How to advance target training?

[haleybethg]

So Sam totally gets target training. He sees the target and clicker come out and he starts pacing. He will go all over his cage, inside and out to touch the target. He was likely target trained in his last home because he took to it in seconds.

I don't know how to proceed though? If I put my hand up he will totally abandon his target for my hand. (Anyone reading who doesn't know, Sam greatly dislikes me and has chosen my husband as his person.)

He's flighted, but I haven't been able to get him to fly from the cage for the target either.

I'm not sure how to advance him and everything I read on target training is basics of how to do it or how to incorporate the step up, which he's definitely not ready for.

 

[Wolf]

Well if he is not ready to step up just yet then your only option is to use perches or other things. I don't usually advance to these things until they have learned to step up, but if you have a couple of free standing perches you could line them up so that he can just reach from the cage to the first perch and then from the first perch to the second one and see if you can target him to these perches and if he is flighted then you can gradually increase the distances until you have him flying between these perches. Then you might want a training table with a perch that you could target him to for trick training. I hope that this will be helpful for you.

 

[haleybethg]

Good idea! Maybe that will help with his step up training too. He isn't fearful or aggressive to my husbands hands, but does step up only when he wants to, so that needs work also.

 

[Wolf]

Ultimately, a bird will only do what it wants to do and we must rely on their love and their trust in us for anything that we are successful in teaching them. Earning their trust is normally the first thing and often the only thing that I work on with my birds for the longest time, with step up and the bird coming to me when I call it are the things that I use as indicators of the level of trust that I have from my birds. I honestly feel that without their trust that it is difficult if not impossible to have a good relationship with them. but this is just my way of thinking.