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Post by Briar on Jul 6, 2020 21:16:25 GMT -6
Or did it mean she still thought he was dangerous? Aubrey couldn't say. He didn't want her to bolt, because there really wasn't room, and what if she ran into something? So after taking a few steps forward, he decided not to push his luck any further, and presented her with another treat instead, held out as a peace offering in his open palm.
"Come on, Briar," he said. "You like carrots, don't you? It'll taste way better than those no good peas." This was, maybe, a lie, but she wouldn't understand his words anyway, right? What was the harm in a little fib? He wondered what he could do to make the carrot look more enticing, but he didn't think moving his hand around would work. She would probably just be surprised if he did, and he felt like she had had just about enough of being surprised for the moment.
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Post by Briar on Jul 6, 2020 21:19:39 GMT -6
With that in mind, Aubrey held absolutely still, except for the occasional bit of very, very gentle verbal coaxing. It reminded him a bit of what it felt like to try and feed birds by hand, which he had attempted occasionally over the course of the winter. The birds, of course, having been used to the feeder and to city living in general, were actually pretty bold once they got used to you. But you still had to hold real still, or else they'd startle too, and disappear into the trees. And once they did, they had no trouble waiting you out until they felt safe enough to go to the feeder again, let alone your hand.
But at least it meant he had plenty of practice with that sort of thing. And as he waited, he thought he could make out hints of Briar starting to relax in her body language.
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Post by Nadia on Jul 6, 2020 21:20:59 GMT -6
Speaking of carrots...
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Post by Briar on Jul 15, 2020 20:57:07 GMT -6
Incrementally, he saw her relax, the cant of her ears change; and incrementally she began, at length, to edge closer to him. It was clear that she didn't trust him yet, but he supposed it was a fair assessment. She didn't know him, after all, and she was just a young thing. With no mother to shelter her if something went awry, he could understand why she might be even more skittish than she otherwise might have been.
His heart went out to her, it really did. He wished that he could offer her that sense of safety - and someday perhaps he would, if he could only gain her trust. But that sort of thing didn't happen overnight, and right now she still had no idea what to expect from him.
When she finally came close enough to take the offered treat, she did so in a flash, and then retreated a little distance away.
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Post by Briar on Jul 15, 2020 20:59:30 GMT -6
Aubrey let her, and stayed very still until she had stopped, before very slowly lowering his hand. "You're a shy girl, aren't you?" he said, though to be honest he didn't know whether she was, at that. The problem was that he didn't know whether her skittishness was a product of her circumstances, or whether it was a core part of her personality.
She watched him warily.
He stared back at her for a while, but then it occurred to him that maybe this was the problem. He was paying too much attention to her, and that attention was making her suspicious of his motives. After all, she had no reason to believe he wasn't about to try and pounce on her, maybe make a light snack out of her... As a prey animal, that would be your first suspicion if something else stared at you a little too long.
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Post by Briar on Jul 15, 2020 21:02:01 GMT -6
Aubrey considered his options. He could ignore her - and that might be for the best, since he had some garden work that he had wanted to accomplish when he had just come out. But then he wouldn't be able to catch her doing something like eating his pea plants. It would be a shame for him to get to work only to finish and then discover another section of his garden utterly destroyed.
... Maybe he would have to split his attention. Was it even possible to do that? He didn't imagine Briar would stay close to him while he worked, where it would be easy to put a stop to things if she misbehaved. And come to that, could he even stop her without spooking her at this point...?
Raising creatures was so difficult. He was beginning to miss Yeo-reum when the Tat-lung had still been just a fish in a tank.
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Post by Briar on Jul 15, 2020 21:05:14 GMT -6
It hadn't been a very good time for him, Aubrey supposed, but being bound to water did keep Yeo-reum out of trouble pretty well. Or more accurately, it had kept him from making too much mischief, though at the time Aubrey had thought the Tat singularly clever in finding ways around it all the same. Briar didn't have that cleverness, but she, being a creature of the land, had much greater opportunity.
... It was probably just as well that Yeo-reum had gained some modicum of restraint after he had grown proper legs. Otherwise Aubrey didn't know how he might have gotten on.
Still, he did want to spend time with her in a way that didn't stress her out. And so, at length, he devised a solution. Heading back into the house briefly, he found some old trellises that he was no longer using, and used these to build a sort of makeshift pen.
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Post by Briar on Jul 15, 2020 21:07:41 GMT -6
Into this, he herded a wary but also somewhat bewildered Briar, who fortunately was not clever enough to realize his design until it had been realized. "I'm sorry girl," he said, when she stared back at him with what he thought might honestly have been a look of betrayal. "I know. But just so you don't eat anything you shouldn't, alright?" Some of it was for his own sake, to keep her from ravaging the plants, but some of the other things he was growing here really shouldn't be nibbled on by Equillion. And until she had better manners, he supposed this would have to suffice.
