What does a dog really remember
Owners often say their dog knows exactly what it did wrong. But does a dog remember events the way a person does? No. A dog remembers differently, and that changes how we should train it.
WHAT DOES A DOG REALLY REMEMBER?
I often hear owners say:
„He knows exactly what he did. Look at him, you can see he knows he is guilty.”
But does a dog really remember events the way a person does?
No. A dog remembers differently.
A dog can have a very strong long-term memory. It can remember certain people, smells, places, experiences and learned actions for years, as well as pleasant or unpleasant situations. However, what I call in my lectures its primary, everyday memory is very short, and I am talking about a period of roughly 70 seconds.
Why does this matter?
Because owners often punish a dog for something it did much earlier. You come home and find a chewed slipper, a knocked over bin or something destroyed. You call the dog, show it what it did and punish it.
The person then thinks:
„He knows why I am punishing him.”
But a dog does not think that way. It connects our reaction far more easily with what is happening at that moment, not with something that happened half an hour or several hours ago. That is why the timing of the reaction is one of the most important elements of dog training. A dog remembers very well what is repeated. It remembers the consequences of its behaviour. It remembers our voice, movement, smell, a particular place and the emotion a situation caused.
In other words:
A dog can remember an experience for a long time, but that does not mean it understands our later reaction to something it did long ago.
That is exactly why good training is not built on anger and punishing the dog after the event. It is built on the right moment, repetition, consistency and clear communication. A dog learns every day, even when we think we are not training it.
Every time we allow, prevent, reward or unknowingly encourage a behaviour, we are teaching the dog something.
So the most important question is not:
„How long does a dog remember?”
A much more important question is:
„What have we taught it to remember?” A dog may not remember an event the way a person does, but the experience you created for it can stay with it for a very long time.
Slaven Stevelić
My Dog dog training centre
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