Chapter 3
Sit before the bowl
The sit you have in a quiet hallway is not the sit you have when dinner comes off the counter.
You think you have sit.
You have it in the hallway, when nothing is happening. You have it when a treat is an inch from their nose. You do not have it when the bowl leaves the counter.
That is the sit that matters. Twice a day, every day, the kitchen teaches the opposite lesson: the moment food appears, the cue is optional. You say sit. They dance. You say it again, louder. The bowl still goes down. They just learned that the second sit, the third sit, or the lunge is what gets paid.
Shouting does not fix this. Chasing the bowl does not fix this. A prettier sit in a quiet room does not fix this. The kitchen is a different job.
Start with one meal. Not both. You are not putting on a show for the house tonight. You are teaching one sequence so clean that the next meal can copy it.
Keep the food on the counter. Put the dog on a mat two steps back from where the bowl will land. If they cannot stand still there yet, you are not ready for the bowl. Go back to attention: say their name, wait for eye contact, mark it, and feed from your hand on the mat. A sit asked of a spinning dog will not be there tomorrow.