Somewhere around object persistence and planning actions: I once saw a rodeo clown's dog in a comedy bit where the clown would remove something from a barrel an

Somewhere around object persistence and planning actions: I once saw a rodeo clown's dog in a comedy bit where the clown would remove something from a barrel and the dog would put it back in when he turned around. Once, the dog missed dropping the object in the barrel--and then picked it up and did it again, this time getting it in the barrel. That dog knew he was performing a certain task, and not just an action. That's stuck with me as a pretty impressive feat of canine cognition.