Herd Hieracrchy and How it Effects Personality

This question was raised a couple of times recently on the GHS message board, and it seemed to be perfect timing, as I’d been pondering why all of a sudden things are finally connecting with me and G. At least it seems like it’s all happening at once. When I mentioned that G was a different horse, I was asked “how so”.   So I pondered....

Prior to our barn move back in April, G lived his day time hours in a paddock by himself, with horses on either side of him and across the aisle way between rows. At night he spent his time behind bars with only the view of the highway in the back and the two horses across the aisle from him. During those 6 years, as much as I worked on bettering our communication, G always had to challenge things. Some times it wasn’t a direct challenge or at first request challenge, but in the course of working it would arise. I chalked it up to G being the personality that he was, and since I was continually maintaining the passive leader role, what other explanation could there be?

Since we moved G to the new barn this April, he lives in a herd of five geldings during the day, with a mixed herd of six in one adjoining pasture, and a mare herd of six on the other side. He is the #3 horse in his herd, and he appears to be content where he’s positioned as he never challenges #1 or #2. At night he is stalled but the set up here is quite different. He has an open stall door where he can hang his head out into the aisle way and see the comings and goings as well as any other horse that happens to be “hanging out”. Now the back of his stall houses a double dutch door, which leads out to a nice sized turnout. During the summer and most of this fall, he has been able to come and go from his stall at night and play with his best buddy Irish over the fence rail. Within a month G started to become a different horse in small ways. He's more trusting on the trail; calmer; is loading nicely in the trailer; responding faster to my requests and cues and overall a much more relaxed horse. He’s even happy to come to me when I arrive at the pasture, which is something I was sure I would lose once he had pasture to graze upon and buddies to play with.

So my conclusions over all this  is that when G was paddocked by himself, even though he had horses on either side of him, that he was the boss of his herd of one. So when I showed up at the barn, he would continue to try and maintain that position in our herd of two. Now that he's #3 horse in a herd of 5, I think that this has taken a little of the wind out of his sails so to speak.  He's learned that if he doesn't challenge the #1 or #2 horses he has quite the content life right where he's at. Now as I maintain my status as #1 in our herd of two he doesn't feel the need to challenge it any more. So maybe I’m reading too much into this, maybe not. But whatever “it” is, I’ll happily take it because this reward just seems so grand in our 7.5 year journey.