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Post by Malcolm on Nov 15, 2021 23:40:42 GMT -6
Malcolm held his breath, and scratched Cashew’s chin with much more enthusiasm. “Good,” he said.
And that was that. He really, really wasn’t going far that day. On the second day, he started attaching a word to it. When he coaxed Cashew onto his hand, he said, “Step up.” Cashew didn’t pay the word any mind for the moment, and came onto the hand merely for the pursuit of chin scratches. “Good,” Mal said. He didn’t think Cashew knew what that word meant either, but it made Mal feel better to say it, like he was the one in charge, the one evaluating Cashew’s performance.
He led Cashew off the hand, this time saying, “Off.” Just as there was a word for getting on, there had to be a word for getting off too. After Cashew got off, Mal gave him another scratch under the chin.
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Post by Malcolm on Nov 15, 2021 23:40:54 GMT -6
Then said, “Step up,” and led him on again. This time he didn’t dispense the chin scratches until Cashew was sitting on his hand. Leading him off, Mal said, “Off,” and when Cashew got off his hand, Mal gave him another little scritch. They did this a couple more times, then Mal finished his cleaning for the day and left.
A couple more sessions passed before Mal tried the ‘step up’ command without the coaxing, merely laying his hand flat upon the ground. “Step up,” he said. At first, there wasn’t much of a reaction, but Cashew came to investigate the empty hand. “Step up,” Mal said again, and hesitantly, Cashew wandered onto his hand. “Good.” He gave Cashew a scratch under the chin.
And now another moment of truth. “Off,” said Mal. When Cashew didn’t immediately move off, Mal slid his hand out from under Cashew.
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Post by Malcolm on Nov 15, 2021 23:41:10 GMT -6
When Cashew clambered back on, there were no chin scratches. Mal wanted Cashew to be doing these tricks on Mal’s terms, not his own. He slid the hand out again, then said, “Step up.” This time, when Cashew hopped on, Mal scratched him under the chin again.
“Off,” he tried again. And something did seem to click this time--- Cashew placed one paw down on the ground, and Mal scritched him the once, then brushed him the rest of the way off. The next time they tried ‘off’, Cashew went a bit further--- and the next time, a bit further still.
They continued on like this for a few more rounds, and by the end of it, Mal had the sense that Cashew was starting to work something out. It took another couple of sessions before Cashew quite realized that he had to hear the words ‘step up’ for it to ‘count’ when he hopped onto Mal’s hand.
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Post by Malcolm on Nov 15, 2021 23:41:32 GMT -6
But with enough repetition and failures, the message finally sank in. By that point though, Cashew seemed pretty comfortable getting onto Malcolm’s hand, and seemed to prefer to stay there rather than otherwise. So now Mal tried lifting that hand up--- only a little, ever so slightly off the ground at first. Cashew froze, sniffed around, then hopped off of his own accord… And when Mal set his hand down again, he was able to coax Cashew back onto it, as though nothing had happened.
That was a relief. In the beginning, if something like that had happened, that would have been it.
Malcolm repeated the experiment a couple more times, until he could see that Cashew was starting to lose interest, then decided to call it quits there.
The next session, he lifted Cashew a little further, and then a little further, before letting him back down and asking him to get off.
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Post by Malcolm on Nov 15, 2021 23:41:47 GMT -6
And the lifts began to get longer and longer too, until he could walk a little ways with Cashew on his hand--- and a little on his arm too, since Cashew wasn’t exactly small enough to fit perfectly into his palm--- if he told Cashew to ‘step up’.
It felt a little bit like walking around with a bird on his hand, but not really. As of yet, Mal had to walk slowly and keep an eye on Cashew to make sure they both kept their balance, but later, when they were more comfortable around each other, they would find other arrangements. For now, this was good enough.
He had thought that would be the be all and end all of the ‘off’ command too, but when he came in again the next day for cleaning, he found Cashew sitting on the top of his nest box, and had an idea.
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Post by Malcolm on Nov 15, 2021 23:42:00 GMT -6
“Off,” he said to Cashew, who looked up at him. Cashew had never heard the word before in this context, so it wasn’t surprising that he didn’t get it right away. Creatures were dumb like that, so Mal was learning not to expect much.
He tossed a little piece of raisin onto the ground and said it again: “Off.” This time, Cashew followed the raisin, and got off his nest box. “Good,” said Mal, and scratched him under the chin for good measure.
From then on, from time to time, when he saw Cashew sitting on something, he would try it again. “Off,” he’d say. At first he had to use bits of raisin to coax Cashew onto the ground, but after the first few tries, Cashew was getting on the ground preemptively to look for his raisin, which was all Mal had wanted him to do anyway.
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Post by Malcolm on Nov 15, 2021 23:42:11 GMT -6
Once he could reliably order Cashew onto the ground with the word, he stopped practicing it with quite the same intensity, though he still did it sometimes, when the mood struck him, or when he needed to.
But as for working on being able to handle Cashew properly, that was still a work in progress. Mal decided that they may as well start with his front paws first. That had to be the easiest, right? He’d read somewhere that going right for the head seemed threatening to animals, and he wasn’t eager to get himself bitten again; and the back legs seemed like kind of a risky place to start since Cashew wouldn’t be able to see what he was doing as well.
Front paws it was.
For this one, Mal sat with Cashew in his enclosure. Slowly, ever so slowly, he touched a hand to Cashew’s paw.
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Post by Malcolm on Nov 15, 2021 23:42:41 GMT -6
“Shake,” he said, since he might as well teach Cashew a different trick, while he was at it.
