Client’s Q and A: Do Horses Remember Me? Do They Remember Our Sessions?

CC at Sherwood Farm Retreat

One of the questions we hear from clients again and again is: “Do horses remember me?”

Do they remember the people they meet? Do they remember specific activities they have done with us? Do they remember a moment of connection, a therapeutic session, or the way they were treated? And perhaps the question underneath all of these questions: when we leave, does something of our time together remain with them?

The answer, as far as both research and experience can tell us, is a resounding yes.

Horses have remarkably sophisticated social memories. Research has shown that they can recognize individual humans, distinguish familiar people from strangers, and even connect information across different senses. In one study, horses were able to match a familiar person's voice with their face, demonstrating that they weren't simply responding to a familiar sound or a familiar visual appearance independently; they were able to integrate information about the same individual across sensory modalities.

And their memory appears to last considerably longer than we might imagine. In a particularly fascinating study, researchers tested whether horses could recognize photographs of their keepers. The horses were able to identify not only their current keepers, but also keepers they had not seen for six months. The researchers concluded that horses possess advanced human face-recognition abilities and long-term memory for those familiar humans.

There is another piece of research that is especially relevant to therapeutic and experiential work with horses. Scientists have found that horses don't simply remember who a person is; their previous experiences with that person can influence how they respond to them in the future. Horses have been shown to remember the emotional quality of a human interaction and to respond differently to individuals depending on whether previous encounters have been positive or negative. In other words, the horse appears to retain something about the relationship, not simply a visual identification of the individual.

This makes intuitive sense when we spend time with horses. A horse doesn't experience us as a collection of words and explanations. They encounter us through our bodies, our movement, our voice, our facial expression, our nervous system, our proximity, our touch and the countless subtle signals we may not even realize we are giving off. A session with a horse is therefore an experience made up of many layers of information. Something can be learned, associated, and remembered without the horse needing to understand the experience in the same narrative way that we do.

And this is where I want to share a couple of personal experiences that have stayed with me over the years.

Red Man: Meeting Myself Through a Horse

When I first went to Horse Spirit Connections in Tottenham for a workshop, I had a very special first session with a horse named Red Man. The activity was a Reflection exercise in the round pen, and my heart's desire for the session was simple: to know myself.

I walked into the arena, and Red Man met me in the middle.

For about ten minutes, we stood together face-to-face, very close. He licked my hands, nuzzled my jacket, looked in my eyes and simply stayed with me. The other participants who were watching later told me that our connection had been amazing and powerful. They were transfixed by what they were witnessing, although at the time, it wasn't necessarily easy for me to see what they were seeing. I was simply inside the experience.

It was a very special session. I felt that I was seeing myself through Red Man's eyes. In many ways, I met myself when I met the horses that day, and that experience continues to inform the work I do today.

What made the experience even more incredible happened about a year later. By then, I was back at Horse Spirit Connections doing sessions as part of my FEEL® training, now on the path to becoming a facilitator. I found myself doing another Reflection activity with Red Man. And he quite literally did the same thing he had done in our first session, after many other different sessions with him over the months.

It wasn't simply that he came over to say hello or showed a general familiarity with me. He recreated the same kind of interaction we had shared the first time. I could feel, very strongly, that the original experience was still fully present for him.

I had the profound feeling that he was recreating it - and not just vaguely. It felt moment-to-moment, exact and detailed, almost as though he was replaying the experience for me and communicating, in his own way, “I remember this. I remember what we experienced together.”

I can't know exactly how Red Man experienced that memory, and I don't know what was happening inside his mind. But the experience was so distinct that it left a lasting impression on me.

I'm not entirely sure how horses remember. Sometimes it almost feels as though there is something they can tune into and channel that is readily available to them - like a frequency they can return to and experience again. Whatever the neurological mechanism may be, that moment with Red Man gave me a very tangible sense that our first experience together had not simply disappeared into the past.

It was still there. And it was beautiful.

Same Old CC

I had another experience of this kind today that prompted me to write this blog post.

Last year, in 2025, I conducted workshops at Sherwood Farm Retreat with my good friend and fellow Advanced FEEL Facilitator, Monica Gilkes of My Spirited Hooves. We were joined by four horse partners who were visiting from Meadows Farm north of King City. One of the horses I connected with very strongly was CC, a Dutch Warmblood mare.

CC is a very special girl. She was born with a hoof issue that prevents her from being rideable, and perhaps because of her experience of rejection and her inability to fit into the conventional horse-human usage world, she instead became incredibly social, loving, therapeutic and affectionate - much like a huge puppy dog.

She is one of the sweetest horses I've ever met. She would come right up to clients and visitors looking for cuddles, affection and love. I connected deeply with her at Sherwood, and she seemed to absolutely shine in the work we were doing. She appeared to adore people and to deeply enjoy being part of the sessions and giving people love. She felt like a total natural.

The following year, CC didn't return to Sherwood with the group. Other horses were sent instead, and for various reasons, it was difficult for me to visit her. So I didn't see CC again until today - approximately a year after the last time I saw her. When I arrived, she came right up to me.

She nuzzled me, snuggled up, asked for scratches and stayed with me for a long time. And then, to make absolutely sure I understood that she remembered me, she did her signature move.

Last year, CC had a very particular way of asking me for attention: she would swing her hindquarters quite quickly toward me in a very sassy bid for booty scratches.

I always found this hilarious about her because she would almost chase people with her backside, demanding scratches with a wonderful combination of affection, confidence and loving sass. And there she was, a year later, doing exactly the same thing.

Same old CC.

I had a clear sense that she was communicating to me in her own way that she remembered me, remembered our relationship and wanted to reconnect in the way that was humorous and familiar to both of us.

We don't always know exactly what they remember, or precisely how they remember it. We don't know whether a horse stores a therapeutic session as a narrative memory in the way a human might remember an important event. But we do know that horses recognize individual people, remember previous experiences and can carry emotional associations from one interaction into another.

And then sometimes, they show us.

They come back to us after months or even a year apart.

They recognize our faces.

They return to familiar patterns of interaction.

They offer us the same gesture they offered before.

They nuzzle us.

They stand beside us.

Or, in CC's case, they swing their backside around and demand the scratches they remember enjoying.

So yes - horses remember us.

They remember people. They remember experiences. They remember how interactions with us feel. And while science is still uncovering the full complexity of equine memory and consciousness, the evidence and of course, felt and lived experiences, suggests that our interactions with horses leave a very lasting impression. For both us and them!