But as he moved away from the pen, some of her initial unease started to abate, and she explored her surroundings with a more curious air. Aubrey was relieved to see it; perhaps the damage of having been ushered in wouldn't be too severe after all.
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Post by Nadia on Jul 16, 2020 9:01:36 GMT -6
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Post by Briar on Oct 3, 2020 11:38:19 GMT -6
Aubrey had taken Loki out with him on a job from the Quest Board not too long ago. It had gone... Well, not badly, but certainly not exactly the way Aubrey had hoped for it to go. It had also given him plenty of food for thought.
He had figured that Loki needed an outlet for his energy, or his boredom, whatever you wanted to call what was going on with him these days. It had just been a matter of figuring out what to have him... do.
Aubrey had never thought about having a guard dog, or an attack dog, or whatever was going to come of teaching Loki some basic... attacks. He had never really thought about getting one of his creatures to attack anyone, period. But he knew some of the basic principles, if only because it had been Aster's line of work, and he had spoken about it sometimes.
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Post by Briar on Oct 3, 2020 12:51:07 GMT -6
That wasn’t the same as real firsthand experience, but also everyone had to start somewhere, right? And it wasn’t as though he was going to be training anything on the same size or scale or magnitude as Aster’s projects. Aubrey couldn’t really imagine taking control of one of those big monsters. It was just Loki, and Loki wouldn’t hurt him; Aubrey did still trust that much about his Houluh.
It still made him a little uneasy, but he tried to quell that feeling as best he could. Otherwise, Loki might pick up on his unease, and that would do neither of them much good if they were training together.
Aubrey had chosen to take Loki out back to the garden behind the house, since it was a place where they could move around a bit more. It was certainly less cramped than inside the house.
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Post by Briar on Oct 3, 2020 12:51:19 GMT -6
There were the plants and the garden beds to consider, but Loki wasn’t an unruly thing anymore, for the most part, and if Aubrey caught him in the middle of something, Aubrey felt that he would be able to stop it in time. They could always have gone to a park instead, but somehow Aubrey didn’t really want to be doing this in a public setting. Someone might see him screw up, and even if he didn’t, what if kids saw him training a dog to attack? He knew fighting creatures were very common, but it still seemed like something that might scare someone.
The easiest, most straightforward thing was to teach Loki how to bite on command, but Aubrey eschewed that for something else. Taking out a pillow, he showed it to Loki, who gave it a polite few sniffs before returning his attention to Aubrey.
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Post by Briar on Oct 3, 2020 12:51:47 GMT -6
It was actually good that he wasn’t too interested in the pillow right now; that made things easier. Aubrey said, “Headbutt,” and touched the pillow to Loki’s head, in the broadest flattest part on top.
Then he fed Loki a treat. “Good boy,” Aubrey said.
It felt pretty silly, since Loki hadn’t really done anything yet. But Aubrey had to show him somehow that there were treats to be earned today, and this was the best that occurred to him.
He had Loki’s attention now. Aubrey could tell that Loki was focusing on him and what he was doing with this. That was a good sign for him to continue. “Headbutt,” he said, and once more, he touched the pillow to Loki’s forehead before giving him a treat.
It went like this for a little while, just to get the idea established in Loki’s mind.
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Post by Briar on Oct 3, 2020 12:52:10 GMT -6
If his head touched the pillow, he would get a treat, that was the idea behind this command. It was a weird thing to teach, or maybe it was just that Aubrey himself felt trepidation about what he was doing, so he was taking it slow.
It was Loki who got impatient first, and on the next ‘headbutt’, he moved of his own accord to lower his head and touch it to the pillow. Aubrey praised him much more enthusiastically this time, and fed him an extra treat.
The next time, Aubrey simply held the pillow, gave the command, and waited.
At first there was a pause. And then Loki touched his head to the pillow. “Good boy!” Aubrey said, clearly pleased, and fed him another treat. Loki wagged his tail, but only a couple of times, as though he didn’t see this as anything to get so excited about.
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Post by Briar on Oct 3, 2020 12:52:20 GMT -6
Well, he had a point in that things weren’t over with just this, and they had more work ahead of them. Loki had only done it the once, after all, and still not with much force. But all things in due time; first Aubrey wanted to make sure Loki had it down doing it on his own.
He repeated the command a few more times, no longer moving the pillow. Each time he did, Loki touched his head to the pillow, with the delay between the command and the action growing less and less each time. Before too long, he was doing it with confidence.
That seemed like a good place to end the session. Aubrey needed more time to think about how to get Loki to use more force. He was pretty new to training in general, so he felt like he should probably be doing some more research on the matter.
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