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Post by Noa on Aug 1, 2020 18:28:08 GMT -6
The Laredo seemed to be getting the hang of chasing after the lure, but Aster honestly wasn’t sure if he was getting the whole point of the word 'dash' as a prompt for the action. So this time he tossed the lure but didn’t say the word, and watched the Laredo go haring off after it with the same enthusiasm as before. Which was about what he expected, but it was still a little disheartening to see it happen.
This time though, there was no reward. Aster wanted the Laredo to start paying attention to the command word. He couldn’t, after all, be flinging around some scented rabbit doll in the actual Pit, when it came time for them to do a proper battle.
The Laredo understood enough about the concept of Aster as a provider of food and treats to hiss at him when the treat was not forthcoming.
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Post by Noa on Aug 1, 2020 18:28:37 GMT -6
It seemed that it understood the concept that there was a treat to be had if it sprinted after the lure by now, at least. That was something, and Aster could build on that. “None for you,” he said to the Laredo.
Aster flung the lure again, this time prefacing it with, “Dash!” The Laredo wasn’t smart enough to hold grudges, and this time it ran readily after the lure just the same as always. This time it got its treat.
Aster watched it for any signs of thought going on in that brain of its, but it was too soon. He sighed. This was going to be another long session, wasn’t it?
Through a process of honestly mostly trial and error, Aster slowly drummed the concept of the command word into the Laredo. It took a long time, and proved to be the work of several sessions.
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Post by Noa on Aug 1, 2020 18:29:08 GMT -6
A few times the Laredo even stopped responding to the lure at all, but this wasn’t as difficult a problem as it might have been in a more clever creature. Aster simply wiggled the lure enticingly in front of it a little longer, and he was able to catch its interest once again, not unlike coaxing a cat to chase a toy.
Eventually, after many many repetitions, the Laredo seemed to finally figure out that unless Aster said the word ‘dash’, there was no reward waiting for it even if it chased the lure. At that point it began, wisely, to conserve its energy and ignore the times when Aster didn’t speak the word. Aster didn’t want to tempt fate, and didn’t try to entice the Laredo into chasing after the lure unless he gave the command. Maybe that helped. It couldn’t have hurt, at the very least.
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Post by Noa on Aug 1, 2020 18:29:26 GMT -6
Now that the Laredo had the command word down though, it was time to get him used to doing this without the lure being used.
Aster didn’t completely remove the presence of the lure at first. He needed it as a failsafe, since he didn’t want the Laredo to go too many repetitions of the word ‘dash’ without actually doing anything. They had worked so hard to get here, and he wasn’t about to let all his work become undone just because he had gotten a little lazy, or hadn’t had the forethought to… Well, regardless, the lure was still there.
But this time Aster said, “Dash!” and moved it only a little.
This time, and maybe only this time, the Laredo’s dim wits finally worked in Aster’s favor. It dashed the full, usual distance without even realizing its prize hadn’t really moved from where it had started.
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Post by Noa on Aug 1, 2020 18:29:42 GMT -6
Before it could scan around too much in confusion, Aster fed it the treat. “Good, good. You did well this time,” Aster said. He was pleasantly surprised, which was to say that he definitely felt like this had the potential to fall flat, and was gratified to see that it hadn’t.
It made him eager to try again. And since the Laredo didn’t seem to mind doing this over and over, Aster did so without any reservations.
“Dash,” he said again. He twitched the lure again this time too, but just to be safe. Once more, the Laredo went haring off, and none the wiser about where the lure had actually gone to. So far, so good. They repeated this a few more times just to get it into the Laredo’s head. Repetition, as Aster was learning, was the key to getting things with this poor beast.
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Post by Noa on Aug 1, 2020 18:30:35 GMT -6
It took that much longer to drum things into its head, but it did come along, slowly but surely. As Aster rewarded him for this repeatedly, the Laredo ceased to pay attention at all to the presence of the lure, at least as far as relying on it to determine where it was that it ought to be stopping with the sprint.
That was how their next session started too, repeating the command as the Laredo had learned it. That was how they began, anyway, as a warm up. And then Aster put away the lure altogether, though still within reach if he needed to use it again, and took a deep breath.
Here went nothing, he thought.
“Dash!” Aster said. The Laredo twitched, then stopped, looking at Aster. Hmm, maybe not then. But he thought it was worth another try, and waited a few moments before giving it another go.
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Post by Noa on Aug 1, 2020 18:30:59 GMT -6
“Dash!” he said again, and this time - maybe the habituation had stuck, or maybe the Laredo had been faked out by something else in their environment. Whatever it was, the Laredo sprinted, and at the end of it Aster had occasion to give him another treat.
“There you go, old guy, you’ve almost got it,” Aster said. “Just do that a few more times and we’ll be done with this. You want to go back to your nice stall where I don’t talk at you, don’t you?”
The Laredo didn’t make any reply, but Aster was sure the sentiment, at least, was true.
Aster tried giving the command again without the lure. “Dash!” he said. The memory of the last morsel of rabbit meat was fresh in the Laredo’s mind, and it dashed when prompted, even without the lure. Aster was grinning despite himself.
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Post by Noa on Aug 1, 2020 18:32:12 GMT -6
Maybe it was because it was such difficult work that made it so rewarding, but it did gratify him to see the Laredo do as he wanted after all. A meal was always more delicious if you were hungry, after all... Or as the saying went, hunger was the best seasoning. The hunger, in this case, being relative, at least on the part of Aster, the trainer.
