HALL of FAME

Robert M. Miller earned his Doctor of Veterinary Medicine degree from Colorado State University in 1956. It was also at CSU that he met his future wife, Debby, a talented barrel racer on the school’s rodeo team.

While in school, Bob spent several summers working as a horse wrangler on cattle ranches, where he developed his own effective but gentle ways of starting and handling horses.

After graduating from CSU, the Millers settled in Thousand Oaks, California, where Bob founded the Conejo Valley Veterinary Clinic. Although he treated animals of all sizes and types, from hummingbirds to whales, his practice eventually became primarily equine.

In 1959, a theory about the learning capabilities of newborn foals slowly began to form in Dr. Miller’s mind. Over the next 25 years, he developed a complete training regimen for the first week of a horse’s life. He dubbed it Imprint Training. Like many revolutionary ideas, it met with resistance and was slow to catch on among professional horsemen.

But by 1984, Dr. Miller was becoming a recognized expert in equine behavior, and through a series of videos and his landmark Western Horseman book, “Imprint Training of the Newborn Foal,” his ideas caught on with the public.

Today, Imprint Training is widely accepted and is practiced around the world by amateur and professional horsemen alike, even in the racing industry. When done correctly, it is the fastest and most profound method of permanently shaping a horse’s responses and attitude.

Dr. Miller left his career practice in 1988, after 32 years as a working veterinarian, in order to devote the rest of his life to promoting and explaining not only Imprint Training, but also the revolution in horsemanship that he saw occurring around him.

His newest book, co-authored by Rick Lamb and titled “The Revolution in Horsemanship” was released in late 2004. joined by a number of other books Dr. Miller has penned over the years on horse behavior and care.

Bob Miller has received numerous professional awards for his work. His sense of humor and artistic talent are renowned and are immortalized in nine books of veterinary cartoons. He and Debby enjoy traveling and snow skiing, and still ride regularly on both horses and mules. In fact, their world champion mule, Jordass Jean, was recently inducted into the Bishop Mule Days Hall of Fame.