One day in early summer, Squealer ordered the sheep to follow him to a remote piece of waste ground overgrown with birch saplings. Under his supervision, the sheep spent the whole day browsing there, and when evening came, Squealer returned alone, telling the sheep to stay. They remained for an entire week, isolated from the rest of the farm, while Squealer visited them daily, explaining that he was teaching them a new song that required privacy.

The sheep returned on a pleasant evening as the animals were finishing their work. Suddenly, Clover's terrified neighing rang out from the yard. The animals rushed to see what had happened: Squealer, walking on his hind legs, was strolling across the yard. A long file of pigs followed, all walking upright, some awkwardly, but all succeeding. Finally, Napoleon emerged, majestically upright, carrying a whip in his trotter, with his dogs gambolling around him. The animals stood in deadly silence, huddling together, shocked and terrified. At that moment, as if on signal, the sheep burst into a tremendous bleating: "Four legs good, two legs better! Four legs good, two legs better! Four legs good, two legs better!" The chant went on for five minutes, and by the time it stopped, the pigs had already marched back into the farmhouse, and the chance for protest had passed.

This event marked the final and most blatant revision of the foundational Animalist doctrine. The original slogan, "Four legs good, two legs bad," had been devised by Snowball to encapsulate the principles of the Rebellion, distinguishing friend from enemy. Now, with the pigs walking on two legs and assuming human posture and tools, the sheep's new chant retroactively justified the pigs' transformation: if two legs were better, then the pigs' adoption of human standing and the whip was not a betrayal but an improvement. The chant drowned out any potential dissent, just as the sheep had been used previously to interrupt Snowball's speeches. The whip in Napoleon's trotter and the pigs' upright gait rendered the old Commandments meaningless; the distinction between pig and man was rapidly dissolving, and the animals outside could only watch as the pigs consolidated their power with the very instruments of the human oppressors they had once vowed to overthrow.