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Post by Briar on Apr 24, 2021 20:06:14 GMT -6
Maybe it was just wishful thinking, but he felt that on some level, Doc knew he needed this. Animals did know how to read the moods of people they were with, even ones that weren't necessarily terribly intelligent. It was why Briar had to keep a close eye on his own emotional state when he was around the pups, and around Yeo-reum too. But the idea that Doc was deliberately trying to comfort him did feel like more of a stretch, and he didn't know if he wanted to give Doc that much credit. Doc was also, in a general sense, probably the least sharp of the trio... Or maybe just less conventionally motivated than Nana. Cipher was the sharpest of the three of them, that much was clear, but beyond that, Briar supposed he couldn't be completely sure.
It was absurd, but nevertheless... there was no one else here to tell him that it was stupid, so he signed, -Thanks,- to Doc. The pup watched his hands, as if they might contain the secrets of the universe - or, more likely, if he was trying to get Doc to do something, or hiding treats. Unfortunately for Doc, there was nothing for him there, but Briar went back to petting him again soon enough, and that was good enough for Doc. He never was remiss for a little attention, even if the other two were currently doing something else, which they still were. For the moment, Briar felt no need to call them back.
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Post by Briar on Apr 24, 2021 23:51:23 GMT -6
Instead, he watched them romp around. That was a good way to make himself feel better too, in its own way. To be honest he didn't really get this about himself either; it wasn't as if he was the one running around and having fun. And the lot of them, Cipher in particular but the other two as well, had given him his fair share of grief over the past weeks and months. But seeing them play nevertheless lifted his spirits, and he wasn't the type who wanted to interrogate his feelings so closely. If it was good then it was good, and he was content to just accept it.
He took a seat on the grass, and Doc took the opportunity to immediately crawl half onto his lap. But Briar was expecting as much, and simply continued to stroke the pup's ears. Doc was having a good time, and it gave Briar something to do with his hands.
They all stayed like that for a while, but the peaceful moment couldn't possibly last forever. Eventually some mischief had to occur, or else it wouldn't be an outing with the pups. It was actually almost a good thing that it occurred when it did, actually, because by that point Briar had been on the verge of nodding off. Too much peace and quiet put him to sleep now, apparently, though given how hectic things had been lately with the pups, maybe it was no surprise after all that he was tired.
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Post by Briar on Apr 24, 2021 23:55:22 GMT -6
If he had actually managed to fall asleep then it would have been bad indeed, because he would have missed entirely the mischief that had occurred after that. As it was, it was the noise that alerted him first, a sharp hiss and then a yelp from one of the pups. He turned to look, and there was Cipher, menacing... Gods, was that a snake?
Briar was on his feet in an instant, upsetting poor Doc, who had still been resting in his lap. But Briar could make his apologies later. If they got bit by something venomous... Briar didn't want to think about it. He rushed toward Cipher, with Doc following after him, and even Nana pausing in whatever she was investigating in the middle of some bushes to look at what the commotion was about.
But then Briar closed in on Cipher, and had a closer look at the snake. It was... bright blue, and despite the fact that it was moving, also seemed to be made of plastic. It hissed at him, then bit ineffectually at his boot before slithering away. Its teeth didn't even indent the leather, and these weren't hard boots that Briar was wearing.
Briar sighed. He really, really didn't understand this place. What the heck was that thing anyway, and what was it doing here...? That couldn't have been one of the pocketpets for the month, could it?
But it could, he realized. He had seen stranger things moving about in these grounds.
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Post by Briar on Apr 24, 2021 23:59:36 GMT -6
If he had actually stopped to think about it, which was what he was doing now, he had absolutely seen stranger things. A rubber snake that moved, and one that still made noise and acted like a snake, wasn't the most outlandish possibility.
Maybe this wasn't such a good place to go out with the pups after all. It afforded him a certain convenience of being away from the grounds of the house where he currently stayed, and he very badly needed a break from that place once in a while... Or even once a day. He also very badly needed to return there and continue his efforts of investigating it, but he could only be on edge for so many hours of the day. Even sleeping didn't feel safe, his thoughts swirling in an uncomfortable tumult, but that wasn't really new. Briar had lived his life for years and years balancing on a knife's edge of anticipation and dread, and honestly the only time he could remember anymore where that hadn't been the case was his time with the boy in the tower.
