I'm getting to know our newest addition to the herd at the Equine Research Foundation-a Tennessee Walking Horse named Jack Daniels who's retired from the show ring. Whenever we get a new horse, whether its one we bought or one that was donated, I always take things slowly. Starting from the ground, I get to know how he moves and how he thinks, and I work on developing a strong bond before even considering saddling up. This time, however, I'm taking things even slower.
Jack Daniels bears scars from his show horse years. No hair grows on parts of his pasterns due to soring by chains and other damaging agents. His tail flops weirdly, because it had been cut and set by a contraption designed to create a tail carriage similar to a Shih Tzu. During his show years he wore platform shoes, causing him to move in an exaggerated manner; even now, barefoot, he has an odd gait.
When I look at Jack, it's obvious what has been done to him physically, but I'm still learning about what may've happened to him mentally. I wonder: Did years of abuse affect his mind or, for that matter, can he even remember what had been done to him? Although I may wish that those tough times were indeed a thing of the past, in all likelihood Jack recalls those days with clarity.
Do horses remember what happened to them years ago, or for that matter, a month, a week, a minute ago? Ask any horse person and, most likely, you'll get an assortment of opinions. Even equine researchers don't agree on how well horses remember.
Short-Term Memory
Take, for example, short-term memory-the stage in which things are learned temporarily and may be retrieved over a brief period of time. Humans use short-term memory for such tasks as keeping a phone number in mind for a few moments. In one scientific study with horses, a researcher reported that horses had poor spatial short-term memory for varying locations of feed.
This conclusion struck me as unusual, because-in my experience as both a researcher and a trainer-I've frequently observed horses easily remembering locations, not only of food, but also of food-rewarded objects and other stimuli.
It's always risky to draw conclusions about a horse's ability based on the negative findings of one report. Just because one study fails to show a certain ability, this doesn't imply that all horses are incapable of it. It just means that additional research using different or more appropriate designs is needed.
So, with the help of our learning and riding vacation participants, the Equine Research Foundation (ERF) took a further look at short-term memory. Our horses performed quite well on spatial short-term memory tests. They kept mental images of different locations of food signals for as long as 20 seconds, which was the maximum delay tested.
While this is interesting information from a scientific standpoint, what's the practical value in this knowledge for horse owners? The fact that horses do have good short-term memory means that, as trainers, we need to make sure that our cues are clear and consistent each time we give them. A mistake on our part can't be quickly erased or forgotten, so teaching a cue and training a behavior correctly the first time is key in helping our horses understand what we want.
We can also clearly see now that timing is everything. Even though horses can effectively use their short-term memory, it can be interrupted, so the reinforcement must be given immediately. Bad timing in reinforcing effort leads to miscommunication and confusion, followed by the horse making the wrong associations.
