Yeah that makes sense as I can tell he loves to come out, because when I put him back in he scratches at the glass like crazy to come back out and looks at me in a begging sort of way (you can tell a lot from their eyes I find). Some people don't seem to think you can tell what a lizard is thinking but you can with some things and getting excited about comeing out is one of them lol. The thing is when he has tail whipped when he's been out it hasn't been that hard really, just half hearted, so as you said should I just put him back if it is really forceful or should I just put him back whenever he does it half hearted or not?.

I seemed to discover a good way to stop him tail whipping when I have to open the door on a morning to get his food dish out, I picked a flower and showed him it through the glass whilst he was still in his hide, and he came straight up to the glass, I then opened the door and slowly moved it towards him and he took it, I did this a couple more times and then removed his bowl while he was munching away lol, and he didn't whip at all, normally he would whip his tail hard when in his hide. I'm hoping that I might be able to build on this and do it every morning, and hopefully he will get so used to it that he will forget about the tail whipping, as it will be like conditioning his brain to think in a different way when he hears the door open. I've also decided to use my tongs for hand feeding, for most of it any way, not because he lunges or anything just because during my research on reptile behaviour and training/ taming I've read a few things where people said they got rid of the bad behaviour by hand feeding but then after a while the lizard would lunge at their hand, and I know from experience with the ackie monitor I had, that he used to get excited when he saw the tongs and didn't when he saw my hand so thats what I'm doing as I would be really cheezed off if I replaced one bad behaviour with another after all the time it will take and so on. The problem is my nasturtiums are only going to keep flowering for so long, so once they stop I have no idea of what to use as a treat, and if I do continue to make progress it would be a real shame if things slipped back just because he wouldn't take anything else. Do you think he might start taking more different things off me once he gets more used to me?

Any way thanks for your advice and encouragement and also thanks to PHFaust for your encouragement.
Martin

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