The ‘smartest cow in the world’ has strong boundaries and knows what she wants

A Nebraska cow has earned a Guinness World Record for her ability to perform rapid-fire tricks in exchange for tasty treats and powerful head crabs.

Ghost, a four-year-old Charolais cow, did 10 tricks in 60 seconds in March to earn the Guinness title for most tricks performed by a cow in one minute.

“She’s pretty excited,” Ghost’s trainer, Megan Reimann, told me As it happens guest host Helen Mann.

“I think her head is getting a little big now, but she’s trying to stay normal and not get too full of herself.”

‘Just so shiny and beautiful’

Reimann usually trains horses on her property in Sheridan County, Neb. But when she first met Ghost, she just fell in love.

“I got Ghost as a calf a few days old to bottle raise, and she was just so shiny and beautiful I thought it would be fun to do something special with her,” she said.

So how do you train a cow?

“I train the horses and the cows – and I hope my kids and husband – using positive reinforcement. That just means rewarding them with something they love for everything they do, which is what I want them to do ,” Reiman said.

For Ghost, that means scratches or cookies.

“That makes working out a lot of fun for her and for me,” she said. “Learning to give her kisses, for example, if she brings her nose close to my face, she gets a cookie in return. That means she wants to give many more kisses.”

Kissing is just one trick in Ghost’s record repertoire. The others included staying in place, coming when called, twirling, bowing, doing a fist punch/leg lift, standing on a pedestal, getting into a lasso, touching a bell, and nodding her head as if to say “yes” say.

LOOK | Ghost the cow does 10 tricks in 1 minute:

It helps that Reimann and Ghost are close.

“She’s very much my cow,” said the trainer. “She will occasionally take treats from the kids, but if anyone else comes near her, she’s not interested and wants to leave.”

And if she wants to leave, that’s exactly what she will do. In fact, the strong-willed cow tends to anything she wants.

“She has a strong opinion,” Reimann said. “She has no qualms about saying no, leaving, or simply declining if she’s not happy with something.”

Not only does she have no trouble drawing boundaries, but she is also good at standing up for herself.

“She knows her worth and she’s not afraid to tell everyone. She makes sure everyone knows what she wants and she gets what she wants and they better get out of the way,” Reimann said.

“She loves to be scratched and she’s more than happy to put any part she wants to scratch right in your face and demand that you take care of her desires.”

Since Ghost set the record, several headlines have called her the world’s smartest cow, an assessment Riemann agrees with.

But she says she’s trained some other cows, too, and they’re actually easier to work with than horses.

“I notice that they are actually more enthusiastic about the training than the horses. Maybe because we sometimes ride horses, and that is work. And I only play with the cows, and they like that and are really looking forward to our time together exercise,” she says.

She admits that she initially planned to drive Ghost, which isn’t unheard of, but it didn’t quite work out.

“She likes to run and buck and has her own mind about where she’s going and what she’s going to do. And I’m getting old. I don’t really like falling off,” she said.