Comment by thaumasiotes

That is not something that will happen with measure words. Ignoring some grammar will limit you. This is not such a case. Ignoring semantics-free measure words will make you sound like a native speaker.

Chinese measure words are not something that happens on a noun-by-noun basis. Memorizing them as part of a noun is not a well-chosen approach. Most often this will saddle you with the burden of separately memorizing "pass" and "passed" as independent forms of the verb, while providing comparable benefits.

You might have noticed that my comment above suggested that

(a) the default measure word is 个;

(b) the default measure word for a horse is not 个.

Do you know why?