... But he would also be loath to lose his time away from the property... And it was hard to find another place where the pups could roam free, and where his chances of running into other people were also vanishingly low.
He looked at Cipher, who was utterly unrepentant. He considered trying to admonish the pup, but Doc was pawing at his leg, and he just didn't have it in him.
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Post by Briar on Apr 25, 2021 0:21:40 GMT -6
Nana was approaching now too, presumably to sniff around to see if he had any treats. The rate at which she in particular was growing was no joke. Right now it was mostly in the leg, but pups tended to grow that way first, filling in later if they filled out at all; and so it was hard to tell whether she would simply become a particularly lanky individual, or if she was going to be more bulk and muscle, and just a bigger dog in a general sense.
Briar had to wonder if it was the appetite that had fueled her growth, or if her growth was why she was so hungry all the time. It was one of those chicken or the egg questions, and he doubted he was going to get an answer, but the thought came to him all the same.
He sighed, and showed Nana his empty hands. She sniffed at them, then lost interest. There was a Thundergug on the grounds of the big house that was just like this, though the Gug looked more... Well, the Gug looked as though you should expect that from him, being so large and rotund. But Nana was a growing pup, and the food motivation did make her easy to train, so he supposed he shouldn't think too much of it.
If he wanted a pup to keep him company, Doc was all too happy to oblige, and if he wanted one to keep him busy, well...
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Post by Briar on Apr 25, 2021 0:29:45 GMT -6
He had Cipher for that, even if he hadn't been looking to get a pup for that purpose.
It was time for the lot of them to go home though. They had accomplished his training goal for the day, and it was starting to get a bit late for what Briar wanted to get done when they got back. As much as he wanted to stay here, and have his break away from the constant tension of being in the same space as Noa, he couldn't stay away too long, for a wide variety of reasons.
At least getting the pups to come with him was no longer the chore that it had been before. Now that they were listening to him when he gave them commands, it was just a matter of giving those commands, and sometimes a bribe or two if need be. Now that their basic obedience had been solidified, it was actually kind of nice sometimes to take them around, because it wasn't the ordeal that it had been sometimes before.
He got their attention with a snap of his fingers, then bid them to come to him. They didn't have a command to follow him, but they more or less understood what he was signaling when he started to walk toward the gate of the mansion. Some were reluctant to leave, but the routine was such that they didn't fight him on it anymore, and together the three of them took their leave of the mansion, and began heading toward home.
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Post by Briar on Apr 25, 2021 0:30:15 GMT -6
There was one other thing that Briar did want to address with the pups, which wasn't exactly obedience. It wasn’t such an issue when they had been younger, but they were a bit bigger now than when he had first gotten them, and they were reaching the stage where they were starting to play rough and get nippy. He wanted to nip this in the bud, so to speak, before it got any worse. Once they were big enough to do some real damage, it would be much worse to deal with, and by then they would probably be more set in their habits too.
The good part was that this wasn’t usually too hard to correct if you caught it early enough. And by now the pups all liked him well enough, even Cipher, in his own way. It wasn’t always Doc who checked in on him, and sometimes even Cipher would try to offer him some comfort when it seemed like Briar was feeling out of sorts, which surprised Briar a little, but was touching nevertheless.
If they liked him, they wouldn’t want to hurt him. He just had to get them to understand that he was hurt. For this reason he was glad he hadn’t lost his voice, only his ability to speak. It was probably possible to do this without being able to vocalize at all, but being able to react like another pup would - by yelping - did make things easier.
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Post by Briar on Apr 25, 2021 0:30:34 GMT -6
On this particular trip to the mansion, Briar brought a lot of toys with him, the kind specifically meant for roughhousing. He didn’t mind playing a little more rough with the pups once in a while; it was just the biting he wanted to address. That, and he wanted to get the idea of not crossing the line into actually hurting him into their heads. A certain level of self control was necessary now that they were getting older, but not really cognizant of their own strength.
