"Big dog" -- (Marcie) -- is a beagle. Most people think of beagles are very stubborn dogs. Many of them are quite aloof.
Marcie wants to be one of those aloof dogs. Unfortunately she is owned by someone who has trained a bunch of really outgoing "demo" dogs, so she doesn't get that chance. She has learned that people have food and if you are really cute and do tricks, people give you food. In fact, she does everything but agility for food. Food is a bonus, of course, for agility, but the real reward for agility is getting to run fast, and stand on really tall obstacles. Okay, it all really means food somehow. But she has run agility when there was rabbits on the course, and she'd didn't stop to look at the rabbit. (She is field breed and from excellant stock).
She's really funny, because she doesn't fawn on me, and she really even doesn't spend that much time in the same room with me. She's usually in my bed, or in my chair, while I'm here in the computer room. If I'm downstairs, she's in the people yard, or she's on a stair on the stair case.
When we run agility, she really doesn't look like she is paying attention to me. It often looks likes she isn't paying attention at all to me when we run a course (and sometimes she doesn't), but she started doing something really odd, that my first agility instructor caught. This was back when I had untreated GERD, which caused asthma like symthoms. She would completely stop running the course. She would go off and sniff, she would go off and eliminate, so do some other behavior that made me stop.
I have never really encouraged the behavior. When it happens I am too busy weezing, coughing, and trying to catch my breath to do anything about it.
Tonight, she pulled the ultimate. It was actually pretty cool. We'd done a really nice run, she was using her border collie beagle personality. (My first instructor once said that Marcie had at least 10 different personalities, and we never know which one she is wearing -- and that is as good an explaination as any).
We did miss one obstacle and it was mom's fault. Too many years of police dog training -- when the instructor tells me to do something I do it. I tried repeating part of the run. We did get past the difficult part and accomplished what we wanted...but in the middle of the run, Marcie went over to the table and stopped. I tried to get her to go on, but she hopped back on the table. Third time, I listened, walked off the course, praised her and handed her a mouthful of hot dog.
I really think she is going to do something when my blood sugar gets to low. I am too chicken right now to force it to happen and actually train it.
One of her cute things -- she leaves the room if I give myself a shot. It really bothers her.