Keeping parrots in our homes is often a great feeling, with lots of enjoyment, learning and fulfilling interactions. However at times it can be challenging and difficult. Like with having any pet, there are often things we need to overcome to live in harmony with each other.
A friend of ours in the parrot community often says that ‘keeping parrots is a lifetime scientific experiment’.
Every day this quote proves so true to us, our clients and others we interact with through our work and on social media. We constantly have to adapt, change, learn, challenge and push our limits to become the best parrot parents we can be.
The problem with the above is it’s often hard and in some situations we aren’t even sure where to begin. If we have an especially difficult rescue, an aggressive hormonal parrot or a bird who just refuses to train or convert to a healthier diet, we can often find ourselves getting frustrated, scared or even disheartened.
This isn’t anything unusual, and we’d say it’s a completely normal and human reaction to a very challenging roadblock in our lives. After all we have taken this little creature into our home and want them to thrive alongside us. Both Sophie and I have had moments in our parrot training lives where we have had to take a step back from a situation. The important thing is to go back and keep trying.
So how do you go about doing this?
The first step is to work out what the root cause of the problem is. Why is the parrot biting? Why is it scared? What is stimulating the hormonal behaviour? Is there something in the environment disrupting training?
After that, you reset your timer with your bird and go right back to basics without attaching a timescale of success to the training. This can be something as simple as passive bonding with an aggressive rescue while they are in the cage, or simple target training with a parrot who doesn’t want to recall or step up.
Doing this not only helps to rebuild trust on both sides of the relationship, but also allows progress to be made even if it is only in small steps. This helps to build up our own confidence again and feel like we are achieving something. Once something is working consistently then we can move onto the next step and keep slowly building things up.
Constructing a firm foundation helps to make the rest of our ‘training tower’ feel so much more stable for future interactions and progress.
There often isn’t a timescale on fixing parrot behaviour related problems. Some things improve quickly due to various factors, some just with time, and others take lots of training and effort to achieve a positive result for all involved.
But one thing is certain – if we keep trying, it increases our odds of success 100% more than if we decide to give up on our little feathered friends.
Best Behaved Birds 