Dear Jerxy: Pet Tricks

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Dear Jerxy: Last August my wife and I adopted a dog. His name is Tony and he's great. (Photo attached.)

I've never had a dog before, but many of my co-workers do, and they passed along the Rule of Threes. Basically, as your dog acclimates to the new environment, you'll see different aspects of their personality emerge after 3 days, 3 weeks, 3 months, and maybe even 3 years. I'd never heard about this before, but apparently it's common knowledge among dog owners. (And it's been more or less true -- Tony's a lot more playful and expressive since we first took him in, and the personality changes have roughly followed the Rule of 3s timeline.)

This seemed like an interesting premise for a potentially long-running Jerxian performance -- kind of like receiving a Yento package every year that you open in front of your family, except your dog is now taking the place of the mysterious self-working trick. So the story would be that my dog just started exhibiting some new, weird behaviors, but because of the Rule of Three-ish nature of things: a) his latent abilities couldn't have emerged until "X" months of acclimating to us and his new home, and b) this is now just another aspect of his personality that we're going to be learning about and dealing with at regular intervals for the rest of his life. ("We've been trying to keep track of it and it seems like it's every seven weeks or so. [Opens calendar on iPhone] Oh wow, you came on a good day -- it's been seven weeks since the last incident...")

In trying to compile a catalogue of tricks that would work with this premise, it seemed like the Jerxian angle would get lost if I'm participating too much -- it risks coming across like a typical "storytelling" trick where the story about my dog just feels tacked on and there's nothing really immersive about the experience. Something along the lines of Moon Barks At Dog would fit the parameters of what I'm aiming for. (But not exactly that because of potential logistical problems. Put your pet and a haunted deck in another room, close the door, and then come back to find that he's cut the deck to the right spot -- pretty good, unless your dog messes with the deck after the door closes...) Also, I'd want the catalogue to include tricks that could be performed in places other than our home -- like if we're out for a walk and run into someone -- so any props involved would have to be organic to the setting where you might naturally encounter a dog and their owner.

Anyway, i was curious how you would tackle this project. (And I figured there were probably some other Jerx-offs out there who've incorporated their pets into a trick at some point and might have thoughts on this, too.)

Signed,
Bringing Entertaining Spectacle Through Interesting Animal Legerdemain Is The Yearning

Dear BESTIALITY: I do tricks with pets relatively frequently (every few months or so).

The Haunted Deck is one of my go-to effects for this. Place the deck and the animal in the bathroom. Close the door and give the animal a chance to “do their thing,” then open it a little bit later to show the dog/cat/bunny/ferret or whatever has cut the deck and dragged out the selected card a little bit. (You will need a hands-off Haunted Deck to do this.)

But I can understand why you might not want to leave your dog alone in the bathroom with an expensive gimmicked deck. (“He found your card! And chewed it up. And peed on it. Great.”)

More often than not, the tricks I do with pets follow that type of format. They are put in the room with something and left alone with it for a minute. When we come back something has changed, and I pin that change on the animal. Why does the animal have to be left alone? It’s evolution. They’re not inclined to demonstrate their powers in front of people because it’s an evolutionary advantage to appear less capable than they truly are.

Triumph the Close-Up Magician Dog

With a Cheek-to-Cheek deck, have someone select a card. Mix the cards face-up and face down and return their card to the deck. Put your animal in the bathroom. Spread the cards to show your friend that the deck is completely mixed up. Throw the deck in the bathroom with the animal. In the process, turn it over so all the cards are facing the same way except the selection. Toss the cards in such a way that they spread across the floor somewhat. (Don’t let the spectator look in after the deck has been thrown in.)

Come back a few minutes later. The cards on the floor have been rearranged so they all now face the same way except the selection. Good boy!

The Invisible Dog

“I’ve reversed one card in this deck. Your dog will be able to determine what it is.”

Two pieces of paper are laid on the ground and a treat or piece of food is placed on each. On one sheet it says “RED” and on the other it says “BLACK.”

The dog eats the black one first.

You scribble out red and black and write in clubs and spades. He eats “clubs” first this time.

You continue on with this winnowing process:

  • High-Low

  • Odd-Even

  • 2 - 4

Eventually the dog has “selected” the Two of Clubs. You reveal that’s the card that was reversed in the deck earlier on.

Cat Scratch

You use the Hoy Book Test (or a Svengali pad, or whatever else you like) to force a word. Let’s say you’re using the Hoy procedure. You don’t have the participant look at the word. You tell them to open the book to that page and show that page to your pet (we’ll say it’s a cat for this example). You toss the cat into a room and close the door. Then you show two small blank slates and toss those in the room too with some chalk and close the door.

“Kitty! I want you to write the first word you saw on that page of the book.”

You put your ear to the door. “I think I hear him writing something,” you say. You tell your friend to listen in as well and some scratching sounds are heard.

(For the scratching sounds, just stand with your ear against the door. Motion for your friend to stand in front of you with their ear against the door too. In this position, just scratch the door itself with your finger down at your hip. You can’t really tell where the scratching is coming from. Even if they do suspect you’re making the scratching noise yourself, that will only serve to lower their expectations, which should only make the climax hit harder.)

Now, you tell your friend to open the page and see what the first word is, “so we can verify if he gets it right.” After a minute or two you go in the bathroom and poke at the slates with your foot. One of them seems to have random scribbles on it. The other one you can just barely make out something written on there. “Darn…something maybe. Oh wait… damage? Was the word damage?” It was! Good kitty.

On The Go

I’ve never really done any completely impromptu, on-the-go, pet related tricks. Not that I can remember, at least. I’m not sure it’s the type of premise you really need an anytime, anywhere version of.

But if I had to come up with something on the fly, the easiest option is to use some kind of mentalism-related phone app and stick the animal in the middle of that process.

So rather than you reading your friend’s mind. Your friend would look at any word on a particular page (Xeno app or Inertia app or something similar) then whisper that word to the dog, then the dog somehow transmits that word to you. For example you can hold the dogs two front paws and do a sort of “20 Questions” type of thing with him. “Okay, Scrapple, is what they’re thinking of something natural [shake left paw] or man-made [shake right paw].” Pause a moment and act as if the dog is pressing down on your right hand. “Ah, okay. So it’s man made. Is it bigger than a phone booth [shake left paw] or smaller [shake right paw].” That sort of thing… until the dog has clued you in to the person’s thought.

Or using the Jerx App, if you force a word on someone (perhaps using the Hoy procedure mentioned above), you could then go to a drawing app and hold that out to the dog and they could use their nose to write some sort of sloppy reveal of that information on the phone.

Pacing

This is not the sort of premise I’d want to beat into the ground with the same people over and over. I probably wouldn’t do a pet-related trick with the same people more than twice a year. It’s such a strongly different premise that using it more often would be overkill.