The pups were glad for the time out. They’d already learned to look forward to their walks to the mansion, where they were generally let loose to do as they liked for a bit, before Briar got on with the job of actually doing some training with them. On this occasion they had seen the toys he had brought with him, so the level of excitement was higher than usual. This was good. That excitement was sure to produce the kind of incidents that he was waiting for, and would likely give him plenty of opportunities to issue corrections.
He offered a tug rope, and the game was on. And sure enough, it didn’t take long for there to be an incident of some sort. Briar wasn’t even sure who did it, there was just such a mess of pups ganging up on him all at once, but he felt something sharp cutting into his skin, and he yelped, loudly.
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Post by Briar on Apr 25, 2021 0:30:56 GMT -6
The game stopped at once, and all three pups backed off, as if stung. Then, almost immediately, Doc started to lick at his hands and whimper an apology. The other two followed suit not long after, though Nana was slower to do it and less enthusiastic. Briar let this go on for a moment before he played with them again.
The pups started off more carefully and gently, to their credit. But it also didn’t take them that long to get worked up again, and if anything, the next unfortunate nip was harder than the last - and this time Briar could see the perpetrator. It was definitely Nana. he wouldn’t necessarily have expected her to be the roughest one of the three pups when he had first gotten them, but by observing them as of late, he could tell that she put a lot of force behind her play. He wouldn’t have called her a bully, but if a pup didn’t know their own strength, she was definitely it.
Briar did the same thing that he had done before, yelping loudly. Once again, they all backed off, then attempted to ‘apologize’. Once he was satisfied that they understood his discomfort, he resumed playing with them.
The play session lasted about half an hour, not all of it tug rope, but spread out between several different toys as well as straight roundhouse wrestling with the pups. It was exhausting, and by the end of it Briar was pretty sure he never wanted to do it again.
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Post by Briar on Apr 25, 2021 0:31:31 GMT -6
Unfortunately for Briar, he knew he was going to have to do it the next day, and probably the day after that too, and possibly for a while. The pups were also pretty tired though, which meant that they would have less energy to make mischief tonight, so there was that. Briar had also gotten in quite a few corrections regarding their biting habits, and by the end of the session he was already seeing some improvements. Cipher in particular was very careful, but all three of them had curbed the intensity of their play somewhat. They weren’t at the point where they were incident free yet, but the idea of trying to exert some self control for Briar’s sake was starting to occur to them, which was good.
They returned the next day for more of the same, and the pups’ enthusiasm for a second round was no less than the first. They swarmed him immediately, and it took a little refreshing for them to remember the hard learned lessons of the previous day. But as the play session went on, the incidents came up less and less, and they were a little gentler when they were wrestling with him too. It was slow but steady progress, and Briar didn’t expect it to happen overnight. The pups needed to figure out how much force was too much, and they were in the process of growing, so it was doubly hard for them to exercise that level of restraint and coordination.
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Post by Briar on Apr 25, 2021 0:32:33 GMT -6
They repeated the process for several days, and in that time Briar observed another change in the pups: the way they played with each other began to gentle too. More than once he caught one of them yelping the way Briar did when they played too rough with him. Apparently it was catching on. On this occasion Briar felt that it was a good thing they were being raised with one another, so that interactions like this could happen, reinforcing his training without him even being involved.
But the pups also had thicker skin than he did, and the added protection of fur, so their threshold was probably a little higher than his. It was still necessary to teach them the boundaries needed for interacting with soft-skinned humanoids like himself, rather than their fellows. So he continued pitching in to play with them until they reached a point where they stopped playing roughly enough with him to hurt him. It took the better part of a couple of weeks for it to happen, and by the end of it Briar was very much ready for the process to be over, but he was glad to have it done. Any older than this, and it would have been a lot worse on him to go through it with them.
With all that done, Briar let them romp around as they liked for a little longer, before collecting the lot of them and heading toward the gate. Today's walk was over, and they were headed home.
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Post by Nadia on Apr 25, 2021 3:31:28 GMT -6
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