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Post by Briar on Oct 3, 2020 12:52:37 GMT -6
Besides which, they’d already been at it for a while, and he didn’t want to tire Loki out by doing too much of the same thing.
The next day, they came back, and already Loki was looking at him with an air of expectation. This was only their second day in the garden, but it seemed like Loki understood, or at least anticipated, that it would be more of what they had done the day before. “You’re ready to go, huh, Loki?” Aubrey said, smiling. Somehow, Loki’s steadiness made him feel a bit better.
Okay. They could do this. Aubrey took out the pillow again, and said, “Headbutt.” Loki butted his head into the pillow, just like he had done the previous day. It was good that he remembered that much.
From there, Aubrey asked Loki to stay, and then backed away a step. Only after that did he give the command again.
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Post by Briar on Oct 3, 2020 12:52:55 GMT -6
This time, Loki had to come from a slightly longer distance to headbutt the pillow. It wasn’t a difficult transition, since the essence of what Aubrey was asking him to do was still the same. Thus, there was no hesitation in Loki, and he closed the distance to butt his head into the pillow again.
“Good boy,” Aubrey said, feeding him another treat. “Now stay.” He backed away a little further this time, then gave the command for Loki to headbutt again. This time, he felt a little more force hitting the pillow, just as he had hoped. He hadn’t been sure that his idea would work, given that he had come up with it mostly on his own, but the fact that he was getting the result he had hoped for gave him more confidence.
From there, Aubrey increased the distance, until Loki was having to run a little to the pillow before he hit it with his head.
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Post by Briar on Oct 3, 2020 12:53:07 GMT -6
That was the point at which he felt that the ‘attack’ packed a real punch. But he was also worried that any more than this, and Loki might actually start hurting himself. He didn’t know how much control Loki would exert on himself, or if the Houluh would blindly trust in Aubrey’s judgement to his own detriment, but a Houluh wasn’t, say, a Murp, whose anatomy was built for head-on collisions. This would have to be enough, Aubrey thought.
After that, Aubrey did a couple more sessions with Loki, just to reinforce the command, and then to try it on a few targets that weren’t the pillow. It took a little adjusting at first, since they had practiced with the pillow up until that point, but after Loki did it the first time and found that the treats were still coming, he caught on pretty quickly.
And so, Aubrey had taught Loki his first… ‘battle maneuver’. What a strange feeling that was.
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Post by Briar on Oct 3, 2020 12:56:48 GMT -6
Aubrey felt pretty good about that, and Loki seemed like he was still in good shape to keep going, so Aubrey decided to just build on that momentum and teach him something else. Loki hadn't been showing, say, super keen enthusiasm about what they were doing, but he did seem calmer since Aubrey started working with him on this, so Aubrey was coming to the tentative conclusion that this was helping Loki get some of his energy out.
The next move... might be easier, or it might be harder. Aubrey wasn't sure which it would be. But it was definitely easier to come up with a way to teach it.
Aubrey took a piece of scrap wood, then picked up one of Loki's paws. "Claw," he said, and raked Loki's claws over the wood. And then, he said, "Good boy," and gave Loki a treat, to establish that they were learning something again.
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Post by Nadia on Oct 3, 2020 19:13:41 GMT -6
Is that a jar...?
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Post by Briar on Oct 7, 2020 1:22:44 GMT -6
It felt a bit foolish, but one thing that Aubrey had learned is that a lot of training did feel like that, in the beginning. And so long as they got where they needed to go, it didn’t really matter that it started out a little strange, right? That was what he thought, anyway, since he didn’t have any baseline to measure against. Aster hadn’t let Aubrey watch his training sessions much, mostly because Aster tended to train nothing but big monsters.
Loki, at the very least, seemed not to judge him for it. And Loki was surprisingly capable of conveying disdain when the mood struck him, so this was no empty gesture. Loki seemed to understand that they were working on something new now, and waited with patience for Aubrey to go on.
Aubrey did - by picking up Loki’s paw again, to repeat what they had done.
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Post by Briar on Oct 7, 2020 1:23:09 GMT -6
He was glad now that he had worked with Loki as a pup to overcome his displeasure at being handled. Without that, this would probably have been much harder to teach. Then again, a lot of things would have been harder if Loki never let anyone else handle him.
At any rate, Aubrey could pick up his paw, and Aubrey did. He said, “Claw,” and raked the Houluh’s claws over the piece of wood again. And then he gave Loki another treat.
Loki let him do this one more time, before he decided he knew what was happening and was ready to move on. The fourth time Aubrey said, “Claw,” Loki jerked his paw out of Aubrey’s grasp and placed it on the wood himself, scraping a bit. Aubrey, pleasantly surprised, praised him with a great deal of enthusiasm.
For his own part, Loki bore the praise surprisingly stoically.
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Post by Briar on Oct 7, 2020 1:23:19 GMT -6
If it weren’t for the wagging of his tail betraying him, Aubrey might almost have thought that Loki was impervious to it.
