Читать книгу Haney's Art of Training Animals онлайн

9 страница из 65

All trainers make use of various little tit-bits as rewards for successful performance of tricks. These serve as a powerful incentive to the animal as well as to show him when he has done right. Withholding the accustomed reward when he fails or but imperfectly performs his duty is much more effective than any corporeal punishment. The repetition of the lesson until the animal will himself perform the required action, and the bestowal of these rewards whenever he obeys your order, is really the main secret of training. Of course there are many important details in the practical application, and many clever devices resorted to by trainers to increase the effectiveness of tricks, as well as skillful combinations of simple tricks to produce elaborate and astonishing feats. These we shall fully explain in their proper places.

To certain scents has sometimes been ascribed a mysterious influence upon animals, rendering them docile and subservient to the human will. To the use of these many persons imagine trainers owe their success. Though some scents are relished by certain animals, we doubt whether, as a rule, they have so great a fondness for them as has been asserted. Certainly there is no general use of them in the profession, though they may have been sold to the credulous by ignorant or unprincipled persons, for this purpose. Cats are fond of catnip, and we know of instances where kittens, displaying a violent resistance to being carried in a basket, have been quieted by being given some leaves of this herb. Animals no doubt receive pleasure from the gratification of their sense of smell, but there is about as much reason in conquering an unruly school-boy by giving him a sniff of cologne water, as in taming a colt by causing him to smell that or any other perfume.