Some background:
Although we know a lot of dogs at our local park and Ben gets along with all of them to a greater or lesser extent, there are 3 dogs (including Ben) who get along especially well, and are the most evenly matched in terms of energy level and play style, so their humans (me, a middle aged guy and a guy about my age) have an arrangement to meet every day at 4 pm. We can do this because we all work from home, and all our "other halves" don't. It's especially nice because at that time of day we have the park all to ourselves.
Anyway, we were there today and the dogs had been playing for a while, and we realised that our dogs spend so much time together (and around us) that all of them will obey commands from all of us. This was really cool, because once we noticed this we were taking turns getting them to do sit- and down-stays lined up in a row while they waited for a ball to be thrown.
By the end, we could each get all three dogs to sit or lie down, throw the ball, and get only ONE of the dogs to run to fetch it while the other 2 waited. It was neat because not only were the dogs obeying when they each had 2 other dogs to distract them, but they were all following commands from only one of us. They looked adorable all lined up in a row, too. We're now going to be spending a little while at the end of each play session (when they're tired) working on training them all together.
This is actually good from a practical point too, since there could be some kind of unexpected emergency or something and it's nice to know we all have some measure of control over each other's dogs should it ever be really necessary to use it. It's also nice to know since one of the owners is the male half of the couple who are watching Ben on my wedding day, and I feel good knowing Ben will listen to him.
YAY! It may kinda be one of those you-had-to-be-there things, but just looking at all 3, saying "sit" once and having 3 poochy butts hit the ground in unison was very cool.
Kate