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Post by Briar on Jul 24, 2022 13:51:27 GMT -6
He had no idea how well it was working, since she had to be in motion for him to test it, and right now the trouble was getting her to go at all. But once he established better control over that, perhaps…
He managed to annoy her a couple more times into moving, after which he decided that was probably enough for the day. He couldn’t expect immediate results, and they would work on this over time, just like they had for getting her used to the tack and the weight. The next day, he returned for more of the same. That session was particularly hard to get through, because for most of it he felt as if he was getting nowhere. He was nearly about to go back to the drawing board, maybe even see if he could fashion a real carrot on a stick to see if that did any good…
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Post by Briar on Jul 24, 2022 13:51:44 GMT -6
But his perseverance must have paid off after all. After numerous repetitions where he had to bother her over and over before she moved, there was finally one where, when he tapped her flanks with his heels, it only took a couple of tries before she took a few steps forward.
To an onlooker, it might not have looked like much, but for Briar this offered a glimmer of hope where he had thought there was none. When they stopped, he tried again, and this time it only took one tap. His spirits lifted as she moved off, and it took some self control to give her a break and not try again immediately. He repeated it only two more times, because he was sure she must have been coming to the end of her patience with his nonsense for the day, but he wanted to make sure she didn’t forget.
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Post by Briar on Jul 24, 2022 13:52:00 GMT -6
She didn’t remember right away the next day, but it didn’t take long for them to get to the point where they had left off before. She was moving when he kicked his heels gently into her sides. Which was more or less what he wanted, but now he needed her to keep going until he asked her to stop.
He had given the matter some thought, and arrived at a two-fold approach. The first was to test whether she understood his signal for her to stop in the first place. He hadn’t had much occasion to try it; thus far when the doe moved, it was a few steps at a time, and seldom more than that. Granted, there wasn’t really enough room in the corral for a comfortable running experience, but he also didn’t want to let her out until he was reasonably sure he could get her to stop reliably.
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Post by Briar on Jul 24, 2022 13:53:34 GMT -6
But now he supposed he would have to put it to the test even with her going in such short spurts. The next time he gave her the signal to go, he only let her take two steps before he sat back the way he had been doing when he felt her slowing down. And she did stop, which was what he wanted, but it was a little too early to tell whether she was simply doing so out of surprise, or if it was because she actually associated what he was doing with a command to stop.
The only way to really be sure was to do it again, so he did. He sat back even earlier this time, and again, she stopped when she felt his weight settling heavily on her back. He also made sure to ease back into his standard seat as soon as she did what he wanted.
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Post by Briar on Jul 24, 2022 13:53:52 GMT -6
After a few more tries, there was one occasion where she took a little longer about it, but she did come to a stop after a moment. It was still a little early to say one way or the other, but Briar was hopeful enough to decide to let her out of the corral now. Dismounting, he led her out of the corral and into the garden proper; he had learned that she was willing to follow him if coaxed, especially with the promise of berries, but often even without a bribe to hand. Once they were out, he mounted up again, and gave her the signal to go. Unlike before, he didn’t immediately sit back to ask her to stop. He wanted to see if she would walk further of her own accord now that they were no longer in such a restricted space. She did -- a little more, though she still didn’t walk very far.
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Post by Briar on Jul 24, 2022 13:54:18 GMT -6
Her instincts were to pause every so often to survey her surroundings, having never explored the rest of the garden beyond the space of the little corral before.
The first time she stopped, he let her do it. But the second time, he simply gave her the signal to go again. He needed her to understand that when he wanted her to go, he wanted her to keep going until he asked her to stop. And if that meant having to annoy her into the idea, then so be it.
The rest of their session was basically this: he would give her the signal to go, and then give it again if she stopped before he asked her to. And when he wanted her to stop, he would sit back heavily until she did stop. At first it didn’t work terribly well on either account, but neither signal was pleasant enough for her to just ignore.
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Post by Briar on Jul 24, 2022 13:54:32 GMT -6
Eventually it seemed to sink in that he would stop it if she did what he wanted her to do.
In the meantime, he also had to stop her from eating any plants she shouldn’t be eating, which was honestly almost all of them. It was probably just as well that she liked him enough not to entirely startle if he moved a little abruptly anymore, because sometimes there was just not enough time to stop her without moving quickly.
It took another few days of practice with just these two signals, but with diligence and repetition, he managed to get her to understand that he wanted her to go if he tapped his heels against her flanks, and that he wanted her to stop if he sat back. He still couldn’t steer her just yet, but it was beginning to feel more like he was a rider now.
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Post by Briar on Jul 29, 2022 13:32:28 GMT -6
Naturally the next thing to do was to teach her signals for turning left and right. Here he was beginning to see where some kind of tack to control her head would have been helpful. It was probably more intuitive for the mount to be directed by having their head turned in the direction that the rider wanted them to go. Unfortunately, for Briar’s purposes, that wasn’t really an option, so he would have to just figure something out using leg signals.
