Does it make sense to use such a stick to guide the dog into the correct position?

I've learned it by giving the dog first a touch pad as reference point, then putting my hand consistently to the correct spot on my leg. and/or making him touch my leg, later makinng him by focus on me while I'm holding my hand out of the pic. This was often my problem, that damned wandered often into the pic.

In between it works, when I'm clawing my hands together on the back. But in the long run this is certainly not ideal.

The dogs come meanwhile into heel on verbal cue, also walk and turn right and left correctly, but for a bit longer distances they don't keep walking touching my leg, except Slippie.

Every dog is going to be different and need different cues no matter how subtle.

As to how you get the response, it's not really important if you not going to be doing competion OB.

To me, the lack of attention after a bit longer heeling that could possibly be your not rewarding randomly on your foot steps.

Often times when someone starts getting distance on the heeling they will forget about that first step, 10th step, whatever.

No matter how long you've been training you can't just keep adding steps without rewarding even the very first step randomly.

I do give random rewards in between, random not only what concerns the amount of treats, alsothe frequency, once after 1 , 6, 3, etc. Maybe I've added sometimes to many steps until the next reward. I'll have to film this again.

I also had the bad habit to mark/rew at the same time. I think I've got rid of this in between. Filming will reveal. I always say to myself (just in my thoughts) maek-wait-rew.

In Forrest's "Heeler's Toolbox" I've learned, that once the dogs have learned heeling to this point, we shouldn't stop any more when we mark/rew , we should do this while they are moving with us, in order they get reinforced for moving correctly in contact with our leg or at least very near to us.

I'm doing this just for keeping themselves very near and focussing on me. If the look after a bird etc. I don't.

I've seen in vids that handlers make the dog sit while they are walkingor running on. Of course this was in competition heeling, so probably not necessary for us.

But would it make sense to train this even though? Would this mean I had to make them sit without verbal command but just with a clear hand signal?

The dog is taught a solid sit away from the heeling in the beginning because you don't want to be teaching the heeling and the sit command together.

For you it can be a verbal or a hand signal for the sit.

In competition the dogs learns to sit on subtle foot movement.

Also in competition I would always practice the foot work without the dog so I don't have to think about "me" making mistakes and messing up the dog.

In Sschutzhund/IPO the dog is required to do a sit, a down and a running stand on command while the handler keeps moving forward.

Foot work can be critical with those moving commands.

Interesting! well for me that means I'll have to retrain or generealize the stays with footwork.

The have a very good and long sit-, down- and stand stay. I can go around them, dance in some distance, run away and towards them, then run away again. also a little distance out of sight and they don't break it.

BUT: they were taught this by hand cue, later on by verbal cue and end it by the release cue and rew. But they're used to the hand signal more from the front. To do this, when they have to stop and sit etc. beside me I'd have to turn my whole arm to them, if not it would be a different signal, additionally a different body pic.

If I have to change this cue anyway, I can as well change it to e foot signal. So I hope, they're not already too much fixed on the hand signal and the "ok"/rew.

But how do I give a foot signal? I mean, I guess it mustn't be too obvious. Can I start with an obvious one and then gradually fade it to a more discreet one?

Your right, I do not need it absolutely. But if I'd like to train a little dog dance it's akward to do everything near me, I also want to do some parts with the dog being at a certain distance.

Only if it is not asked to much from them. If it is, we can be happy together using other means