They did a few more repetitions to drive the idea home, after which Aster was good with ending the session. On subsequent sessions, it sometimes took a few repetitions with the lure before the Laredo remembered to work without it, but slowly Aster managed to phase out the lure altogether. By then, never mind the Laredo, Aster was more than ready to be done with this whole ordeal.
But at last the goal had been accomplished, and the Laredo could now dash on command.
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Post by Noa on Aug 4, 2020 21:42:02 GMT -6
The guy Aster had hired to spend some time with the laredo had come and gone again, taking it on one of their trips together. What they did on those trips, Aster couldn’t really guess, seeing as the laredo was… well, to put it bluntly, not very interactive a creature to begin with. But the guy didn’t complain, and the laredo got its exercise, and Aster paid him without fuss. It wasn’t a bad arrangement, actually; Aster didn’t like people, and it would have been a real stretch to say that he liked this one either, but at least the guy - what had been his name again? - was easy to deal with.
And the Laredo always returned in good condition, so it wasn’t like this was some goon running off with a creature only to bring it back banged up and traumatized, or with newly formed bad habits.
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Post by Noa on Aug 4, 2020 21:42:42 GMT -6
But then, if it were someone like that, Aster would have fired him on the spot.
Now that they had some basic skills under the Laredo’s belt, the only thing left to do was to teach it an attack. Aster had given the matter a lot of thought, and decided that the best use of the creature’s bulk was to try and teach it to slam its weight onto a foe.
That… was easier said than done though, especially considering the creature didn’t have a good deal of wits for Aster to work with.
He had thought long and hard about how he was going to do this. In the end he started by constructing two walls of thin wood, which would stand well enough for him to lead the Laredo in between them, but would fall with relative ease if the Laredo tried to smash them aside with its bulk.
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Post by Noa on Aug 4, 2020 21:42:59 GMT -6
With the aid of a few bribes, Aster led the Laredo between these two wooden walls, which were laid out so that the Laredo barely fit between them.
It wasn’t a comfortable fit. But then, it wasn’t supposed to be. The whole point was to play on the Laredo’s distaste for being in the enclosed space, and try to have him get out of it. There was a tall stone at the end that prevented the Laredo from simply passing straight on through, and from what Aster had observed, at least, the Laredo didn’t seem particularly good at backing up. It still might happen, but Aster was hoping the Laredo would just try to smash its way out instead.
He wasn’t disappointed with the results. As soon as the food bribes had stopped, the Laredo immediately realized the bind it was in, and became agitated.
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Post by Noa on Aug 4, 2020 21:43:21 GMT -6
Aster barely had enough time to say the command word - “Slam!” - before the Laredo had thrown its weight against one of the boards, neatly knocking it over in one go and scrambling out the other side.
Aster breathed a sigh, though he didn’t know if it was because he was feeling relieved or frazzled.
Still, it had worked. He just needed to try again. Not, of course, without rewarding the Laredo first for his efforts; he wanted the Laredo to associate the action with a reward, or else they’d never get anywhere without the negative stimulus first. “Good boy,” Aster said to the Laredo. “Not that you care whether you’re good or not, so long as you get fed, hmm? You remind me of someone else I know.” But even Grunty had more wits, though he seldom chose to use it when there wasn’t sufficient incentive involved…
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Post by Noa on Aug 4, 2020 21:43:45 GMT -6
So maybe there wasn’t really much of a difference after all. But, well, the Laredo wasn’t going to teach itself. Aster righted the wall that had been knocked down, and repeated the process. The nice thing about the Laredo not having much in the way of wits was that it hadn’t wised up to the idea just yet, so Aster could still get away with it.
And sure enough, as soon as he stopped distracting the Laredo, it began becoming dissatisfied with its surroundings. At least this time Aster knew how much time he had. “Slam,” he said, and the Laredo slammed into one of the walls, as if on cue.
It was only the illusion of it doing this on Aster’s command right now, but close enough was close enough. Aster fed the Laredo another treat, then set up the walls so they could try again.
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Post by Noa on Aug 4, 2020 21:43:57 GMT -6
Patience and perseverance… Aster had to remind himself that these were the key to training the Laredo as they went through it over and over. The amount of repetition made his own head spin sometimes, and by the end of the session he had hardly any idea whether he had made any progress. But they were laying the groundwork for this, and hopefully over the next session Aster would get to see his own hard work pay off. That was what he thought to himself, anyway.
The next day came, and Aster led the Laredo back to their training field. The walls were set up again. They repeated some of what they had done the previous session just to jog the Laredo’s memory, and it played out exactly as it had done before. But then Aster placed the walls a little further apart, such that they were no longer quite so close as to make the Laredo immediately uncomfortable.
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Post by Noa on Aug 4, 2020 21:44:17 GMT -6
Aster wanted to see if the Laredo could perform the move according to Aster’s verbal prompt, and not just when it felt pressed in by its surroundings.
Aster sure hoped that the Laredo had been able to absorb some of it. He’d been feeding the bugger treats for long enough; with any other creature, he would have been able to say with more certainty that they had managed to form some recognition of the word and how it related to the treat, even if that understanding was far from perfect. But Aster had never worked with a creature quite this dim, so he didn’t want to jump to such conclusions just yet.
… He did feel a bit bad about disparaging the Laredo’s intelligence so much. But… Well, it was true. The encyclopedia said so, and his practical experience so far wasn’t proving it wrong either.
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