Читать книгу Haney's Art of Training Animals - W. H. Burroughs - Страница 32

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In performing this trick in public one of the audience is allowed to choose a card from the pack, and this card, with several others is thrown on the ground. The horse is then asked by his master to select the chosen card from among them, and to give it to the person who chose it. This sounds like quite a difficult feat, especially, as is usually the case, if he has had his eyes blindfolded while the selection of the card was being made.

Having taught the horse to find and pick up the handkerchief it is very easy to substitute any other article in its place. If a card should be substituted it would be picked up just as anything else would be. The main difficulty is to teach the horse to pick the one desired from among the others, and that one only. To do this, spread half a dozen cards upon the ground at intervals of about ten feet. Let the horse go to one end of this line of cards. He will naturally stop at the first one he comes to, and, if left to himself, will pick it up. Instead of allowing him to do this, start him ahead with the voice using the term “Get up,” or any other which he has been taught means “go ahead.” Do this until he reaches the card which you desire him to pick up, at this you must remain silent unless he is about to pass it by like the former ones, in which case you say “Whoa,” and keep him standing before it until he picks it up. When he does this, reward him and speak encouragingly to him, that he may know he has done what you wished. If you make a practice of speaking to him when he stops at the wrong cards, and of keeping silent when he reaches the right one he will soon come to understand that “silence gives consent,” and that that is the proper card to select. The order in which the chosen card is placed in the row should be varied so that the horse may not learn to select the card by its position instead of obeying your signal. This enables you to let your auditors place the cards in any position or order their fancy may dictate without interfering at all with the successful “working” of the horse.

After he has learned to select the desired card without hesitation, he must be so taught that he will hand it to the person who may have selected it, when he comes to perform in public. To teach him this, have an assistant stationed at some distance from you, and when the horse comes to you with the card, instead of taking it from him as you have been accustomed to do, turn his head in the direction of your assistant and start him up. He will go to the assistant if the latter holds out his hand, and, perhaps, whistles to him. Pretty soon the whistling may be dispensed with, and he will carry the card in any direction indicated in search of some one to receive it. When he comes to perform in the ring he will go around the edge looking for somebody to whom he may relinquish the card. The proper person will probably hold out his hand to take it, but a hundred others will quite as certainly do the same thing. Now if the horse selects the right person in spite of the other claimants to lead him astray, a round of applause is pretty sure to crown his success. To insure this he should be taught to relinquish the card at some particular signal given by the trainer. A cough will answer, or any word which can be incorporated into a sentence addressed to him, without being detected by the audience. We have given sufficient instruction on this point in preceding pages, we believe, to enable the trainer to use his own discretion as to the manner of associating the signal with the giving-up of the card, in the horse’s mind.