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Post by Kadin on Mar 5, 2021 7:47:24 GMT -6
As a long he was in a calm state of mind and ‘at ease’ the whole time.
But it was Skip’s turn right now and even if Elk felt that it was unfair he couldn’t convince Kadin to pay attention to him instead. So, with a huff, he went back to the water to see if he could find something else to catch and bring to Kadin to get attention that way. He didn’t find anything right away, but eventually after a lot of smelling he found something that smelled fishy but wasn’t a fish.
The next step was with that estharne plushie. Kadin was a bit worried about this one, especially since he knew from past experience that houluh tended to guard against such a plushie. He started off even further back with this one, so far that Skip couldn’t even really see it. Then he worked on the same thing, making so that Skip was calm and at ease before moving him forward and trying again. Skip was getting really good at the being at ease part, just in general, but the closer they got to the plushie the more interested he was in it.
At East: 11
129
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Post by Kadin on Mar 5, 2021 7:48:05 GMT -6
It was impossible to avoid, really, especially since Kadin knew that he was such an anxious houluh to begin with.
It was a flower! He barked at it but it didn’t move so he was pretty sure it was a flower and not a fish even if it smelled fishy. He tried to pick it up but it was hard to pick up a flower, especially this one. It was kinda big. He whined at it, complaining that it was making his life hard by being difficult to pick up! But it was a flower do it didn’t care about what he had to say.
But with a lot of patience, Kadin worked on getting Skip to calm down close to the plushie, too. He even did tell him to pay attention to it sometimes, but then after letting him be cautious for a few moments, he’d tell him to go ‘easy’ and work on calming him back down. It took a while for Skip to really get what he was trying to tell him, but eventually all the previous work paid off and he calmed down about it, too. Kadin kept practicing with Skip until he could reliably be relaxed, even around something he thought was a real estharne.
At East: 12
130 *level up
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Post by Jack on Mar 5, 2021 7:51:35 GMT -6
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Post by Kadin on Mar 5, 2021 8:27:23 GMT -6
Kadin felt a little bad about focusing on Skip so much when Elk still needed some work, too, but he put it to the back of him mind by reminding himself that he’d be working with Elk plenty once he was done with Skip. The next thing he wanted to work on with Skip was bite. Since this was a pretty natural move for houluh, he wasn’t predicting too many problems with it. He started out by bringing out a rope toy that he thought Skip would like. He dangled it on front of the puppy’s head and said, “Bite!” in a very encouraging way. The puppy, of course, delighted to have some play time, grabbed on to the toy and bit down hard, growling happily the whole like. “Good job, Skip!” Kadin praised. “Good boy, good bite!” As his reward, Kadin played tug with him for a little while to reinforce that it was a very good thing.
Elk eventually decided to give up on the flower. It was just too hard to carry around for him! Plus he got distracted by a fish. One darted away from him while he was trying to drag the flower out of the water.
Bite: 1
131
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Post by Kadin on Mar 5, 2021 8:27:48 GMT -6
And with a bark of delight he was racing down the bank trying to play with it. Of course, fish were in water and not exactly interested in playing with a houluh.
Kadin then repeated this same thing for a while more. He’d present Skip with a new toy instead of trying to get him to drop the other one and tell him to “bite!” He’d keep dangling it and being tempting until Skip would finally release the other toy and go for the one Kadin was tempting him with, making this a fun game where they got to play tug with a whole lot of different toys. Once Skip bit down on the new toy Kadin presented him with, he’d get a lot of praise and they’d play for a little while so Skip could see how much fun it was to play with the toy Kadin told him to play with. They kept repeating this for a while until Skip was quickly bouncing from toy to toy, biting down on whichever one Kadin presented him with next.
Not like that would stop Elk from trying. He raced back and forth, barking madly at the fish and trying to get it to pay attention to him.
Bite: 2
132
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Post by Kadin on Mar 5, 2021 8:28:24 GMT -6
It didn’t care at all, once it saw that he wasn’t getting in the water, and just kept going about its fishy business even with a dog barking at it from the shore. It was hard to get Elk to give up on something, but even he couldn’t keep barking at a fish forever.
