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Post by Noa on Jul 13, 2020 21:07:07 GMT -6
This was just… half of ‘lay down’, basically. Wasn’t it? Well, if there were more complications to it, Aster supposed he would find out today.
They began in the spot that was becoming their customary place for these sessions, with Aster running him through the other tricks first. Once they had done that, Aster approached Nightshade, treat in hand. It had become a sort of habit for him to start this way too, to show Nightshade the treat, as if to tell him, ‘pay attention, there’s a reward for you if you do as I ask’. Or maybe just that what was coming was important, and that Aster was about to ask something new of him. He didn’t know if Nightshade understood it as exactly that, but he could feel the Wiurn’s attention sharpening. Nightshade was… very attuned to people, or maybe just to Aster in particular.
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Post by Noa on Jul 13, 2020 21:07:28 GMT -6
No, it was probably ‘people’ in a general sense, considering he was one of those custom made creatures; even if Aster hadn’t been his intended companion, the predisposition to attention remained.
Aster took a breath, then moved in close enough to touch Nightshade’s hide. Nightshade wasn’t skittish about being handled, and in fact seemed to rather like being groomed--- just as he liked all attention, the more of it the better. So he merely snaked his head back to see what Aster was doing, seeming perfectly comfortable, and perhaps even a bit eager. “Bow,” Aster said, and pushed down on the Wiurn’s back, between his shoulders.
This was in itself a bit of a feat, since Nightshade was a Wiurn, and therefore quite tall; his shoulders were only just within the height at which Aster could still exert any significant force on them with his hands.
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Post by Noa on Jul 13, 2020 21:07:42 GMT -6
And even then he had to go on his toes a little, to throw that weight in there.
For a moment nothing happened. Aster wondered if maybe Nightshade didn’t feel the pressure. Aster knew he should have; Aster had done much the same when he had been teaching Nightshade to lay down. But there was always that moment of doubt before the creature reacted, in which he second guessed himself just a little, even after so many years spent training beasts.
And then, slowly, Nightshade’s shoulders sank down.
“Good boy,” Aster said, and gave him the treat. Truthfully he had only gone down a little ways, but that was good enough. The critical point here was that his hindquarters had stayed up; Aster didn’t want him simply repeating what he did for ‘lay down’. He hoped calling it there would give Nightshade some idea of what Aster was looking for: just his front half lowered, not his whole body.
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Post by Noa on Jul 13, 2020 21:07:58 GMT -6
Of course, doing it just the once wasn’t going to do much. Aster let Nightshade get up and have a moment to collect himself, then started again.
“Bow,” he said, and pressed down on Nightshade’s shoulders. This time, having been rewarded once for it already, Nightshade lowered himself more readily. “Good boy,” Aster said, releasing before Nightshade’s hindquarters went down. Admittedly he didn’t know whether Nightshade would try lowering his entire body, but he figured it was better to be safe than sorry. And Nightshade had essentially done what Aster had asked for; they could work on holding the position once Nightshade had the general movement down.
Once more, Aster gave the command. “Bow,” he said, and pressed on Nightshade’s shoulders. Nightshade moved into a deeper bow this time, still not for very long, but more than he had done previously. And his hindquarters stayed up, which was promising.
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Post by Noa on Jul 13, 2020 21:08:38 GMT -6
Aster wondered briefly if the position was uncomfortable for him, but Nightshade certainly wasn’t showing any signs of distress thus far. He would keep an eye out for any signs, but for the moment it seemed that was a non-issue.
After a few more repetitions, Nightshade managed to go all the way down. By that point Aster was feeling a little more confident that the Wiurn had the general idea that he only needed to bow his front quarters, since it had been pretty consistently what Aster had asked of him with this word. Aster began leaving his hand there for longer, to keep Nightshade in the position for a longer span of time. After all, if Aster did mean to use this to make getting onto his back easier, he needed a little time to do it. Aster was a good, and a deft rider, but even he couldn’t just teleport onto the back of a beast.
