Never doubt you or your dog's abilities

So I'm not a religious follower of Silvia Trkman, but I do think what she does with her dogs is pretty awesome, especially all the tricks. From my experience, I think there are very few agility competitors out there that see the value and fun in training tricks. Training tricks is my favorite thing to do with my dogs, but most of the time I run out of things to teach or see things and think "Panic couldn't do that!" so I don't attempt them. However, when I saw Silvia's recent bottle hold challenge I thought I would try it even though I didn't think Panic would be able to have such dexterity to hold an object. 

Well of course I was wrong, I should just accept the fact that Panic can do ANYTHING, I just have to know that he can and be able to teach him. (When I first started training him to jump for example, I just "accepted" the fact that he would just be one of those dogs that ran REALLY REALLY WIDE--I honestly didn't think he had the ability to collect. Not that at this point he is the tightest turning dog in the world, but the boy can collect himself.) 

In any case I definitely didn't think he would actually get to holding the bottle in the first session, but by the end of it he started to get the idea.

It's not a miracle of a trick, but it helped solidify the fact that our dogs are only limited by us and our abilities as trainers. In any case, I think that is a good thought for people to have going into AKC Nationals--good luck to everyone competing!