copy cat horse

[Baileyhoss]

does anyone else have this problem or is it just me or am i imagining it?

I really do think my horse is copying other horses, good & bad. He is not the most confident of horses, but is very capable, just needs some brave. When we are standing at the edge of an arena, he really does watch who ever is performing very closely, to the point where a girl from our yard was jumping and horse stopped, she fell off and b who was watching gave a sympathetic worried little wicker.

xc training last month - if the horse before us stopped at a jump, b tried to as well. Didn't think much of it.

SJ a couple of weeks ago. Watched some lovely clears, b got a lovely clear, true and confident, even over some big scary fillers.

cross country a couple of weeks ago. B has only been in a start box once. scared of it, wouldn't walk through the small gap so had to enter from the front, always always sticky over the first 2-3 jumps.
This time, we stood in the warm up and watched a couple go before us. Professional types, walked into the box, galloped out straight over the first 2 and away. B walked in no bother, and when i put my leg on, he was off like a bat out of hell, locked onto the first and carried on the whole course like that

I made jokes at the yard about having him watch some good ones etc, laugh laugh, then yesterday my suspicions seemed to be confirmed.

Friend & I jumping in the school, Friend comes into a 3' parallel (quite wide) on bad stride and horse just stops at the bottom of it, takes out the front bar with his chest.

B watches this, his turn, jumps some lovely jumps over bigger uprights 1m, 95, a 1m spread which was also quite wide, turn him to the smaller parallel and canter in, nice stride then bang. brakes are on, I bounce of his head and land on my feet in the middle of the jump!! wtf!!!

Just for background. B never ever stops like that. He always backs off a mile out and ducks out the side, my friend was watching said he had a good canter, plenty impulsion, his ears were pricked, my leg was on, all good, it was like he just watched his buddy and copied him. Got back on, jumped all the uprights again, a little growl from me and he flew the paralell, (which now looked huge

)) and he seems back to normal.

Is it me, or is that odd?

And does anyone have any really good ode vids they can lend for b to watch before our first intro?

Fx

 

[kerilli]

i don't let mine watch if one's doing a bad round, but i think it's more because i start thinking negatively if i see someone making a right mess of the fences, so i turn away until someone good goes in and then watch. maybe it rubs off!

 

[Lobelia_Overhill]

my mare used to copy other horses, if we were out a hack and someone spooked, so would she. She did the refuse-to-jump-cos-that-pony-did too! One time someone was doing some lateral work in the indoor school, and my mare started doing the moves as well - despite my not having a clue what the other rider was doing, much less asking for this sideways stuff

 

[Booboos]

I was warming up for dressage one time in a very large school where the test was being run in part of the arena cordonned off, so we could all see each other very clearly. There was a pile of jumps dumped just outside A in the arena and every horse that went in spooked at that. I am convinced that all the horses warming up were seeing their 'mates' spook and worrying about that area before they even went near it, as the situation got worse and worse as time went by!