He didn’t really have a plan in mind right then, but he thought it may as well be worth a try to see what happens if he just… nudged her with a knee to one flank. It was the signal he had been planning to use, and maybe if he was lucky, she would naturally react to it in a way he could work with.
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Post by Briar on Jul 29, 2022 13:32:47 GMT -6
Briar didn’t think it would be that easy, but it wasn’t entirely impossible, and most likely the worst thing she could do was ignore him. He had been using his heels against her flanks to get her to go in the first place, so he doubted she would startle at his turning signals now.
Swinging himself into the saddle, he went over the signals she did know at first just to get her warmed up a bit. They were riding on the outskirts of the garden this time, to keep the distractions of plants she might try to eat to a minimum.
Once he felt that they had gotten into a comfortable rhythm, he tapped one knee against her left flank to see what would happen. She didn’t startle, though she slowed a bit. It was clear that she felt it, but she didn’t know what to do with it.
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Post by Briar on Jul 29, 2022 13:34:11 GMT -6
Unfortunately, she didn’t turn the way that Briar had hoped she would, so his suspicions that it wouldn’t be that simple had turned out to be correct. He hadn't been too optimistic about it, so the disappointment was only mild.
He was a little at a loss as to what to do now though. Should he find some reins after all? Or… On second thought, maybe he could do what he had done to teach her the ‘stop’ signal, and just start introducing the signal when she turned of her own volition. Hopefully that way she would come to associate the signal with the action, and then she would perform it when he asked it of her.
Of course, coming to a stop happened more often than turning around, but he supposed he wasn’t really in a hurry. His own archery practice wasn’t exactly moving along at a breakneck pace either.
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Post by Briar on Jul 29, 2022 13:34:56 GMT -6
It would be more training to get her combat ready, but it would be quite some time before he had any occasion to use a mount, even for conventional purposes such as running errands. This was especially true because the doe wasn’t desensitized, and a trip out of the estate grounds was more likely to cause her to freeze and spook than lead to anything productive at present.
So they had plenty of time. And with that time, Briar let her wander. He didn’t let her stop unless they had been going for a while and she needed a break, but beyond that, he didn’t try to steer her or anything. She wandered where she wanted to in the garden.
When she turned, he would nudge the outside knee. She did stop or tense the first few times he did this, but after a while she seemed to get used to it.
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Post by Briar on Jul 29, 2022 13:35:10 GMT -6
He didn’t necessarily think she had formed enough of an association to respond to it as a command just yet, but at least she wasn’t changing or stopping what she was already doing because of it either.
And since he was doing this already, he also worked in another signal that he had been planning to teach her anyway. If he noticed her speeding up, he would shift his weight forward. If she slowed down, he would shift his weight backward. Again, his hope was that she would come to associate the shift in his weight with the speeding up and slowing down, such that when he did it, it would eventually prompt her into doing the corresponding adjustment of her speed.
This probably felt more natural to her, since he didn’t notice her tensing or adjusting anything she was doing in response to it when he first started doing this.
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Post by Briar on Jul 29, 2022 13:35:23 GMT -6
At least he hoped it only meant that this felt more natural, and not that she didn’t notice him doing it at all.
This way of trying to teach her riding signals was… He didn’t know about its effectiveness just yet, but it wasn’t fast, that was for sure. He knew going into it that it was going to be slow, but it was tough work, at least for Briar. The riding sessions were naturally longer to give her as much time as possible to actually produce the behaviors he wanted associated with the signals, and he had to pay attention the entire time. The point was to start giving the signal as soon as he noticed her starting to do something. If it came too late during or after the fact, then she wasn’t likely to associate it as a signal to do the thing, but instead as a consequence of it.
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Post by Briar on Jul 29, 2022 13:35:41 GMT -6
He also didn’t want it to fail, which was why he kept this up for a couple of weeks before he even started testing out the signals on their own, to see if she had picked them up. He started with turning -- once she was going, he nudged one knee against her flank, and hoped for the best.
On his first try, nothing happened. He did it again though, and… maybe it was a lucky coincidence, but she did turn. More hearteningly, she turned the way she was supposed to. He tried it again on the other side. The response wasn’t as immediate as he would have liked, but she did turn the other way after a moment.
That was… good. Better than he had thought it would go, actually. He went over the turns with her a few more times, and with more repetitions, she became faster at responding to it.
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Post by Briar on Jul 29, 2022 13:36:12 GMT -6
His patience had paid off in that regard, and now all there was left to do was to reinforce it through repetition. After the uncertainty of what had come before, this felt like the easy part.
Heartened by this, he tried signaling her to speed up by leaning forward. Again, the response wasn’t immediate, but after a few paces he did feel her starting to move a little faster. Easing off, he shifted his weight back this time. The response to this one was faster; she slowed down almost immediately.
Through practicing these two signals a few more times, he found that she was slower to speed up, but slowed down as soon as he had asked. That would need more work. But she did do what he was asking her to do when he gave her the signals, which was what he had been most worried about. That was good.
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