www.sitmeanssit.com Fred Hassen and 14 month old ‘Charger’ a black labrador retriever, are seen during some video from a teaching phase of the program where I am refining concentration on his ‘mark’ command. Having these fundamentals in anything you are doing where the dog has to concentrate on an object that he is going to retrieve, you want to bring things into the situation that will be distracting different pictures to the dog to refine his concentration. My movement around him initially makes the dog take glances at you, and especially if you line up on different sides, move behind him, or anything that may make the picture different to him. I use these opportunities to make him see that he must look at the object or ‘mark’ it. As he gets more immuned to all of this, all of his energy comes forward and his motivation becomes at it’s highest point. It’s the training process that will develop this most. The moving along the shoreline on the angle returns will allow you to turn very simple initial pictures, into a more complicated picture and allows me to teach concepts faster. You will see it all tied together in future videos, and you will at least know how the drill was started. I’m constantly challenging him, and raising his bar which keeps his attention and energy level high.