fearful, Challenging-Aloof

15. Success Stories: Defining Personality
Dell Hendricks, Col. Axel Steiner, USAF (Ret.),
Hilda Gurney, Marcia Smith, Tommy Turvey, Jr.,
Ken Borden, Jr.

This book would never have found print if it werent for Deb Burns and all of the staff at Storey, who patiently and articulately made sense and structure out of my ideas and procedures. For that I am grateful.

Id like also to express thanks to:

Bob Oury, whose horses enticed us to leave Florida, and who is the hardest-working man I know.

Gail Rodecker, my true F friend and Myers-Briggs consultant, who gave much of her time and insights to the personality segment of this book.

My husband and business partner, Kim, who is indeed a gentleman in all weather and a smart and charming companion. We have become two sides of the same coin.

My children, Jamie, Jessica, Kassie, and Hudi. Being your mother gives me great pride and a never-ending sense of accomplishment.

Endel Ots, who is both friend and family to me. And to his father, Dr. Max Ots, for raising such a fine young man.

Ginna Frantz, who has believed in my riding and writing all along and supported me generously.

Erika Walsh, who redefines the word busy on a daily basis but still finds time to help me immensely.

Finally, I am forever indebted to the hundreds of horses who tolerated my ignorance as I learned to ride and who shaped my path by responding to me anyway. I have acquired more information from the horses in my life than I have from any other source and for that I am both grateful and humbled.

YVONNE BARTEAU CAME INTO MY LIFE as a pupil in a dressage training session. Surrounded by a herd of horses at various levels, she was clearly an ardent competitor even reciting from memory twenty-one dressage tests!

At one dressage show I saw her jumping from one horse to the next with barely enough time to warm up. I made the comment that horses were not cars, and that she needed to take more ride-in time to account for their individuality. Now comes the book!

Horses are Yvonnes teachers.

In this book she teaches the trainer how to learn

from the horses, and how to understand their different

personalities. Its all about how to have

a relationship with them.

A trainer may well be born not made, but Yvonnes knowledge is from the proverbial school of hard knocks. And speaking of schools, whats in this book is not taught in any school. The reader gets a heavy dose of reality. Well-organized information is delivered first with a description of a horses personality, followed by the entertainment: real case examples.

Carol Lavell and Gifted at the 1992 Olympic Games in Barcelona, Spain, where they won a Team Bronze medal in dressage.

Yes, horses are Yvonnes teachers, but she takes one step beyond. In this book she teaches the trainer how to learn from the horses, and how to understand their different personalities. Its all about how to have a relationship with them.

Yvonne writes with a huge depth of perception, and she is armed with a vast array of experiences. You will not find another book like this one.

CAROL LAVELL
International FEI competitor, Olympic medalist

HAVE YOU EVER WONDERED what goes on inside a horses head? More specifically, how individual horses might view the world around them? That idea seized me as a horse-crazy ten-year-old and has yet to let go. I studied, read, and reread my meager collection of horse stories, wondering if all horses were like Black Beauty, Flicka, and The Pie. Or were they as different from one another as I was from my own brothers and sister? I speculated the latter to be true long before I had access to any real subjects.

Decades have passed since then. I am now a successful dressage trainer, and my childhood passion has led me through a lifetime of studying and learning all that I could about my favorite creature, the horse. My best and most reliable information has always come directly from the noble steeds themselves. I still remember, and am grateful to, those early lesson ponies in Canada and the racehorses I met and studied with on a five-year learning expedition around the Standardbred and Thoroughbred racetracks of America. These new friendships included some flighty, volatile, and at times unpredictable young racehorses.