well its the same shape as a parabola except instead of opening upwards it it opens to the right. this makes it no longer a function and i think only functions are parabolas but i could be wrong.
@itzkirby: if your going to try and simplfy thats not what your going to get, and for these types of equations you generaly graph them rather than simplify. If you were to graph the transformations on that graph the origin would be (-4,0) and the two key points would be (-3,1) and (-3,-1).