It is at the expense of the handlers of certain dogs in agility competitions, but speaking only for ourselves, the canines who make mistakes are the ones we find utterly endearing.

There is no question that when it comes to such dogs, our very favorite agility dog of all time has to be Kiva, a Siberian Husky whose off-script performance illustrates unadulterated joy. Check out her agility run from 2012. She started out strong, but less than a minute in, and Kiva’s earthy strings were cut loose. We feel sure that every time we watch her take an unscheduled jump, we hear, “Wheeee!”

And then there was the crowd-favorite Mastiff competing at the Rocky Mountain Cluster Dog Show in 2014. His run was 1:34 long, but it felt like 1:33 of it took place in the weaves:

And then there are distracted dogs…

Where we’re going with this is that there are all sorts of agility terms, and one of them refers to a dog like “Winky” who get distracted at the top of an agility A-Frame. The adorable Bichon Frise competed at Westminster’s Masters Agility Championship Preliminaries in 2019 and was a particular crowd favorite which we know because we sat ringside and heard the roars of affection. Maybe it was just us, but Winky seemed to “feel the love.”

What Winky did is called “frame gazing” and it refers to the dog who pauses at the top of the A-frame to take in the superior view of the arena.  We suspect others might not agree, but we can’t help but think these dogs are pretty intelligent to want to stop and smell the roses, so to speak. Just saying. Agility folks who are reading, we know you have your own stories and photos to share!

Image: We used a Border Collie because personally, we’ve never one seen one “stink” at agility.