Eager to try again, Aubrey held up the piece of wood. “Claw,” he said. Loki picked up his paw and raked his nails across the wood. “Good boy!” Aubrey would have liked to pet him the way he did with Lyra and Joker when they did well, but he understood that it wouldn’t have been a reward to Loki if he did this, so he restrained himself and merely offered Loki a treat.
It felt as if this was going very well. Loki had the basic idea of the move down already, and now it was just a matter of practice, and maybe practicing on a target that wasn’t this specific piece of wood. That felt perfectly doable, though maybe not all in one session.
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Post by Briar on Oct 7, 2020 1:23:42 GMT -6
For now, Aubrey just wanted to reinforce what they had managed so far. So he held up the piece of wood again. “Loki, claw,” he said. And sure enough, Loki scratched at the piece of wood with one paw.
Aubrey kept them at this for a few more attempts, just to be extra sure that Loki would remember. Maybe he wasn’t giving Loki enough credit; and by the end of it, he could sense that Loki was getting a little impatient about it. But the more practice they had, the better, right? At least, as far as he understood it, that was the case. And Loki did seem to get faster at it, and more practiced with the movement, by the end of their training session. He did call it to an end after that though, to give Loki a break.
They resumed the next day, first with the wooden target, as a review.
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Post by Briar on Oct 7, 2020 1:23:58 GMT -6
Aubrey wanted to see that Loki still remembered what the command meant and what he had to do. Considering how much they had practiced the previous day though, it was little surprise that Loki remembered. From there, Aubrey held up a few different things for Loki to scratch on command. At first, Loki hesitated slightly, but after two rounds of different objects, he had stopped second guessing himself, and was now clawing at them consistently, regardless of what they were. Aubrey tried to choose things that were neither to hard nor too yielding, though of course there was no telling what Loki might actually have to scratch if Aubrey ever had to ask Loki to do this outside of training or a show.
But at least there would be no question that he would do it now. He had gotten another command down, and Aubrey couldn’t be happier with his performance.
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Post by Nadia on Oct 7, 2020 12:27:59 GMT -6
How cute.
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Post by Briar on Oct 8, 2020 11:59:36 GMT -6
After this… it was just a matter of teaching Loki to bite now, wasn’t it?
To be honest, Aubrey had been avoiding this, even though he knew that the most natural way of attacking for a Houluh was probably its bite. It wasn’t that he was worried about being bitten, or that mouths scared him for some reason; it was just that he had spent all that time when Loki was younger teaching him not to bite, and so now it felt a bit hypocritical to be asking him to do it all of a sudden. Would Loki get confused? Would he refuse to do what Aubrey was trying to prompt him into?
He supposed there was really only one way to answer that question, and that was to start doing it. So Aubrey wrapped a stick in a sort of treat that came in strips, and presented it to Loki. “Bite,” Aubrey said, and waited.
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Post by Briar on Oct 8, 2020 11:59:50 GMT -6
Loki approached the stick and took a little sniff at it. Aubrey hoped that the treats made this enough of a ‘snack offering’ that Loki would be prompted to bite it. Even taking it into his mouth without biting down very hard would be okay, at this stage. Fortunately he was rewarded not too long after, when Loki did just that. When he did, Aubrey said, “Good boy!” and offered him a more normal treat.
Loki eyed the offered treat, as if considering his options, and ultimately abandoned the stick. It was harder to eat, and although Aubrey didn’t think Loki considered this next bit, if Loki chewed on this, he would probably end up eating bark along with it. “Good boy,” Aubrey said again.
He waited until Loki was done with the treat before picking up the stick and trying again. “Bite,” he said, offering the stick to Loki.
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Post by Briar on Oct 8, 2020 12:00:16 GMT -6
Loki studied the stick for a while, and Aubrey began to wonder if he wouldn’t bite it after all. And when they had gotten off to such a good start too… But at length, Loki did bite down on the stick again, at which point Aubrey praised him and offered another treat.
On the third attempt, he had a look in his eyes that reminded Aubrey a little bit of Lyra, like he was trying to figure something out. This time he approached the stick very deliberately, and while watching Aubrey, he closed his jaws around it. “Good boy!” Aubrey said, offering another treat.
After that happened, the fourth attempt went much faster. This time, when Aubrey said, “Bite,” Loki latched onto the stick immediately and let go immediately too, and seemed to have already anticipated the fact that he would get a treat when Aubrey gave it to him.
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Post by Briar on Oct 8, 2020 12:00:43 GMT -6
He was figuring it out. That much, Aubrey could see.
And Aubrey would have liked to stop things right there, but he figured it was better to reinforce it, so that Loki would have an easier time remembering it when the time came. Not that Aubrey hoped they ever had occasion to use a command like this, since any situation that required Loki to bite someone was probably going to be pretty hairy… Well, outside of one of those Salonne shows, anyway. But still.
Even if he knew what he was doing though, Loki bore with the repetition of the command patiently. Aubrey was sure the treats helped with that too. By the end of the session, Aubrey felt confident that Loki had the command down.
From there, it was just more of what they had done with the last two commands - the process of getting Loki used to biting different targets.
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