Horse learning and memory

Wagtail

Wagtail

Horse servant
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I have been astounded by what my girl remembers of her training after many years of not doing it. When she retired and started to come sound I did more clicker training with her as she couldn't be ridden. I had taught her to rear on command over ten years ago, but had not done it at all for the ten years inbetween. I was surprised when I stood in front of her, raised my arms and said 'up'. She went up without hesitation into a balanced rear. Now recently, I have brought her back into work after 3 years off due to injury. She remembers half pass, and walk pirouettes, and performs them faultlessly, with little effort. We are not doing canter yet as I am building her strength but using lateral work in walk and trot to help strengthen her shoulder. I guess it is probably not that surprising she remembers the ridden work, but I am surprised she remembered the rear command due to me not doing it much when I first taught it and having not done it at all for a decade.

Anyone else's horse surprised them by what they remember?
 
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kirstykate said:
They are a like Elephants, they never forget:p:p
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Yes, I think they are. It brought me to tears when a friend of mine told me of the lovely mare she had been forced to sell as a teenager. When she was thirty something and driving to a new office one day, she passed a herd of horses and she thought she saw her old mare. So on the way back she stopped to have a proper look. She saw her agan, a dark brown, almost black mare in with a number of others at the end of the field. So she called. The mare lifted her head, whinnied and galloped over. My friend could not believe it was her!

Pale Rider said:
We brought a foal back after nearly 10 years and the mare knew it. So did one or two of our others, but the reaction of the mare was increadable.
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Aw that's lovely. I do think that mares bond more deeply IME, even to horses that are not their foals and to people too.
 
"Studies of learning in horses have revealed aspects of memory, as well as sensory and other cognitive abilities. For example, one horse learned to obtain a food reward by picking the correct choice in each of 20 pairs of patterns. At the end of the training period, the horse's performance with four of the pairs was perfect, and even the 'hardest' pair was discriminated correctly 73 per cent of the time. A year later, the horse showed hardly any memory loss. Not all horses do equally well at such tests, though a poorer performance might indicate an individual was simply less motivated, rather than a lack of innate ability."

Source: http://www.gla.ac.uk/External/EBF/uhcc7.html
 
Mine on a couple of occasions has remembered horses she hasn't seen for many years. When I was in my teens, my best friends dad always had apples/carrots in his pocket for our ponies, either when he came up to the yard, or at shows, maybe once a week or so. Over 8yrs later my friend & her parents came to visit when my daughter was born as we now live far apart. We went up to see my pony, who immediately recognized her dad, & began to snuffle gently at his pocket, like she had 8yrs previously. Despite the fact I hand treat her a lot, he is the only person she has ever gone near the pockets of, & she was very affectionate with him although she is rarely demonstrative.
 
fburton said:
"Studies of learning in horses have revealed aspects of memory, as well as sensory and other cognitive abilities. For example, one horse learned to obtain a food reward by picking the correct choice in each of 20 pairs of patterns. At the end of the training period, the horse's performance with four of the pairs was perfect, and even the 'hardest' pair was discriminated correctly 73 per cent of the time. A year later, the horse showed hardly any memory loss. Not all horses do equally well at such tests, though a poorer performance might indicate an individual was simply less motivated, rather than a lack of innate ability."

Source: http://www.gla.ac.uk/External/EBF/uhcc7.html
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Excellent. Thank you :)
 
When I bought my big girl she was at home for the first week then she was ridden up to a field and turned out 24/7. She hacked out from there a few times, each time turning out of the gate to the left and returning from the left. First time she went in was from the right, she never went to it from the right again. She then injured herself badly, and had to be taken from the field by lorry and ended up on 7 months of box rest at home. Once she started walking out it took a while longer to get her back to the field but although it's up a long track and the other horses were approaching half a kilometre away up the track so she couldn't see or hear them she remembered that she turned in there. It must have been 8 months since she had done it the one and only previous time. Most impressed by her memory, clever old thing she is:D
 
littlelegs said:
Mine on a couple of occasions has remembered horses she hasn't seen for many years.
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I had a reunion with a horse (my own TB's sire, since gelded) who I had lost track of for 5 or 6 years. I knew him very well when he was still a stallion and used to take him out for exercise on a regular basis. He was a dark steel-grey then. When I caught up with him again he had turned light grey all over and so I didn't immediately recognize him when I went to visit him in the field at the invitation of his new owner. As I walked over, calling his name, I thought to myself "Can that really be him?" and at the same time he looked up at me and whinnied. I believe he knew who I was before I had fully twigged it was him. (Although my mane hadn't turned grey at that time, I suspect it was my voice that he recognized first rather than my appearance.) When I approached to give him a stroke and a hug, he didn't treat me like a stranger at all. Anyway, I remember feeling pleased and a wee bit emotional that he had remembered me after all that time.
 
My daughter used to ride a 11 year old Sec A who as a foal had lived with another Sec A which coincidentally belonged to a girl she knew from school at the time. We went to a show and her friend turned up with her Sec A, and she hadn't even unloaded it before they were shouting to each other.
 
Slightly different, but along similar lines, we had two mares and fed them in the field out of almost identical white buckets, the Appy's bucket had a label with Reeves on it. Sister and I shared the horses, so fed each mare 'turn about' the Appy knew hers was the bucket with the label on it, so it could be said that she had early reading skills.
 
My old lad always remembered which pocket my Dad kept the polos in even when he hadn't seen him for months.

My share lad at the mo had an interesting reaction to a new horse on the yard which made me wonder if he knew him from somewhere (of course he may just be a tart flirting with the new one).
 
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