Blackberries and learning

I've been going blackberry picking with Grey this week and it was really interesting to see his behaviour. Two things came up. One that he learned how to pick blackberries. Previously I used to give him a blackberry and he never picked one for himself despite sniffing them. But when I was just picking for myself and ignoring him, he started picking off the lower branches and ate quite a lot. So I wondered do dogs learn at all from copying humans even though we have different tools? We have hands they pick from their mouths. Or is it just opportunistic?

Second he behaved differently while I was picking than he normally would in the same field that we would go to on a walk. Effectively I was ignoring him and stationary. He stayed very close and often was laying near me or just pottering close by. He didn't do a quarter of the free running he would have done normally. So different energy from me really affects him. Interesting. I'd already seen the week previously that one way to get him to bring an object back when playing fetch is if I sat down on the ground. He was much more likely to come to me than if I was standing.