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Post by Noa on Jul 13, 2020 21:08:50 GMT -6
It took several more repetitions for Aster to work Nightshade up to bowing for a length of time that he was satisfied with, but they got there eventually. Aster figured that was a good place to call this session to a close, at least as far as working on ‘bow’ went. They could pick up the next day, when the only thing to work on was getting Nightshade to do it without Aster having to press on him to make it happen.
For their next session, Aster repeated a little of what they had done last time. In truth he was hoping Nightshade would start moving on his own while they were doing these repetitions; and on this occasion, his hopes were answered. On the fifth or so repetition, Nightshade’s shoulders lowered before Aster’s hand had a chance to make contact, and the Wiurn bowed down all the way without any further prompting.
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Post by Noa on Jul 13, 2020 21:09:21 GMT -6
“Good boy,” Aster said, making sure to reward him thoroughly. On the next attempt, Aster made no move to push him at all, to see what Nightshade would do. He was a little slower about it, but Nightshade did complete a bow.
From that point on, Aster eschewed the pushing entirely, except when Nightshade didn’t seem to be responding to the verbal prompt at all. It happened a couple of times near the start, most likely due to nothing more than confusion, but Nightshade picked up the idea quickly enough after a little stumbling.
And then it was just a matter of repeating it with him until Aster felt comfortable that Nightshade had it down. That happened over a couple more sessions of less intensive repetition, mixed in with their practice of other tricks and the like, and then Aster was content to call this trick up to snuff as well.
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Post by Noa on Jul 14, 2020 20:56:32 GMT -6
Aster supposed that if he was teaching Nightshade to bow, he might as well teach Nightshade to do the opposite: to sit, more or less like a dog might. He didn’t know that it would ever have a practical use the way a bow would, excepting if he wanted to slide off the Wiurn’s back like a child might descend a playground slide, which he doubted he would want to do because of the spines involved… But, well, it wasn’t as if teaching a Wiurn to nod his head had many practical applications either. Or any, at all, in fact.
Suffice to say that he was really just doing this to pass the time and get to know Nightshade better before they did any more serious stuff. Hell, by this point he might well just be doing it to take a breather from all the other stuff he’d been doing.
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Post by Noa on Jul 14, 2020 20:56:52 GMT -6
The tricks went quickly, they didn’t require a lot of emotional investment or very careful attention, and it felt like he was getting things done when he managed to teach Nightshade something new.
And the Wiurn did so like the attention.
“Okay Nightshade, let’s try something else,” he said to the Wiurn. Nightshade turned to Aster at the sound of his voice. Aster held out a treat, to set up the premise that they were learning something new now, and said, “Sit.”
With that word, he moved to press on the Wiurn’s hind quarters, in a manner fairly similar to when he had been teaching the Wiurn to bow. He kept at it until the Wiurn’s hindquarters dipped a bit, then said, “Good boy,” and gave Nightshade the treat.
Nightshade ate it, and when he was finished, Aster began again. “Sit,” he said, and pressed again on Nightshade’s back over his hindquarters.
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Post by Noa on Jul 14, 2020 20:58:22 GMT -6
Maybe it was because they had been practicing ‘bow also, but this time Nightshade was faster on the uptake, and went all the way down on his haunches. “Good boy,” said Aster, this time with rather more feeling, as he had been caught a little off guard by this. As though he could sense Aster’s pleasant surprise, the Wiurn tossed his head, seemingly a little proud of having provoked that reaction, as if to say to Aster, 'see? Aren't I something?'
Well, he’d heard that the newer Wiurns weren’t quite so dim as their earlier brethren. It shouldn’t have surprised Aster that Nightshade could figure some things out for himself. But the only Wiurn Aster had really had a chance to work with up until that point was Avander, and Avander was different for a wide variety of reasons.
Nightshade did look a little odd when he sat.
