Signs of a Dog Remembering the Day Before
Since studies have shown that dogs have the ability to remember commands and past events, looking for certain signs that can recall events from the past becomes a bit easier. One of the biggest signs you dog can recall things from the day before is if they remember where they left a toy inside or outside of the house. Often times, your dog will leave a favorite toy in a safe spot in the house like stuffed between the couch.
Perhaps when they wake up in the morning and go downstairs with you they will run right over to the couch and retrieve the toy. This is a sign they remembered where they put the toy the day before.
Some dogs will also show they remember things from the past by staring at something intently they remember from the days before, tilting their head to the side at something familiar, or spinning, barking, and getting excited over something that happened in the days before.
Your dog performing their training skills properly can also suggest that they can pull from their memory to do certain learned commands like “sit,” “stay,” “come,” and more at the right times and when asked.
These are some signs you may notice if your dog can remember the day before:
Here are some other signs you may notice if your dog can remember the day before:
How Long Can a Dog Remember an Event?
The length of time which a dog remembers an event can be as short as 10 seconds – 3 minutes at most. Dogs have an extremely short-term memory, meaning if you accidentally stepped on their tail, or you’ve finished scolding them for chewing your shoes — they’ll forget almost instantly.
Unlike humans, dogs have an associative memory, which means they learn and relate to associations as opposed to specific memories. Associations can include names, scents, or s. As an example, let’s take a memory of you taking your dog to the park.
Instead of your dog remembering the entire process that’s involved with going to the park, he’ll identify that memory to specific events leading up to it. He’ll associate the park with you putting on your shoes, or maybe you putting a leash on your dog.
Those are just some ways that your dog is able to associate his memories with certain events that take place in his life.
We know that dogs can be smart, but not enough research has been done to determine whether or not memory capacity differs from one dog breed to another. Generally speaking, dogs exhibit varied types of memory cognition, including the following.
With a lack of empirical evidence regarding how a dogs brain “remembers” things, when faced with a question like “Do dogs remember their owners?” a good follow-up question is, “How do we even know?” Luckily, dogs are great test subjects (Sit? Sure! Fetch? You bet!), which allows experts to extrapolate information based on a dogs behavioral patterns.
Anecdotally, training dogs for advanced cognition may not be too far off. Renowned psychologist and dog author Dr. Stanley Coren wrote for Psychology Today that he once interviewed a man who, having lost his short-term memory due to a brain injury as a child, relied on a “memory assistance dog” to help with episodic “new memories” such as where he parked his car. Pretty exciting stuff.
These advancements support the idea that adopted dogs may remember their previous owners, but how they remember them is still uncertain. A dog who lived in unhappy circumstances, for example, may associate negative emotions or anxious behavior with certain objects or locations. And we definitely know that dogs miss their humans when people leave the house — just look at how happy they get when you walk through that front door!
Until recently, it was thought that only humans and a few animals had episodic memories. Some research suggested that dogs sort of have that ability, but a groundbreaking study in Current Biology provided strong “evidence for episodic-like memory” in dogs. The team trained dogs to the point that instead of saying “lie down,” the researcher would say “do it” and the dog would obey.