How Good Is A Dog’s Memory?
You have surely met a dog that you haven’t seen in years, but that greeted you as always. He remembered you! Are you wondering how it is possible? Today we are looking into the question of how good a dog’s memory is.
The memory of dogs
Knowing how far dogs can remember also helps us determine how long they remember the commands we gave them; or whether they will recognize us after a long hospital stay or vacation.
How does dog memory work ?
It is clear that dogs have a memory capacity because, even after a long time, they do not easily forget us, our friends or other pets. Like us, dogs have short-term and long-term memories, but they work a little differently than ours.
The short-term memory stores certain events over a period of 10 or 20 seconds. These are then forgotten again.
For example, if the animal breaks your shoes and you come home two hours later, don’t scold him because your dog doesn’t remember what he did.
If it were different, he would hide as soon as he saw you instead of greeting you as cheerfully as ever, wouldn’t he?
This is why dogs live in the present without thinking about the past because they simply cannot.
While you worry about not exercising in a long time, your pet will not remember and after a few weeks will be just as happy as it was yesterday.
Associative memory
Dogs do not have a memory like ours to long remember certain events or to make decisions based on them. Rather, the memory of dogs is associative. This means that they store a circumstance or an image in their brain that they can later associate with a similar circumstance in the future.
On the other hand, if a person is pampering, loving, or playing with the dog, your pet will remember these facts when he sees and smells them again.
So how long can a dog remember a person?
Well, we won’t be around the bush for long: all of life! The connections that are stored in his brain and that relate to what this person makes him feel with their gestures and movements, with their gaze, voice and smell, is a memory that will always remain in your pet.
There are other cases where animals had to be adopted because the first owner could not look after them or for other reasons. These dogs recognized their owners years later when they visited them.
And what about the dogs that have spent years at the graves of their owners? You have never forgotten her and waited for her even after her death.
There is no doubt that for humans there is no more sincere, loyal, and loving animal than a dog. Don’t you think they deserve all of our attention, love, and affection? We firmly believe in it!