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Post by Noa on Jul 14, 2020 20:58:59 GMT -6
Aster had never seen something of his shape perform a ‘sit’ before - that was to say, a creature whose forelimbs were their wings, which they also walked on when on the ground. Until he came here, he'd never seen anything like that at all, actually. And so again, he kept his eye out for a sign of discomfort from Nightshade, but when he couldn’t find any, he moved on. It might not have been a natural go-to posture for Nightshade’s kind, but apparently it didn’t take any great concessions of comfort on Nightshade’s part to perform it either.
“Sit,” Aster said again, pressing his hand onto the lower part of Nightshade’s back. Nightshade sat more readily this time, now that he seemed more sure of what Aster wanted. And because he did so, Aster left him there a little longer before giving him the treat, the ‘good boy’, and the pats.
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Post by Noa on Jul 14, 2020 20:59:15 GMT -6
In this manner, they continued until Nightshade was sitting for the desired amount of time. By that point, he was already beginning to sit on his own, without Aster having to touch him. Since he had made the jump of his own accord, Aster went with it, and remained hands off unless Nightshade needed a little more prompting, either to stay sitting down for longer or because he had forgotten to respond to the verbal cue. Soon Aster wasn’t having to use his hands at all.
And then came the drilling, first of the trick itself, and then of ‘sit’ mixed in with the other commands that Nightshade knew already, so that the trick would be committed more firmly to Nightshade’s memory. They were settling into a pattern with this, both in the sense of training sessions as part of their daily routine, and of the trick-learning process specifically. It didn’t take long at all for Nightshade to get the hang of this one.
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Post by Noa on Jul 15, 2020 21:52:28 GMT -6
Since they seemed to be going over a series of what Aster had always thought, with degrees of fondness or disdain, as ‘dog tricks’ - and thereby not things he had ever bothered to teach any of his other creatures, come to that - Aster supposed he might as well lean in and teach Nightshade to roll over. To be honest, some of his thought process was more of a curiosity as to whether it could actually be done. He certainly would never have asked it of Avander, not for the issue of feasibility but merely because Avander would have been much too proud for such a thing. And there was no justification for it, no reason of utility that Aster might have used to persuade him.
Nightshade, on the other hand - he who was currently laying his great heavy head on Aster’s shoulder, tickling the side of Aster’s face with his waving tendrils - seemed to have, for whatever reason, much less self respect.
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Post by Noa on Jul 15, 2020 21:52:43 GMT -6
It might have had something to do with never having been a Sarane drake; but come to that, maybe it didn’t either. “You’d roll over, wouldn’t you?” Aster said, absentmindedly petting the offered nose. Nightshade made a low rumble of what Aster took to be pleasure, and pushed his snout further into Aster’s hand.
Well, that settled the matter, didn’t it?
“Okay then,” Aster said. He indulged Nightshade a moment longer, then gently shoved the Wiurn’s head off him. “Nightshade, down,” he said, and Nightshade obediently laid himself down, as he had been taught. From there, Aster showed him a treat, then said, “Roll over.” As he said this, he moved to the side. Nightshade followed him, by some coincidence not getting up immediately, but rolling to one side first. “Good boy!” Aster said, before the Wiurn could rise, and fed him the treat.
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Post by Noa on Jul 15, 2020 21:52:58 GMT -6
And so it began.
Nightshade stood back up to eat, of course, and Aster let him. After the treat was given, the trick was considered over, after all. On their next attempt, Aster once again asked Nightshade to lay down first. “Roll over,” he said again, and moved. This time Nightshade lifted his head and made as if to rise, so Aster said, “Ah-ah! Lay down.” Nightshade laid himself down again. “Roll over,” Aster tried, and moved to the side again. There was a pause; perhaps Nightshade was puzzling things over. At the end of that pause, Nightshade flopped from his belly onto his side, and watched Aster attentively, as though looking for approval or confirmation. “Good boy,” Aster said with a nod, and fed him the treat.
It wasn’t quite a roll, but it was a start. At least he had stopped trying to get up during the command.
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