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Post by Alma on Mar 6, 2020 23:28:57 GMT -6
Again and again, all of it was repeated, until the houluh sagged and stumbled, unable to do much more than stumble in the direction pointed when the command was given, nearly falling over herself choosing a direction when the command came without pointing at all. It was to be expected from such a small and technically young creature. At least it ran when the command was made, or at least tried to run she observed as the houluh made a game attempt at stumbling very quickly as she gave the command one last time.
Well, she could let Tin rest for a little while before the next command. She had plenty of time to train the slave hound. For she doubts it would grow suddenly unmanageable as the sarane had. SHe sometimes doubted it would grow any larger at all.
Tin, aware only that there was no more commands and therefore no more game, stumbled back to Haix and collapsed to sleep with a flop.
((Run-End? Tin-13.0))
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Post by Alma on Mar 7, 2020 0:22:23 GMT -6
The next trick would be much less taxing for the houluh, so Haix had let her rest only long enough for Haix to have a small meal and investigate the nearby plots. Haix woke the houluh with her name, the creature blinking half-closed eyes at the ssashirk. Tin stood slowly, front limbs stretched, then the rear, yawning widely as she did so. It took another call of her name for the houluh to make the effort to stand, pushing herself up as if she were some old cripple hound.
With the houluh finally on her feet, Haix snapped the new command at her, dropping the brightly colored, now filled with water pouch above the houluh’s head. Tin, whether through her tiredness or trust of Haix, failed to move at the sound of the new command, and the pouch smacked into her head with a gush of water that washed away some of the dirt. ((Scamper-Start))
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Post by Alma on Mar 7, 2020 0:22:34 GMT -6
The houluh sneezed, then shook her body and head in an attempt to be rid of the water. Haix gave her no praise or apologies, the creature having failed to scamper out of the way as she hoped. Instead, leaving the very confused and now very awake houluh to create a fine breeze with her floppy ears and violent shaking of them, she returned to the side of the pond, crouching down next to it to refill the pouch with water. When it was full enough for her tastes, but not so full as to smash the houluh flat should she fail to scamper out of the way, she loosely tied the mouth shut and returned to Tin.
The houluh paid little attention to her at first, but when Tin heard her name and the new noise in tandem, she looked up to receive another face full of bright pouch and cold water.
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Post by Alma on Mar 7, 2020 0:22:46 GMT -6
The next time she approached the houluh with the filled pouch, Tin cocked her head to the side as she stared directly at Haix, gaze flicking once to the pouch. Tin started to back away from Haix, but the latter hissed for her to stay put, and so all Tin could do was watch as the pouch approached her again. She began to shiver as she watched it, wanting to run away as fast as she had earlier, but wanting to be a good girl.
This time, Haix did not drop the pouch, though she said the word for Tin to scamper. Instead, she gave the houluh a small push, Tin reacting by quickly prancing a foot away. The movement looked silly, but it seemed fast enough for her needs, so Haix repeated the lesson several times, the new command and the slight push following a split second after so that the houluh might link the two in her mind.
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Post by Alma on Mar 7, 2020 0:23:30 GMT -6
Each successful scampering was met with a treat and praise. When the houluh reacted to the slightest pressure of her hand and scampered a few feet away, the motion slight enough that the houluh could be expected to repeat it even if she was exhausted, that was when Haix stopped pushing the houluh in time with the word. She did shove her arm towards the creature one last time as she said the word, the houluh scampering away though she had checked the push before it would have touched the houluh.
A few more of those saw the reward of treats randomly replaced with only pats and praise, the houluh sometimes shoving her head forwards to be patted despite the treat tossed to her. It was a strange creature but, though she did not care to pat the houluh every single time, she did give Tin an extra pat once for her audacity.
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Post by Alma on Mar 7, 2020 0:23:54 GMT -6
The pouch came back into play after she decided to test Tin. There was no arm reaching forward to warn her to scoot out of the way of the gently tossed pouch, only the new command. And, thankfully for the bored ssashirk and the still exhausted houluh, Tin managed to scamper away and leave it to convert the dirt it landed upon into mud.
There was still more training Haix wished to do with the houluh, but the beast sat and trembled, panting heavily despite the meager effort prancing a few feet away. It was clear that Tin was in no shape to learn much of anything else, and Haix reluctantly gave up on the idea of training the rest of it that day despite the height of the sun.
Grabbing the sack, Haix called Tin to her. Then, after watching the runt stumble slowly over, she resigned herself to carrying the slave hound. She did not want the trip back to the kennel to take any longer than it had to be. ((Scamper-End? Tin-14.0 Haix-191.0))
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Post by Alma on Mar 7, 2020 1:09:47 GMT -6
Haix was tired of Tin being tired. The past couple of days the houluh had only learned a few things, and had been unable to so much as walk normally after the last batch of training. SHe also had been forced to carry the houluh pup back to the kennel in her arms, the sack just too small to fit Tin and the supplies that had occupied it. In order to prevent such a thing from ever happening again, Haix had chosen to not train the houluh a single new command for the next few days, instead giving over that time to forcing the houluh to develop a smidgen of endurance so that the next back of training could be completed.
So she had tied a rope around the houluh’s neck, and both had set off at a jog to the park, more than a few tugs of the leash required to keep Tin following alongside her without rest. ((Endurance-Start))
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Post by Alma on Mar 7, 2020 1:10:12 GMT -6
Upon reaching the park, the houluh was taken to a small pool of drinking water, and left to lap up however much water she could as Haix drank from the fountain for humanoids. Once Haix decided she had drank enough, stopping before it would become a nauseating sloshing mess in her belly as she ran, she pulled the houluh away and jogged back to the plot with the pool. The houluh was untethered, and Haix ordered her to run.
