We touch here to an unfamiliar area and difficult to transform into precise characterization observations but everyone's understand its importance.
Mentioned above of a "good head". It is also a head (brain) that determines behaviors conducive to learning, memorization and repetition in time of gestures and attitudes favorable to the performance. There are books on behavioral observation but there is little or no publications that allow to make a link between observable behavior parameters and athletic performance. This is why this chapter takes the form of a discussion and that is also why readers are invited to enrich it by their contributions by mail or on the website www.gfeweb.com
We look at three aspects of the behavior that the breeder can observe over time by looking the comportment of a given individual within a group and how it interact with humans in common breeding acts (routes box-paddock, meals, vicinity, care, travel and gatherings...) The character subdued or dominant occurs within the herd by looking at the place of the individual in the hierarchy: access to the trough and the collective feeder, reaction to the actions of intimidation of other individuals. A ‘subdued’ will it act the same at training and will it be or easier to school? The question is not settled.
On the other hand, it is assumed that hyper-dominant horese should be initiated with consideration to the joys of training.
Placid or emotional temperament can be observed in the field (the opening of the hunting season is a period of choice for this kind of observation, same as the Fireworks, etc...), but it can also be done to the stable. Emotional horse is not the friend of the blacksmith when it spooks at the rasp noise or shoe which strikes the ground, but the "too placid" giving badly his foot or which is "hold me please" is not his friend either.
This can be correlated with blood but not totally. There are emotional horses that lack blood which stress makes lose their means instead of make them react and there are placid horses behaving with all the energy and responsiveness necessary timely (it is often one of the qualities of the Kannan and Mr Blue offspring).
Finally, curious or indifferent attitude can be observed in the way in which a horse reacts to changes in its environment: arrival of a new horse in the barn; introduction of an individual or a group into a new grass field, installation of a new fence ribbon, introduction of a toy in a box, etc...
Curiosity shows an awakening and a sensitivity to external stimuli that can be useful in training, but an excessive curiosity can lead to a lower capacity of constant concentration for 60 to 90 seconds of a course full of "curiosities"!
Is unknown, to our knowledge, almost everything about the heritability of this attitude, but it's a gap that time will fill because it is an informative behavioral parameter!
For these three behavioral parameters, the observation is done in duration; It starts at the youngest age, continues during the cycle for breeding and when the eventual return to stud after a sport career.