Tales of the Color Wheel Volume 1 Number 1 - Family Camp 2013: Reds to the Rescue

By Sue McMurray

In addition to customized day camps youth, adults, teams or church groups, MM Training and Consulting offers “Family Camp” by invitation only. Typically held over Memorial Day weekend, this camp focuses not only on horsemanship but also on activities that build stronger human relationships.

On the horsemanship side, we work on improving our connection with our horses through ground training, under saddle work and trail riding. On the human side, there are activities and discussion time about personal goals for life and relationships. Marcia and Davalee integrate the MM Training and Consulting philosophies and Color Tool© to promote connection in both realms.

The Color Tool© is a system of recognizing motivations and personality types of individuals – both horse and human. The Color Tool© is broken into four parts, and every person and horse falls into one or more of the following personality types: Red sorrel, Blue roan, Gray, or Yellow palomino. Each of these traits describes the color of a horse’s or person’s personality; the “inside” color, not the color you see when you look at them.

The Color Tool© is especially applicable to Family Camp, as a virtual rainbow of personalities are represented in the group. Family Camp 2013 was particularly memorable in this regard. The group was comprised of mostly blue, red, and yellow people with one or two full, or at least partial gray personalities, to balance out the mix.

All was going well until one of our blue participants was “attacked” by a spider in the breezeway of the barn. While “blue” personalities have a wealth of interpersonal strengths such as great attention to detail, creativity, and compassion, to name a few, remaining calm during a spider confrontation is not one of them. Our blue participant let out a blood-curdling scream so loud that it blasted dust off the barn rafters and knocked several barn swallow chicks out of their nests onto the floor of the area. Horse blankets rippled from the great gust that swept through barn, and a huge wind devil spiraled up out of the shavings pile, scaring the horses so much they ran out of their stalls and cowered into the back corners of their outside runs.

At the sound of the commotion, our “red” participants ran to the barn to take charge of what was obviously a very serious emergency, given the prolonged screaming and paralysis of our blue participant. As the red team approached, they were uncharacteristically baffled, as there was no obvious injury. However, it was a well-known fact throughout camp that the victim and family were gluten intolerant. As one of the red rescuers remembered this, he thought perhaps the blue victim was having a gluten reaction and prepared to administer CPR.

“No!” screamed the blue victim, pushing the red participant away and pointing at the floor. “Spider!! It was ON ME!”

The red team, being natural born leaders, immediately came up with a plan of action called “The Swish and Stomp.”

“If this ever happens again, swish it off and stomp it into the floor,” one red participant said, while the other one mimed swishing off an imaginary spider and stomping it into the cement. “Swish and stomp,” they repeated several times. “Just remember you can depend on us, the Spider Response Team.”

Once the calamity was over, the story was passed around the campfire. The yellow people told it again and again just so they could laugh hysterically for the majority of the evening. The gray people enjoyed the story but couldn’t understand what the big deal was. The blue and red participants both agreed on one thing - what says “I love you” better than your own personal spider response team?