It was easy to tell that biting things was something that came to houluh naturally! Now that Skip was getting the basics down, it was time to switch to something else. Kadin presented him with some wooden sticks next to bite instead of toys. At first, Skip didn’t want to give up the toys, but Kadin was persistent. He kept telling Skip to ‘bite’ the stick and waving it around to look more enticing. Eventually, with a small growl, Skip jumped up and bit down on the stick next, growling playfully and wagging his tail at this new part to the fun game. Kadin gave him a lot of praise and played tug with him with the stick. He’d then vary it up with different toys, sticks, and other objects he’d ask for Skip to bite. There were so many different types!
Bite: 3
133
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Post by Kadin on Mar 5, 2021 8:31:02 GMT -6
They were going between a bunch of different types of things and only playing with him when he bit the right object.
Eventually he got distracted again, this time by flowers. Again. He just seemed to keep finding flowers! Elk went over to sniff at them and their fishy but not fish smell. He wasn’t sure what to make of them still and something told him that he wouldn’t have much more luck with these than he did with the last ones. Still, he wouldn’t be him if he didn’t try!
Now it was time to see if Skip would bit things that weren’t just toys. Kadin brought out the life sized plushies for this one, too. He set up a small galabex one for this first. He walked over to it and pointed to it, making eye contact with Skip when he said, “Bite!” Skip, with a stick in his mouth, seemed a bit confused and trotted over. Kadin kept encouraging him to bite the plushie. This was the closest he’d get, really, to having him practice on something real. Skip sniffed at the plushie a bit. He didn't seem super keen on it yet.
Bite: 4
134
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Post by Kadin on Mar 5, 2021 8:31:19 GMT -6
Kadin picked it up and held out one of its legs, wiggling it in front of Skips head to tempted him. “Bite, Skip!” He kept encouraging. He wasn’t sure what part of that worked, but eventually Skip dropped the stick and, with a bark, bit the plushie, growling playfully the whole time and dragging it around like a crazy dog. “Good job, Skip!” Kadin praised, letting him play with it for a while and giving him some treats for a job well done, too.
He tried to bite at them, but that still wasn’t a good idea. They didn’t really make it easy to bite them and he felt like they’d just fall apart in his mouth. So he started pawing at them instead! Maybe this would work better. And it did! He could hit them out of the water, at least, but they had strings or roots or something that was holding them in the water? It was weird, he didn’t know what to do!
Now it was just down to some rinse and repeat practicing. Kadin had Skip go around to all kinds of different plushies and ordered him to bite them.
Bite: 5
135 *level up
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Post by Kadin on Mar 5, 2021 8:35:12 GMT -6
He was slow about it at first, still in the play mindset and more interested in trying to rip some of the toys apart than just following the command and biting them, but as they continued he started getting faster and faster. Pretty soon, he was biting on command just like Kadin hoped he would be. Kadin kept it at it until he'd drop what he was biting and go to the next one right away. He was sure to give him plenty of play time, treats, and praise as rewards every time he did what he wanted him to do. Skip seemed to be having a blast about it, at least! Which Kadin was ultimately grateful for. He'd come a long way from when he'd gotten him.
Elk whined in distress at the plant that just wasn’t cooperating with what he wanted. Plants shouldn’t be this hard to play with! Why didn’t it have a nice stalk or vine or something for him to bite on to? That was how he could carry around sticks, he liked sticks. Sticks were good plants that were easy to pick up and carry around and why did flowers have to be so difficult and not like sticks!
Bite: 6
136 *added to skip only
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Post by Jack on Mar 5, 2021 8:50:09 GMT -6
Some plants came to rest on the shore of the river
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Post by Kadin on Mar 15, 2021 13:21:31 GMT -6
At this point, Elk had already learned a lot of different tricks and abilities. Kadin figured that it was time to bring another pup into the training area and work on something with them as well. Since Skip was already done being worked with, Elk probably needed a buddy, even if Kadin would work on the houluh individually at times. And Kadin wanted to make sure that next pup was here and ready to learn, especially since he was so close to being done with Elk. So Kadin brought Pepper over from where she had been exploring in the mines. They hadn’t gotten much training done down there since so many creatures kept popping up. But Kadin hoped that Elk would be able to get Pepper back on track and show her the ropes. After all, Kadin only needed to train Elk one more thing before his training was done. Since Elk been doing so well with all the fishing from before he decided the best thing to do would be to teach him how to track down fish next. It could be a pretty good deal at the end of the day. Elk would know how to track down fish and then how to catch them afterwards.
In addition to having elk and pepper with him, who were both going to be in training, Kadin also brought Tex. Tex was a relatively new addition to his kennel, being siblings with Jude and one of Miles’ offspring, his first houluh.