Nothing happened, but that was to be expected at first. Cashew let Mal touch his paw, so Mal fed him a tiny bit of raisin. “Good.” Then he tried it again. “Shake… Good.” Since he wasn’t doing much right now, Cashew was happy, apparently, to just keep getting raisins. “You’re having a good time right now, huh? It’s a free ride right now, huh? Well, you’ll have to work for it later,” Mal said.
Nevertheless, he did that a couple more times before he tried something else, just to be sure. “Shake,” he said, and this time he slid his hand under Cashew’s paw, grabbed it, and lifted it. And before Cashew could freak out, he let go. “Good,” he said, and fed Cashew another piece of dried fruit.
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Post by Malcolm on Nov 15, 2021 23:43:03 GMT -6
He only did this a couple more times before he called it a day. He didn’t want Cashew getting fat and complacent from too many treats, since that wouldn't suit his purposes at all.
They continued on the next day. “Shake,” Mal said, and grabbed Cashew’s paw. He let go right away, then rewarded Cashew for his troubles. Cashew didn’t seem very bothered by this, so the next time Mal did it, he grabbed the paw and shook it up and down. Again, before Cashew could protest, he let go, and fed Cashew again. Maybe the food was keeping him calm, or maybe they were developing some of this ‘trust’ business that the books on animal care liked to harp on and on about. Well, if trust made the process easier, then so be it, even if Mal didn’t place much stock in the feel-good story of the year nonsense about animals.
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Post by Malcolm on Nov 15, 2021 23:43:41 GMT -6
Well, whatever it was, a couple more repetitions of that and Cashew no longer seemed surprised that it was happening. So then it was time to move onto the next step, which was to see if Mal could get him to do it on his own.
This time, when he said, “Shake,” he merely held out his hand. Cashew didn’t do anything with it at first, sniffing around and probably looking for his treat, the little freeloader. Then he tentatively put his paw on Mal’s hand. Maybe he meant to jump on, thinking it was the other trick, or maybe he wanted to root around and see if he could find the treat that way. But whatever instinct compelled him, he’d done it, and as soon as he did, Mal grasped it, shook it up and down, then fed him another piece of dried fruit -- some mango this time.
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Post by Malcolm on Nov 15, 2021 23:44:49 GMT -6
To reinforce the lesson, he immediately tried again. “Shake,” he said, holding out a hand for Cashew. This time it took less time for Cashew to put his paw on it than before. Mal shook his paw up and down, then let it go. “Good.”
A third try, and it took even less time. By the fourth, he was doing it smoothly. Mal was pretty satisfied with this, and took to trying the same process over with the other paw, just so Cashew wouldn’t be favoring the one paw the whole time. It took some time, but since he had the basic idea already, Cashew picked it up after another couple days of practice.
“Well, that’s a start, at least. You won’t be impressing anyone just yet, but you’ve got potential,” Mal said, giving the creature a scratch under the chin, as had become his habit.
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Post by Malcolm on Nov 17, 2021 21:34:06 GMT -6
He had thought so when he first laid eyes on Cashew, though he hadn’t realized how frustrating and time consuming the process would take at the time. But now that he was getting into it, he supposed he may as well continue. Sunk cost fallacy was a fallacy, but he didn’t like the idea of having spent so much time on something and then giving up without a real good reason.
Since things were going so well, Mal decided to give another trick a try. This time, he said, “Wave,” and took Cashew’s wrist in his hand. They’d only just recently done another trick where Mal was handling his paws, so Cashew didn’t seem to mind. But instead of shaking it up and down like he had done before, Mal shook it side to side, as if the creature were waving goodbye. When that was done, Mal fed him a bit of raisin.
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Post by Malcolm on Nov 17, 2021 21:34:40 GMT -6
Now that he knew the treats were coming, Cashew got pretty complacent about having his paws handled by Malcolm. Well, Mal supposed the fact that nothing bad had happened yet must also have helped. When Cashew was finished eating, Mal repeated the process. “Wave,” he said, and took Cashew’s paw to wave it back and forth. Cashew was released, got his snack, and so on.
He repeated it a couple more times before he decided to stop with the touch cue and see what Cashew would do if he just used the command. “Wave,” he said, but didn’t make any move to touch Cashew’s paw.
Cashew didn’t do much of anything at first. The confusion must have gotten the better of him. “Wave,” Mal said again, but Cashew just began sniffing at his hands, looking for a piece of raisin. Mal sighed. Well, so much for that.
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Post by Malcolm on Nov 17, 2021 21:35:13 GMT -6
“Wave,” he said a third time, and lifted his hand to reach for the wrist of Cashew’s paw.
That must have looked just familiar enough to jog Cashew’s memory a little. Cashew moved his paw a little. Malcolm supposed that was good enough; at this point he felt that it was more important that Cashew was moving his paw on his own than anything. They could get the specific motion down later, once the general concept had been imparted onto the little creature's equally small brain. He fed Cashew a piece of fruit, then waited a few minutes before trying again.
"Wave," he said. This time he was more patient about waiting, since he had seen Cashew do something of his own volition just now. Cashew sat on his haunches and tilted his head. Malcolm repeated the command, and at length Cashew moved his paw without Malcolm having to hold it.
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Post by Malcolm on Nov 17, 2021 21:36:00 GMT -6
"Good," Malcolm said. It was slow progress, but it was some kind of progress -- or it had better be, at any rate. It was already so time-consuming as it was.
The next time Malcolm said, "Wave," Cashew moved his paw more readily. Some of it was sinking in then. Malcolm had by this point learned the importance of repetition when teaching tricks; if he was putting in the time to teach Cashew these things, he sure didn't want to have to do it again, or worse, have the little weasel fail him when it was time to actually put the skills to use. So he repeated the process several more times before he started working on refining Cashew's movement, just to make sure Cashew understood that he needed to move his paw on his own.
... That said, the process of refining the movement itself was much more easily said than done.
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