Finding Glimmers

Part Three: The Brain Remembers Experiences

One of the most hopeful things I have ever learnt isn’t actually about dogs.

It’s about brains.

Not perfect brains.
Not neurotypical brains.
Not “good” memories.
Just brains.

Before I became fascinated by neuroplasticity, I genuinely believed I simply had a bad memory.
For years I thought my disabilities defined the way I learnt. That perhaps they placed a ceiling on what I could understand or remember.

I couldn’t have been more wrong.

Those who know me personally—or have worked with me as a client or colleague—know how much I study.

If we uncover something during a consultation that deserves a deeper understanding, I will happily disappear into scientific journals, psychology textbooks, neuroscience papers and behaviour research for hours, simply because I want to understand it well enough to support you and your dog in the best way I can.

Learning has never been something anyone has needed to encourage me to do.
If anything, I’ve always struggled to stop. (Notice the timer?)

I would spend hours reading.
Reading the same paragraph again.
Highlighting everything.
Making notes.
Drawing diagrams.
Creating colour-coded folders.
Then somebody would ask me a question.
And…
Nothing.

My mind would go completely blank.
If you’ve ever experienced that, you’ll know just how frustrating it can be.

What you don’t see

As a reader, client or colleague, you see the finished pieces.
The blog posts.
The webinars.
The podcasts.
The books.
The consultations.
What you don’t see are the notebooks.
The pages covered in colour.
The mind maps.
The sticky notes.
The diagrams.
The photographs.
The folders.
Every colour.
Every connection.
Every example.

They aren’t there because I don’t understand.
They’re there because they help my brain find its way back to the information.

And that one realisation changed everything.

My brain wasn’t failing.
It was waiting for a cue.
If someone unexpectedly asked me,
“Tell me everything you know about the amygdala.”
I’d probably freeze.

But if they asked,
“Why does Diesel sometimes freeze before he barks?”

Everything suddenly appears.
Not because I learnt something new.
But because Diesel became the retrieval cue.
My brain suddenly knew where to look.

That was one of the moments I began looking at neuroplasticity differently.

Then I realised…
Our dogs learn like this too.
Learning doesn’t happen in isolation.

It happens through relationships.
Through places.
Through smells.
Through movement.
Through emotions.
Through previous experiences.
Through context.

Which is why guardians often tell me:
“He’s perfect at home, but he can’t do it outside.”
And they’re absolutely right.

The cue changed.
The environment changed.
The nervous system changed.
The brain was being asked to retrieve learning under completely different circumstances.
Suddenly, so much behaviour began making sense.

Then something else occurred to me.
What are glimmers?
They’re retrieval cues.

Tiny pieces of evidence quietly saying,
“Remember this feeling.”
“Remember this place.”
“Remember this smell.”
“Remember that you were safe here.”
Every glimmer becomes another experience the brain can return to later.
Another pathway.
Another memory.

Another opportunity for the nervous system to whisper,
“I’ve been here before.”
“I survived.”
“Perhaps I’m safe.”

Why does this matter?

Because one of the most remarkable things about the brain is that it is constantly changing.
Neuroscientists call this experience-dependent neuroplasticity.

In simple terms, our brains adapt according to the experiences we repeatedly have.

Every peaceful interaction.
Every successful recovery after a startle.
Every curious sniff.
Every gentle breath.
Every glimmer.

Each one becomes another opportunity for the brain to learn something different about the world.
And as those experiences are repeated, something equally remarkable happens.

The brain begins strengthening the pathways that support those experiences through a process called activity-dependent synaptogenesis.
That sounds wonderfully complicated.
But the idea behind it is beautifully simple.

One of the most hopeful phrases in neuroscience is:
Neurons that fire together, wire together.
Imagine walking through a field of long grass.
The very first journey is difficult.
You have to push the grass aside.
There’s no obvious route.
But every time you walk that same path, it becomes a little clearer.
A little easier.
A little more familiar.
Eventually…
without even thinking…
your feet naturally follow the path you’ve travelled before.

Our brains work in remarkably similar ways.
Repeated experiences strengthen the pathways that support them.
Not overnight.
Not perfectly.
But gradually.
One experience at a time.

Perhaps that’s why glimmers matter so much.
Not because they magically erase fear.
Not because they make difficult emotions disappear.
But because every glimmer becomes another gentle step along a pathway that says,
“Safety exists too.”
Attention shapes experience.
Experience shapes the brain.
And over time…
the brain begins shaping what we expect to find next.

A lesson my dogs have quietly taught me
For a long time I believed needing examples, colours, stories and retrieval cues somehow meant I wasn’t intelligent enough.

Now I understand something entirely different.
My brain stores information through relationships.
Through colour.
Through stories.
Through connection.
Through context.

And perhaps our dogs have been trying to teach us the very same lesson all along.

Learning isn’t simply about storing more information.

It’s about helping the brain know where to find it when it matters most.

And perhaps that’s what a glimmer really is.

Not just a beautiful moment.
But a tiny piece of evidence that the brain can return to again…
and again…
and again.