Goat Diaries Blog by Alexandra Kurland

[Nanno]

Well yes, but short-term memory seems to automatically become long-term memory after they sleep on it for a night or two. I worked on this trick only about once a week, yet Sputnik made tremendous progress from one lesson to the next. He went from putting his mouth on the rag at the end of our first lesson to actually picking it up when I dropped it at the beginning of the second lesson, which was more than a week later. By the end of the second lesson he would walk 2-3 steps and bring it back. On our third lesson a week later I tossed it across the patio and he brought it back to me each time. So it appears that he actually did commit the previous lessons to long-term memory and even made progress without actively working on it. But he was less engaged when I did two lessons in a row, and I think it was more because the rag was wet and he was distracted by the prospect of taking a walk afterwards. Usually Sputnik is good for 2-3 lessons in a day and progresses faster than with once a week lessons, but not every lesson goes quite the way you expect. And I definitely need to get some better toys while he's learning!