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Post by Noa on Jul 8, 2020 21:35:41 GMT -6
Thus, he was a little reluctant to just shut it down wholesale. Maybe when he taught Nightshade some more manners, he'd make that part of his agenda, but for now he took the hit, and patted Nightshade's neck.
And then the first noise went off.
If Aster hadn't been expecting it, he would have startled too. It was a good thing he knew the timing. If he had spooked, then Nightshade certainly would have done the same. At least this way Aster remained calm even as Nightshade's head jerked up again. "Whoa boy, easy, easy," Aster said, redirecting the Wiurn's attention. He was finding that treats didn't have such a strong pull for Nightshade, but fortunately Nightshade responded well to Aster's voice and body language, and to praise. He could see the Wiurn hesitating, wanting to turn his attention back to Aster, but not quite sure if he could, after that.
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Post by Noa on Jul 8, 2020 21:39:28 GMT -6
All Aster could do was keep going. "Easy, easy. Come on, look at me. Don't mind it, it's just a little noise. There's nothing wrong." He kept up a litany of such nonsense, adding a treat for good measure, since he didn't want to give Nightshade any positive reinforcement until he had the Wiurn's attention back on himself, in some semblance of calm.
Fortunately, the groundwork he had laid before seemed to help. Nightshade's reaction didn't persist, and soon enough he allowed himself to be distracted again. "There, that's a good boy," Aster said, feeding him the treat and rubbing his head plate. "You're not worried about a little noise, are you."
Then the tape player went off again, and Aster had to do the whole thing over.
It went like that for a while. The first few times, Nightshade reacted to it as if it were a novel thing.
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Post by Noa on Jul 8, 2020 21:42:21 GMT -6
But then, to be fair to him, Aster supposed it was, since he had used a few different noises. After a while they would repeat, but they hadn't gotten to that point.
After the first few times, either curiosity or frustration got the better of Nightshade, and he actually broke away from where Aster was attempting to entertain him, and went to investigate it. Aster let him for now, though he stayed close in case Nightshade did something like try to break the tape player. Still, he figured that letting Nightshade see that the noise had a harmless source ought to be helpful in getting him to feel secure enough to ignore it later on.
Aster held his breath as Nightshade nosed around it, but ultimately the Wiurn seemed to decide it wasn't a threat. From there, it was easy to get Nightshade to focus on Aster again, with only minimal coaxing.
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Post by Noa on Jul 8, 2020 21:45:37 GMT -6
Apparently that was the revelation he needed. After that, while Nightshade startled a bit at the noise, he didn't freak out or seem terribly compelled to investigate it again. Aster practiced 'lay down' with him for a bit, since it was the only command that Nightshade knew, and the Wiurn followed it without any problems.
Surprisingly, this was turning out to be less painful than Aster had anticipated. But hey, he wasn't going to look a gift horse in the mouth.
They repeated the process over a few more sessions just to be sure, but after a certain point, Aster felt convinced: Nightshade could deal with a reasonable amount of noise without spooking or becoming alarmed. And they got there without Nightshade trying to blast something to smithereens even once... if that was what he could do. If Aster was being perfectly honest, he had been kind of curious to see if Nightshade would produce any dramatic reactions, but...
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Post by Noa on Jul 8, 2020 23:25:04 GMT -6
All that effort trying to distract Nightshade while he was trying to get the Wiurn used to noise had Aster thinking. Maybe he ought to teach Nightshade some simple tricks just so the Wiurn had something else to do while Aster was trying to get him not to respond to other things. He never asked Avander for unnecessary tricks anymore now that Avander was full into his battle training, but it might be an interesting place to start with Nightshade. Besides which, Nightshade seemed to have more of a playful personality; Avander had been more mischievous as a Sarane whelp, but it had largely subsided into showiness and snark when he had become an adult.
The question was, then, of what to teach him.
