Thanks for the replies Carrie and Aly!

Ironically, last night in agility class we were discussing
this very topic, but I didn't make any connection to what
I'm doing in regards to periodically giving them part of
my food.

We use a lot of food luring to initially teach the obstacles,
but one of the guys was mentioning that after the
obstacle is learned, then you should start randomly
giving the food reward, for the exact reasons you've
both just given. The dog will work that much harder at
each obstacle trying to get that reward again.

I wondered though if the dog would then take that as a
sign that he was doing the obstacles incorrectly if he didn't
get the food reward and then start trying other things
in a desperate attempt to get the reward? My assumption
was you'd need to make sure they got lots of verbal praise,
as you took away the food reward, so they'd know they
were still doing things correctly, but noticed this guy didn't
really give his dog any food or verbal praise when they
finished a run. His dog does really good, but I have my
doubts about how well that would work for Oz.

Last night, we had a miscue between us on a tunnel that was
positioned next to an a-frame. He was suppose to go through
the tunnel, but he passed it and came to me. I've no doubt
a handling mistake on my part, but once that happened, and
he got no confirmation that he'd done right, he just went
through a whole sequence of behaviors seeing if he could
hit the right one, from trying to jump over the tunnel, to going
up the a-frame, to going in the wrong end of the tunnel, to
finally doing it correctly. I had tried to maneuver him back to
the tunnel entrance to give the command again, but he was
already too focused on going through his own lil' checklist.
I think I may have strayed off point here, but the inner workings
of the dog mind is just very intriguing. Like trying to solve a
puzzle to me.

Par...