Have I screwed up beyond help??

Progress is always exciting. My 3 foot red tegu I recently got did not thrash around like an alligator today when I took him to the tub. Keep at it they are supposed to be great monitors.

Thanks, Lisa! Yes, baby steps - they are great, especially in the right direction!! I feel the same with my young Savanna, he actually comes out to greet me now when I open his door - granted, it's because he wants food - LOL - but he doesn't huff at me anymore, and I can pick him up with no problems. Same for my baby Argentine Tegu - he still huffs a little but he isn't near as thrashy as he used to be when I first pick him up!! Gotta love these guys - they are like having real children, all the learning you do being their parent!!

Welcome to monitor husbandry. Many view these animals in a completely hands off manner, unless they need to. Some inbetween, and then there are people who want nothing but to play with it, and take it around with them, etc etc.

Monitors are smart, and for mine I used exclusively tong feeding for the vast majority of feeding. They learned to assosciate the tongs with food. I also use dishes occasionally for things like ground turkey or fish pieces. The goal is for the monitor to never view your being as a source of food. If your monitor always assosciates you with food, you will have an interesting reaction with your captive. Get him to assosciate a myriad of things with food, and keep up things like touching him occasionally, changing water, moving substrate for cleaning etc.

I've been doing things like this with my year old almost 4 foot nile, I rarely handle, I hand feed him rodents with 0 issues, and he has never actually bit me. Well, unless you count having to rush in and grab him all of a sudden durring a very bad storm to ensure his saftey- he nipped me. I have 4 monitors, none of which offer any sort of biting.

-Mike

Welcome to the world of black throat monitors They are eating machines, food addicts, garbage cans, etc. Ive owned several species and nothing ive seen comes close to the black throats drive to consume. Thats exactly what happened with mine when he was about the size of yours. He slowly reached out and tried to take a bite out of my gf's thigh. Its hunger motivated, not aggression. We, as keepers, have the unfortunate condition of being made out of stuff monitors like to eat
For sure try to disassociate your hands with food, this is the very reason we use tongs.