On a whim, Aster decided to try something. Going into the enclosure that day, with nothing on him but for treats, he didn’t actually know what he was going to do until more or less when he got there.
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Post by Noa on Jul 8, 2020 23:25:59 GMT -6
But when he did, he had Nightshade's attention almost immediately. He drew a little more interest by holding out a treat in his hand for Nightshade to notice, then said, “Say yes.” And he moved the treat up and down, so that the Wiurn’s head bobbed with it.
“Good boy,” Aster said, and gave him the treat.
Nightshade didn’t know what he was being rewarded for yet, but that was because they were just starting. A little more practice, and Aster was sure he would have it. It wasn’t a difficult trick, after all.
After Nightshade was finished eating, Aster tried it again. “Say yes,” he said, and did the same motion with the treat in hand. Again, Nightshade’s head followed it, and then Aster gave him the treat. They repeated this a couple more times, before Aster ditched the treat and simply started motioning with his hand instead.
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Post by Noa on Jul 8, 2020 23:26:21 GMT -6
“Good boy,” Aster said, and gave him a pat for his troubles. Nightshade responded by butting his nose into Aster’s hand. It was more gentle than when he thumped his head plate into Aster’s chest, so that was a relief, at least.
Aster repeated the process with his hand guiding Nightshade’s head motions a few more times. And then, on one such repetition, he saw Nightshade begin to move without Aster quite moving his hand, so he put his hand down. Nightshade moved his head a little more before realizing the hand was gone, but by that point Aster was already rewarding him. “Good boy,” Aster said, and gave him another pat. “Let’s try that again. Say yes…”
When Nightshade didn’t move, Aster prompted him with his hand again. It was a setback, but he expected this, since it was just the start of the process of getting Nightshade to do the trick without the hand signal.
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Post by Noa on Jul 8, 2020 23:26:32 GMT -6
He tried again. “Say yes,” he said, and didn’t immediately lift his hand this time. The Wiurn, likely prompted by habit if nothing else, began to bob his head up and down. “Good boy,” Aster said, and gave him a very enthusiastic bout of patting. He wanted to emphasize the praise now, to reinforce it strongly, so that Nightshade would feel more compelled to do it again.
“Say yes,” Aster said again, and this time Nightshade seemed more sure of himself when he moved his head up… and then, more slowly, down. Aster had been rewarding him for moving his head at all, but this time he waited until Nightshade had made the whole nod motion before giving in and rewarding the Wiurn. “Good boy, good boy,” he said. “You’re really getting the hang of this, huh? Say yes,” he said, letting go of Nightshade again. The Wiurn bobbed his head slowly up and down once. “Good boy.”
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Post by Noa on Jul 8, 2020 23:27:34 GMT -6
Aster repeated the process, and slowly Nightshade got faster at it, until he was nodding at a more reasonable pace when Aster gave him the command. By that point, he was well past the point of needing a hand signal to perform the trick, and needed only the vocal cue to prompt him.
Aster felt that this was going pretty well, actually. He had forgotten how easy it could be to teach something when that something was relatively simple, like this trick had been. It was a nice break from the more intensive, time-consuming stuff that he had been doing, with Avander and Rhys and Grunty and the whelps. Eventually he would need to do all that with Nightshade too, but for now it was kind of nice to just... take a break, relatively speaking, even if this was still training of a sort, when all was said and done.
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Post by Noa on Jul 12, 2020 23:09:46 GMT -6
Now that Aster had taught Nightshade how to nod his head, they may as well work on teaching him to shake his head too. It wasn’t a particularly useful trick, but Aster was, against all odds, kind of having a good time. And Nightshade didn’t seem to mind, since he was getting attention; Aster was beginning to realize that the Wiurn liked that, probably more than the treats. It was good if that became a motivator for him, since a training session involved that by default. So long as Nightshade didn’t get too clingy about it, Aster figured it wasn’t a bad arrangement.
