Imprinting

The imprinting process is really interesting. I knew we needed to do it with our new baby. We had seen and read about Dr. Robert Miller's method and put it into practice. My dad held my mare...Handle with Style aka "Jessie" while David and I began the imprinting process. The point is pretty much to desensitize them to touch and various objects so that they aren't as spooky to them later on. Dr. Miller, through his studies, discovered that foals take to large moving objects kind of like an orphaned duck might follow around some other animal. You have a short window of time in other words to work with them and help reduce their natural, instinctive fear. A lot of times horses are fearful of new objects, like a plastic bag or clippers. When you introduce those items while imprinting, however, they are much less likely to have issues when reintroduced to those objects sometime later.

We began by starting while she was laying down. I held her neck and head and David held her front and back hooves so that she couldn't get up. We put a halter on her. We rubbed all over her body starting with her head. We rubbed her ears, inside her ears, in her mouth, even in her nostrils. Anytime she showed any resistance, we continued rubbing that same spot until she had relaxed for a certain length of time. (usually between 30-50 rubs). We rubbed her body and her legs as well. We tapped on the bottom of her hooves and even moved her legs at the elbow/hip and knee/hocks. We patted he body with rhythm, and rubbed and patted a plastic bag on her too. We rubbed clippers on her and in her ears as well as on her muzzle. We took the halter off at the end and made sure she was relaxed and calm when we let her get up. It's important to finish when they are not struggling. We repeated this process Friday evening and again on Saturday morning.

Things that surprised us:

•She was so relaxed at times that she seemed nearly asleep
•by holding her left front and hind leg together and by keeping her neck and head bent slightly we were able to keep her from getting up
•Jessie seemed better each time watching us handle her baby
•we were pros by the end and it really helped to repeat the process more than once
•it was awesome to be that close to her
•we are seeing evidence of the benefits of imprinting this first week