"Charging" ahead

Hi everyone! Crash and Pippin wanted me to update you on this clicker training they just started. Monday and Tuesday night they began what is called 'charging' the clicker. This is where they learned not to be afraid of the 'click-click' noise that it makes, and to eat millet when said noise happened. Yup - they liked this game, hear a noise, eat a treat, repeat!

Monday Trev and I learned the tricks of trying to train two bonded birds who are always out or in their cage together. Taking one out for training...not just yet. We'll work on that later. So, we did our best. We tried one bird in one room, one in another. This - not possible. The noise cockatiels make when they are looking for their flock - other tiel owners will know what I mean...over and over. So, we tried in the same room, but distract one. This worked better. Both birds got in two good reps before losing interest, but we weren't positive the clicker was adequately charged, so we repeated on Tuesday night.

Tuesday night we worked with Pippin first. Trev had Crash on his shoulder, and Crash was ok with chillin. Then we traded birds. Repeat. Click treat, click treat. A bit harder for Trev, cause Pip knew what was going on. Then we went for round two. The problem here was that both birds had learned what click meant. Fresh in their minds. We have a few successful clicks and treats, but it was hard to keep the second bird from helping the first.

This is something we're going to have to work on as we continue to train. Crash and Pip don't agree. They like watching, and helping to eat treats. Especially the treat helping part.