🛏️ Week 3 Day 2 · Place/Settle — Doorbell + Greeting Hold

Layered distractions. Day 1 proved the behavior works in real environments. Day 2 stacks competing stimuli simultaneously — verbal praise overlapping the cue, simultaneous lures, ambient noise, and social pressure at once. If it holds under layers, it holds anywhere.

Place / Settle — Week 3, Day 2 with your dog

⏱ 10–15 minutes🏠 Mat near entryway — household member assistance helpful🎯 Goal: settle holds through doorbell + guest entry + greeting sequence as one continuous chain

Where Day 1 left off

Day 1 ran the arrival sequence — sit → place → settle through a guest arrival. your dog can sequence the chain from the sit all the way to a settle through the door-open moment.

Day 2 adds the greeting itself as a distraction layer: your dog holds the settle while a guest actively greets them — calling their name, crouching down, making eye contact. The social pull of a directed greeting is the hardest layer for a settle to absorb.

Your Week 3 Day 2 protocol

1
Setup: Mat in position, household member briefed on the greeting script
The "greeter" needs to know the protocol — excited tone but no physical greeting until release
Brief your household member (or yourself, if practicing solo with a recorded doorbell): when they enter, they walk to within 5 feet of your dog's mat, make eye contact, say your dog's name in an excited tone, and crouch toward them — but do NOT physically greet until you release your dog. The proximity plus excited name-call is the distraction stack. Physical contact only happens after release from the settle.
2
Reps 1–3: Full sequence — doorbell → sit → place → settle hold through excited greeting approach
The greeter gets excited, calls the name, crouches near the mat — your dog holds the down
Run the full sequence: doorbell → ask your dog for sit → "place" → settle hold. Greeter enters and approaches mat with excited energy, calling your dog's name, crouching to eye level — but holds physical contact. your dog must hold the down through the approach and excitement. Mark the hold at 10 seconds after the greeter is close. Then release with "okay" or your release cue — only then does physical greeting happen. If your dog breaks: reset to mat, no greeting happens yet. The greeting is the release reward, not an interruption.
3
Add physical contact layer: greeter pets your dog on the mat without releasing
The greeter pets your dog while they're still in the down — before the release
Once your dog holds through the proximity and excited vocal: have the greeter gently pet your dog on the mat while they're still holding the down. This is the peak distraction — physical touch while the behavior is still expected. If your dog holds a 5-second pet while in a down without breaking: mark and release to full greeting. If they break: reset. The "pet while down" layer takes multiple sessions for most dogs; any success today is ahead of schedule.
4
Rep 4–5: Stranger version — different greeter or phone camera trick
A less familiar person, or simulate novelty (hat, different voice, unfamiliar approach angle)
The hardest settle is with an unfamiliar greeter — someone your dog doesn't know. If you have a neighbor or friend available: use a real novel person today. If not: simulate novelty by having your household member approach from an unfamiliar angle, wear a hat, or use a different vocal tone. Any novelty in the greeter increases the arousal. Hold the full sequence. A settle that holds through a novel-greeter approach with excited proximity contact is Week 3 Day 2 passed.

Physical contact during the settle hold — step 3 — is harder than any distraction in Week 2. Many dogs will hold a settle through movement and noise but break immediately when touched by an excited person. That's not a training failure; it's the next frontier. If your dog holds through steps 1 and 2 but breaks on step 3: that's excellent progress. Step 3 becomes Day 3's warm-up target.

The greeting is the final proof for settle reliability

A settle that holds through visual and auditory excitement but breaks on physical touch reveals that the physical greeting is the terminal behavior the dog was waiting for throughout the hold. The stay was not the behavior — the greeting was. Extending the settle through the greeting approach and even the early petting redefines what the settle "earns": not the release to greeting, but the greeting itself while remaining in position.

This matters practically because arrivals are chaotic: the person is excited, your dog is excited, and the physical greeting starts before you've had a chance to release. Training the settle to hold through physical greeting approach gives you margin — even if the greeting starts "early," the behavior holds long enough to reinforce the position.

Talk to your coach about today's distractions. Voice coaching is 15 minutes per session, included with a founding membership. Real-time help when layered distractions don't go as planned.

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Week 3 Day 2 — layers make it real.

10–15 minutes. Competing stimuli. Stacked pressure.

✅ Week 3 Day 2 logged.

Layered distractions cleared. The behavior holding under competing stimuli is a fundamentally different animal than the behavior holding in quiet conditions. Day 3 adds duration and variability — the last frontier.

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