🧘 Day 2 · Week 2 — New Triggers

Impulse Control — Day 2 with your dog

⏱ 5 minutes🍽️ Door threshold + meal time🎯 Goal: 5-second wait before release at the door and before the food bowl

Day 1 recap

Day 1 built the sit-and-wait game: treat visible in open palm, 1–3 second holds, mark and deliver on clean waits. If your dog was holding 3-second waits reliably and you added the verbal cue "wait," the foundation is solid.

Day 2 transfers the wait behavior to two real-life contexts where it matters most: thresholds (doors) and meals. These are the moments your dog's impulse control actually gets tested.

Your Day 2 protocol

1
Context 1: Door threshold (10 reps)
Sit before the door opens — open door only when sit holds
Ask for a sit at any interior door. Say "wait." Reach for the door handle. If your dog breaks the sit: stop, ask for the sit again. If they hold: open the door a crack. Hold the crack. If still sitting: open fully, then give a release cue ("free" or "OK") and let them through. No treat needed — the door opening is the reward. If they bolt before the release: close the door again, reset.
2
Context 2: Meal bowl wait (5 reps over 2–3 meals)
Sit-stay before the bowl goes down
Hold the food bowl. Ask your dog to sit. Say "wait." Lower the bowl slowly toward the floor. If your dog stays sitting: set the bowl down, pause 3 seconds, give your release cue. If they break: lift the bowl, ask for the sit again. The rule: bowl only touches the floor when the sit holds. Release cue before they eat. This meal-time wait is the most consistently practiced version of impulse control you'll do — twice daily, every day.
3
Combine both in one session
Door wait → walk to bowl → bowl wait → eat
Practice: wait at the door → pass through on release → wait for the bowl → eat on release. That's two impulse-control moments back to back. This is the beginning of your dog understanding that good things happen when they wait — and that waiting is the default, not jumping.

If your dog can't sit at the door without immediately bolting to get through: back up to stationary sits-and-waits for 5 more reps, then try again with the door only moving 2 inches. The threshold context is high-arousal — the door creates excitement that competes with the sit. If your dog won't sit for the bowl at all (too aroused by food): start with the bowl on the counter and only move it when they're sitting, even briefly. Duration builds when the arousal goes down.

Why thresholds and meals are the best training moments

Impulse control trained only in low-arousal sit-wait sessions doesn't transfer well to high-arousal real life. Thresholds and meals are the two moments where your dog's drive is highest — and therefore the two moments where impulse control training is most valuable and hardest. Building the behavior in those contexts directly is more effective than hoping it generalises on its own.

Door waiting especially matters: a dog that sits and waits at every threshold — interior doors, the car door, the front door — is a dog that can't accidentally run out of the house or bolt into the street. That's not a nice-to-have, it's a safety behavior. Build it while the habit is easy to shape.

Ready? New room, same your dog.

5 minutes. Different spot. Same cue.

✅ Day 2 logged.

Context switch done. That's how generalisation gets built — not by drilling in one spot, but by proving the cue works everywhere. Day 3 adds duration and distance.

Day 3: Duration + Distance → ← Back to Week 2 skills

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