137
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Post by Kadin on Mar 15, 2021 13:26:37 GMT -6
Kadin was really excited to begin working with Tex, but Tex was still young and had a lot to learn before they started the training proper. Plus, Kadin needed to finish up with Elk and Pepper before he put a lot of attention on Tex. It was unfortunate but true.
And this way, if they ever wanted to track down any fish first just to see if they were worth catching, Elk and Pepper would be on the case. Elk would be able to show Pepper what he already knew and they’d both be able to learn how to track down fish together. The first thing Kadin figured they’d probably need was some fish scent to go off of. Since they had already caught fish before, Kadin was able to use them to rub on with some rags to get their scent on. Using that, he could have Elk and Pepper smell the rags with the fish scent on them. Kadin had Elk and Pepper both smell the rags covered in fish scent. They both sniffed at the rags and Kadin waited, seeing if they were going to do anything about it. Both of them seemed pretty confused, but happy enough to smell whatever the heck they were smelling on the rags. Kadin realize that he was probably being too ambitious here. He had a different idea. He should probably start smaller than starting with actual fish for them to track down first. So instead he showed them each a treat.
138
Track: 1
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Post by Kadin on Mar 15, 2021 13:33:20 GMT -6
He had them smell a treat first and then he tossed it up onto the sand somewhere for them to find, saying, “track!” Elk and pepper both went racing after the treat to go get it. But since the treat was the same color as the sand it was a little hard to find. They had to sniff around in order to find it.
He also wanted him to learn a little bit from Elk in a little bit from Pepper, too, before he really got started with Tex. So Tex was left to simply hang out on his own in the area while Kadin was working with the other houluh. Text didn’t really know what to do here. I mean there was a lot of sand there was a lot of smells it had never smelled before. The sun was blue in the sky and it was really nice day out, too.
Kadin had them continue practicing this for a little while just getting them used to using their nose to find something to eat. He’d toss the treat somewhere on the sands, usually in different directions, and have both houluh try to track it down. They got really good a tracking down the smell of the treat. Once he was satisfied that they could find that every time, he decided to move on to something else. This time, Kadin first had the houluh restrained so they wouldn’t go after the treat right away. Then he’d show them the treat and let them smell it.
139
Track: 2
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Post by Kadin on Mar 15, 2021 13:38:54 GMT -6
Next, he’d hide the treat somewhere they couldn’t see it. Then, finally, he’d release the hounds and tell them to track. It took a little while for Pepper to be able to find a treat. She still wasn’t used to this whole training and commands thing so it was going to take a little while for her to figure out what it was all about. But Elk was an old hat at figuring out what new games Kadin was trying to get him to play. He was pretty sure that this was a new game he was determined to figure out how to do it. So could really put his nose to the grind stone and searched out those treats as quickly as he could. He was much faster at picking up on this new game than Pepper was! He raced back to Kadin as quickly as he could once he found the treat for the next one!
So Tex figured that it might as well just wander around and maybe look for some fish or something else to do since the human and other houluh kept ignoring him. So Tex wanted over to the edge of the water and sniffed at it. The water smelled a little bit funny, kind of different from what it was used to in the kennels. But it didn’t think it was too too funny to drink so he lapped up some of it anyway.
Kadin had them continue this same sort of search for a while more.
140 *level up
Track: 3
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Post by Kadin on Mar 15, 2021 13:39:34 GMT -6
He was still wanting them to get the practice in and wanting Pepper to get more experience with doing a behavior and then coming back to him, After they practice this for a little while, Kadin decide it was time to move onto the next thing. This time he made it a little bit more complicated. He decided that they needed to have a lot of different hiding places for the treats instead of just searching them out on the sand. This way they would really have to work for it and Pepper could get more practice too. It would also give them both some experience for a longer term search among all sorts of difficult terrain. Once he had it set up, it resembled an obstacle course. They seemed to like this since he built a bit of an obstacle course for them to sniff out stuff in. Just as before, Kadin would tie the two of them up so that they couldn’t watch him hiding the treats and toys he wanted them to find. Then he’d give them the scent of the treat or object he wanted them to search for. And then he’d tell them to track! And release them to do it.
At least the water tasted ok even if it smelled a little bit funny. Now what was Tex supposed to do next? Tex figured that it wouldn’t really get much use out of anything here right by the water. Though maybe there was something else in the area that was interesting?
141
Track: 4
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