“Alright, Nightshade,” Aster said, “let’s try something else now…” He showed Nightshade the treat in his hands, and made sure that the Wiurn had his gaze fixed on it. “Say no,” Aster said, and waved the treat one way, waiting until Nightshade’s head followed it, and then the other way.
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Post by Noa on Jul 12, 2020 23:09:56 GMT -6
He had to do it slowly, and make sure Nightshade was actually following the motion of his hand with his head movements. Aster didn’t want him to just look left and right, after all. The motion was a little strange on him, since Wiurns didn’t really shake their heads the way people did. Their necks were a lot longer, and attached to their skulls at a different angle than a human’s, due to the difference in their postures. So a head shake on a Wiurn didn’t really look the same as a head shake on a person, but between the command prompt for the trick and the side to side motion, it got the idea across.
When Nightshade had moved to Aster’s specifications, Aster said, “Good boy,” and fed Nightshade the treat. He waited until after Nightshade was done with eating before producing another treat, and showing that to Nightshade again.
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Post by Noa on Jul 12, 2020 23:10:13 GMT -6
“Say no,” Aster repeated, and made the same side to side gesture with the treat to prompt Nightshade to snake his head back and forth. When Nightshade completed the motion, Aster fed him the second treat.
Aster expected it to take a few tries, but the second attempt had gone faster than the first. A few more tries and they might have him up to speed.
By this point, Aster felt that maybe they were ready to try it without Aster holding a treat in his hand, at least. Nightshade had been alright with following just Aster’s hand signal when they were doing ‘say yes’, and this trick was so similar that he felt a little confidence in the Wiurn’s ability to pick it up. Deciding to just go for it and give it a try, he said, “Say no,” and motioned with his hand from side to side.
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Post by Noa on Jul 12, 2020 23:10:29 GMT -6
Nightshade followed it, faster than he had done for the last attempt. “Good boy.” Now that the treat was out of the picture, Aster rewarded him with a few pats for his trouble, then started the process all over again.
It took a few tries to get Nightshade to perform the trick quickly, but not so many that it was a particularly tedious process. It was, again, a simple trick, and Nightshade picked it up a little more quickly than he had done the last, since they were so similar.
And from there, it took barely any time at all to get the Wiurn to perform it without the hand signal prompting. What he had learned last time was highly transferable to what he was doing now, since the pattern behind the two tricks were essentially the same: Aster would say a word, and then he would move his head a particular way, and get rewarded for doing so.
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Post by Noa on Jul 12, 2020 23:10:42 GMT -6
The first few tries were for Aster to show him what the motion was, and then from there it was just a matter of acclimating to the trick.
Even after Nightshade had shown Aster that he could do the trick without a prompting hand signal, Aster kept him practicing it, alternating it with the other commands that the Wiurn already knew. He wanted to reinforce it a bit more since it was a new thing that Nightshade had learned, and without some reinforcement, Nightshade might forget it soon after. It took place over a few sessions, alongside other small things Nightshade was learning, before Aster was satisfied that they had done enough, and he could relegate ‘say no’ to the same group as the rest of Nightshade’s tricks, to be brought up in rotation to add variety to their sessions.
From there, it was time to move onto something else once more.
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Post by Noa on Jul 13, 2020 21:06:35 GMT -6
Having taught Nightshade how to shake his head for yes and no, Aster decided he wanted to do something a little more… well, hands-on wasn’t exactly the word he was looking for, but… He gave the matter a bit of thought, and came up with the idea of teaching Nightshade to bow. That would make mounting him easier if Aster ever decided to make a riding beast out of him, though Aster hadn’t actually decided whether he would. He had Avander for that, thought maybe it would be worthwhile to have a back-up mount in case Avander was ever unavailable for one reason or another… He would have to think about that one.
Still, regardless of whether Aster intended to teach Nightshade riding directions, it shouldn’t be too difficult to teach him to bow. He had taken pretty well to everything Aster had taught him so far, including ‘lay down’.
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