While horse owners worldwide want a simple answer to the question of whether foal imprinting works or not, it’s hard to give a simple answer to what really isn’t a simple question. This was the message of an imprinting research review presented by Nancy Diehl, MS, VMD, assistant professor of equine science at Pennsylvania State University, at the American Association of Equine Practitioners convention held Dec. 3-7 in Seattle, Wash.

"There have been many publications in recent years investigating Dr. Robert Miller’s imprint training methods/outcomes," she began. (Miller, of Thousand Oaks, Calif., has published many articles and books on the subject and is generally credited with pioneering foal imprint training.) "His work on this has been a great contribution to the horse industry. However, the research on his methods has raised many more important basic questions on handling and horse behavior rather than does it work or not work?"

What Is Imprinting?

"According to Miller, imprinting is a highly regimented handling procedure done at birth, then repeated or expanded upon at some intervals over days or weeks," she explained. "At birth, he says there is a sensitive period for the foal to learn, and we take advantage of this with this handling procedure. The handler presents very specific stimuli to the foal, touching all over his body and inserting a finger into his orifices until the foal does not resist. About 30 repetitions are usually required; this varies with the foal’s resistance, but the handler doesn’t stop until the foal relaxes and doesn’t resist any procedure. It should result in bonding with humans, desensitization to some stimuli, sensitization to others, and submission to humans, but not fear. According to Miller, these steps will provide irreversible learning experiences during a proposed critical period in early development