It was repeated when the houluh appeared to be flagging, the houluh putting on an increasingly smaller burst of speed each time it was repeated. Haix jogged alongside her for a little bit, then called the run to a stop, to which the houluh gratefully complied. It was only a few minutes later though that the order to run was repeated, and this time she was ordered to run until she stumbled and nearly fell to the ground. With that, Haix retied the lead, and slowly jogged her back to her cage.
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Post by Alma on Mar 7, 2020 1:10:22 GMT -6
The next day followed the same pattern. Haix tied the rope around Tin’s neck and, leaving all items behind at the kennel to lessen her own load, they jogged back to the park. The houluh lagged behind as they did so several times, but a sharp tug on the lead forced her to keep going despite the tiredness of her bones.
Then came the water to drink, and then came the water to swim.
When the lead was untied this day, Tin was ordered not to run, but to swim. She plunged into the water and began paddling around it, completing roughly half of a circuit before turning back to the stairs. Haix waited until she crawled out of the water, weighed down by all of it that stubbornly clung to her fur, then ordered her straight back into it. The end this time came as she dipped once beneath the water, Haix hopping into the pool with a splash to pull her out. The houluh stumbled back to the kennel with Haix, though the pace was much more sedate than the last.
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Post by Alma on Mar 7, 2020 1:10:35 GMT -6
This cycle of training continued for several days, each of which Haix waited longer until retying the lead and taking the houluh away from the park to rest. One day, a running day, she pushed the houluh a little too hard, and had swam around in the pool while waiting for the houluh to finish her nap. Once she had woken up, albeit moving as stiffly as a tree in a slight breeze, Haix had checked her for any sign of serious injury, making sure the pads of her paws were not bleeding and that no limbs had sustained any lasting damage. When it was determined that her body’s failure was due to exhaustion rather than damage, Haix had let Tin drink her fill at the water bowl and they began the trek back.
But there was progress, no matter how slight it seemed at first, the houluh lasting longer every day.
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Post by Alma on Mar 7, 2020 1:11:02 GMT -6
It was when Tin had outlasted her in a run that Haix accepted that the training had paid off. The houluh seemed filled with practically endless energy, and now they were leaving the park due more to time restrictions rather than the houluh’s exhaustion. It seemed like the creature had finally gained some measure of endurance, and Haix was happy to think that she might be trained several things in one day rather than just flopping onto the ground to give up.
Of course, the houluh was a creature connected in some way to the soft-skin godlings, and there was no way to know if her budding endurance was something borne of hard work, or a trick that would drain away when she needed it most. With that in mind, she took the houluh back out to the park another day, instructing her to run and watching her for any signs of trickery as she did so. ((Endurance-End? Tin-15.0 -Left park, at River Bend))
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Post by Alma on Mar 8, 2020 18:48:32 GMT -6
Their fishing expedition from the previous day had gone well. The massive fish they had caught turned out to be capable of learning a few tricks and was thus spared from being their meal that night, a true shame considering its size. Then again, if she decided not to train it and instead tried and failed to sell it to any one wandering around the soft-skin hive, she might make a meal of it then. While there, glancing back over her shoulder to make sure some izer had not come down to peck at it, she decided it would be useful if the houluh could guard their catches, even if the tiny thing could not do much more than bark to alert her of the problem.
That was why today she decided to take the houluh back to the park rather than go fishing again. The slave hound had proved that she could learn things quickly enough that Haix could hope to finish the rest of training in one day.
((Guard-Start))
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Post by Alma on Mar 8, 2020 18:48:59 GMT -6
Now this command would arguably be useless in general in the soft-skin hive. Even in the outskirts of it, the ‘wilderness’ that was on the wrong side of the wall, one rarely stayed put long enough to have a need of guarding anything, and a houluh would be no match for even a single vulticus should the later want anything that the former had. In the main part, the part referred to as the city by the inhabitants, few dared intrude into kennels and onto plots of private land, for these tended to have creatures that could kill as easily as they could look at you.
Then again, she needed some way for the bait to stay still, and Tin’s bark would be more than enough warning before something grabbed her. If the houluh proved to be exceptionally good at guarding and alerting her, she might even risk sleeping out there for a longer hunt.
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Post by Alma on Mar 8, 2020 18:49:20 GMT -6
So they arrived at the plot, Haix with her sack of supplies and the houluh with her boundless energy. It was the same one that she had taught the houluh how to hunt in, and had been pleased to find that the escaped grubbles had turned into a field of holes. She even saw one of them as they approached, a thin, emancipated thing compared to the fat bodies they had back in the cages when they were meant to be nothing more than treats and training tools. Well, at least those still in the plot would find use as the latter. The treats she carried for the houluh were long dead and dried pieces of meat, but she rather thought they would be more filling than the scrawny vermin she watched duck down into a hole. It was a good thing too, or else the houluh might mistake this next bit of training to be just a variation of the hunt command.
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Post by Alma on Mar 8, 2020 18:49:36 GMT -6
It was similar to the hunt command, but she did not need the houluh to silently kill anything that ran up to whatever she had Tin guard. If the houluh did try to kill things approaching her on sight, the creature would soon cost her more that the houluh’s worth in revivals and the puffed up soft-skins demanding more than that. That, and the houluh would most likely die antagonizing anything bigger than a newly-hatched formica.
She let the houluh run into the fenced in area as she closed the gate, making sure it was shut more out of habit than any real need. The slave hound had been living up to her reputation recently, becoming far more attached to the ssashirk than most of the beasts she had spent more time with. Tin even seemed to have learned to pick up a few basic commands without needing to be trained them, such as looking up when her name was called.
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