zizou

Ok I'll try that. Thanks Steve

Yeah, I did read about the negatives, I don't think I'll be doing it after all. TOT is going all right, the only thing I"m not overly happy is that my dog's realised that I unleash him when I bow down and say ok, now as soon as I start bowing down to him he'll get up and want to go before I give the ok. I just stand straight again until he sits, and try again and again until he stays seated until I unleash him. I hope this is the right thing to do.

Thanks again Steve, Your reply cleared up any confusions now. And yes you were right with the overexcitement, this time I moved the food further away and he's calm and not whining or barking or anything. Going good so far. I'll have to look into how to teach a dog not to eat from strangers, I'd imagine it wont be easy..

Hi Steve, I have to say thank you first for sharing your time on this thread for the last two years. I and surely all others appreciate your help here. Trhis thread acutally made me subscribe to this forum today. :-) I've got a couple of questions with the technique: I started doing TOT but I did it wrong, did distance before time so I'm intending to start all over again from tonight and do it properly. I have read all 20 pages and your main post again so I should be right for tonight. I still have these questions though: 1. Once your dog sits for 3 minutes, does not get distracted by other dogs people etc. What will be the feeding procedure? you still tie him up and then go inside make the food bring it out etc? Or should you be able to say sit and stay to the dog any time and go and make dinner with the dog waiting for you? 2. this brings me to my other question,(Correct me if i'm wrong from here please) At the beginnig you say Yes when he looks in your eyes then OK when you unleash him. Then in the next stage when you teach him to sit, you say Yes once he's looked at you and sat right? In the third stage where you extend the time of the sit do you say yes once he's completed sitting for an x amount of time? And should you actually say sit, and sit/stay or just wait for the dog to sit automatically? Two other behaviour questions related to this: Even though I was doing it wrong I'll describe what my dog did, my 13 week old am. bulldog puppy was whining at the beginnig when I went inside, once he calms down I go out, as soon as he sees me he gets excited again. I would place the food away from him then stand next to him tell him to sit, he would sit and give me eye contact but then after a couple of seconds out of impatience or whatever reason he'd bark in a high pitched noise and whine and stand up to sort of tell me to let him go. When he does this, should I tell him to sit again and try from beginning or go back inside until he calms down? or maybe move the food further away??? Not sure what to do.... And I thought about this, if you teach your dog to obey and then get a reward and only eat in a limited timespan are you creating a dog that is going to be very eager to eat at other times and from any other source? If lets say for example an intruder comes into your yard and just throws a bone to your dog do you think a dog trained with the tot method will sort of see this as easy food and go for it because usually he has to work much harder for food? Thanks in advance zizou