Does anybody train through mimicry? I've seen a few videos now where the horse is trick trained or "liberty" trained through mimicry of the trainer. Such as training the horse to do a spanish walk while cuing and doing an exaggerated walk yourself. I've even seen people "cantering" next to their horse, and doing "lead changes". I find this interesting, we touched on horses learning through mimicry in Equine Behavior, but we never came to a solid answer on if horses actually do understand this type of training, and how far can you take it?

A foal more often then not learns bad behaviors from it's dam, if she herself has poor habits. As an example I once had the hardship of handling a 2 month old filly up to a yearling that was by far the most ill mannered foal I've ever seen. At 2 months old she was already kicking out at people who entered the stall, attacking you if you were trying to handle her etc. Just like mommy!

So if a foal can learn mimicry from another horse, does it only learn from it's dam or can this go further down the road? Such as learning as a yearling from a babysitter horse (perhaps in the winter this horse paws at ice on the edge of a pond and water comes out, then the yearling learns this skill through watching his babysitter)? Can it go even further to things like the horse's first ride? If it sees another horse being ridden, whom is an older reliable buddy (perhaps the babysitter horse?), will the horse be more willing to stay calm and accept a rider on it's back? If he sees Lightning, his friend being calm while being ridden, will he too learn that this is "normal" through mimicking his reliable friend?

Interested in what everybody thinks about this, am I way off here? Does anybody have experience with training this way? Curious to know!