Animator problem with multiple sprites and one controller

I have two a game object with a sprite and two sub-sprites (hands). I also have an animation controller with two states:

1. Walking

2. Standing

The condition from moving to STanding to walking is set to "Walking" boolean, that will then handle the transitioning.

If I set the boolean to true before running the game, it animates correctly. However, when I call a script in the root sprite object (with the controller)

animator.SetBool("Walking", true);

I run into a problem where only the root sprite animation is does not run at all! (Looks like the value isn't set)

[edit] Edited since the original issue was a stupid user error.

Question 2) Is it possible to edit transitions for sub-sprites by drag'n'drop or am I limited to using manual hand written inputs for anything but the root object?