Bad Mommy!

Crash and Pippen send their apologies, they haven't been able to make me type their updates in a timely fashion. So, here's a macaw sized update, and we'll get back on our regular schedule and be better at posting on their training!

The boys wished to tell everyone they've learned a few tricks. If I could figure out how to take a video off my phone and load it in here, you could even see their newest trick, "pull sword out of stone".

Tricks they've learned:

• Targeting - following a chopstick around for clicks and treats
• Climb the ladder - climbing to the top for clicks and treats
• Ring - pick up a ring for clicks and treats - this will eventually turn into retrieve the ring, I hope
• Ball - pick up the ball for clicks and treats - also hopefully retrieve. Unfortunately, as a newbie clicker trainer my clicker timing was a bit off so right now they think the goal is pick up ball, fling ball as hard as possible. Working on this....
• "Sword from stone" Take ball, above. Add toothpick to little hole in ball. Present combo to birds. Birds figured out all on their own, to pull the toothpick out of the ball. As I'm a bit better with the clicker when they learned this, they do not also fling the chopstick.
  

Behaviors we're workign on:

• Toweling - a useful behavior where they tolerate being wrapped in a towel for things like vet procedures. We started by putting the towel on the ground and click/treating (C/T) for walking onto the towel. Then we moved to staying on the towel while various edges were picked up. We can put them above them (not on yet) now for a C/T. Getting there.
• Harness training - we want to take our (flighted) birds outside to play. However, Crash and Pippin informed me, the moment they saw their brand new, blue, harnesses that those weren't infact harnesses but rather snakes. Big, blue, biting snakes - and they promptly flew circles around the room any time you got close to them with said harness. The attack plan for this training has been one of desensitization by their choice. We put the harness and all their favorite toys on the ground and did C/T for targetting, moving them closer and closer to the toys (and harness). We also treated for position, meaning we provided a treat, but closer to the big scary thing than even the target was. Slowly, we've come to accept it on the ground. The next step we took was targetting w/ the harness in our hands, and slowly this worked too. Then we moved to having them actually target the harness, from the floor first, C/T if they touched it, and quickly faded that to our hand, C/T for touching while it was in our hand. However - we didn't want them to think that the goal was to touch it, as it the goal is to wear it, so we quickly moved to making the harness into a big loop and targetting Through the big loop! This is where we are. Pip will stick his head all the way through for a C/T. Crash hasn't quite made that step yet.
  

Next up:
More harness training, a more concerted effort at working on retrieve, and a few other fun tricks. I think we'll make them a birdie agility course and begin working on that with them. Over a barrel, through a tunnel, up their ladder, through the weave polls, and if we can get them to do it - down a slide! why not!

More updates faster, promise!