🛏️ Week 3 Day 1 · Place/Settle — Guest Arrival

Real world starts here. Your dog has the skill — now we prove it counts everywhere. Week 3 takes every behavior out of the living room into the environments where it actually matters.

Place / Settle — Week 3, Day 1 with your dog

⏱ 10–15 minutes🏠 Front door or entryway🎯 Goal: settle holds during a real or practiced guest arrival sequence 🔗 Chained with: Sit

Where Week 2 left off

Week 2 built place-settle across: mat entry, send distance, 2-minute duration, mild distraction, mat portability, fluency, and real-world household chains. your dog settles on the mat in multiple locations with distraction.

Week 3 Day 1 is the hardest real-world application: settle holds while guests arrive at the front door. This is the maximum-arousal household event. The sit-as-entry chain structures the approach to the mat.

Your Week 3 Day 1 protocol

1
Setup: Position the mat 8–10 feet from the front door
The mat is ${label}'s anchor point — visible from the door, away from the threshold chaos
Place your dog's settle mat in the entry area — far enough from the door that your dog isn't directly in the greeting zone, close enough that you can easily send them to it when the doorbell rings. Have high-value treats on or near the mat. Do 2 warm-up settles before the "arrival" practice begins — confirm the behavior is active before the chaos starts.
2
Chain: Sit → send to mat → settle
The arrival sequence starts with a sit — then "place" — then the settle holds
When the doorbell rings (or you're practicing with a household member knocking): ask your dog for a "sit" first. Once sitting: say "place" and send to the mat. Once on the mat and in a down: hold the settle through the door opening and the guest entering. The sit-as-entry behavior is the chain — it interrupts the running-to-the-door pattern and redirects to the mat sequence. Even if your dog needs the sit cue 3 times before moving to the mat: work through it. The chain has 3 steps and any step is trainable.
3
Reps 1–3: Practice arrival sequence with a household member
Someone goes outside and "arrives" — repeat 3 times
Have a household member go outside and ring or knock. Run the full sequence: sit → place → settle hold through guest entry. After the guest has entered and your dog has held the settle for 10 seconds: release and allow a calm greeting. "Calm" means four paws on the floor — if your dog jumps: turn away, reset, try again. Release to greet only after the settle hold.
4
Rep 4–5: Real or unexpected visitor (if available)
An actual guest arrival — or a more novel household-member arrival with a prop (hat, umbrella, package)
If you have an actual visitor expected today: use the real arrival as a training rep. If not: have a household member arrive with something that changes their appearance or behavior — a hat, a bag, a different voice. Novelty is a distraction amplifier. Run the full sequence. If your dog holds the settle through a genuinely novel arrival: that's an excellent Week 3 Day 1 outcome. Jackpot it.

If your dog cannot settle at all while guests arrive — runs to the door on every rep regardless of cues: the arousal is exceeding the behavior's current strength. Don't fight the arousal — reduce it. Practice with the door closed. Practice with no knock. Practice with a very boring household member at 6 feet. Build the sequence from zero-arousal and add stimulation incrementally. The 3-step chain (sit → place → settle) is a lot of behavior under pressure; any single step holding is progress.

The sit-chain solves the door-rushing problem

Door-rushing when guests arrive is driven by conditioned arousal — the doorbell or knock has been paired with exciting social events so many times that it's become a reliable trigger for the rushing behavior. Cuing "sit" the moment the trigger occurs interrupts the chain before the rush happens. The sit isn't the goal behavior — it's an arousal-reduction behavior that makes the mat send possible.

The settle on the mat is the goal behavior: your dog goes to a designated spot and holds while the socially exciting event happens around them. Once that's reliable, it gives you a predictable, repeatable way to manage arrivals: doorbell → sit → mat → settle → release to greet. The whole sequence becomes the protocol, and your dog's behavior at the door goes from chaos to predictable.

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Week 3 Day 1 — real world counts.

10–15 minutes. New environment. Real stakes.

✅ Week 3 Day 1 logged.

Real-world proof. The behavior works outside the living room — that's the whole point. Keep taking it into new environments and the reliability compounds.

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