Focus Point 🎯

🐾 A new focal point for heelwork

Now we are at a step where many athletes struggle — but this step can take your heelwork to the next level.

We now want to start phasing out the food hand and teach the dog a new focal point.

Our new focal point will be:

➡️ the left armpit

🏡 Build the focal point at home

One thing is very important:

All of the next steps for building the new focal point are practiced exclusively at home.

At the same time, you continue your normal food driving on the training field.

So both things are built in parallel:

✅ Food driving continues on the training field
✅ The new focal point is trained at home

Only once the focal point works reliably do we bring it onto the training field.

For now, we practice in a low-distraction and low-motivation environment.

👀 Why the left armpit?

The goal is for the dog to eventually walk without the food hand while still having a clear point to focus on.

When dogs look directly into the handler’s face during heelwork, they often move too far forward or turn their head slightly to the side.

This can make the overall position look less clean.

If the dog focuses under the left armpit, he usually takes up a better position automatically.

This helps create:

✅ a straighter position
✅ a more harmonious picture
✅ cleaner overall heelwork

💡 If we are building heelwork from scratch, we can use this focal point to create the cleanest possible position right from the beginning.