Hello everyone,
Some of you may remember our rescue Senegal Parrot, Constantine, that we acquired at the end of November of last year. A little history- we are unsure of his age, and has been rehomed at least twice, since he came from a hoarding situation. He is extremely fearful of new things, and takes a long time to adjust to anything new in his environment. After a lot of work, he took to target training and started wanting head scritches through the cage. He was was terrified out of his cage though. Did not step up and would become very scared.
After continued work with target training and building him a custom play gym to train with, he came out of his cage and would hang out on the gym. Still though, he would not step up and was very scared of hands. Flash forward to today- I figured I would give it a shot to wrap a towel around my arm and see if he would step up that way. Lo and behold he steps right up and hung out on my arm eating his sweet potato for ten minutes, then went to explore the gym on top of his cage. He is currently eating his dinner quite contently there right now.
So, my question being this- what is the next step to take to eventually work toward not needing the towel wrapped around my arm for him to step up? Has anyone had any experience with any behavior like this before, and if so, any steps to move forward from here?
Some of you may remember our rescue Senegal Parrot, Constantine, that we acquired at the end of November of last year. A little history- we are unsure of his age, and has been rehomed at least twice, since he came from a hoarding situation. He is extremely fearful of new things, and takes a long time to adjust to anything new in his environment. After a lot of work, he took to target training and started wanting head scritches through the cage. He was was terrified out of his cage though. Did not step up and would become very scared.
After continued work with target training and building him a custom play gym to train with, he came out of his cage and would hang out on the gym. Still though, he would not step up and was very scared of hands. Flash forward to today- I figured I would give it a shot to wrap a towel around my arm and see if he would step up that way. Lo and behold he steps right up and hung out on my arm eating his sweet potato for ten minutes, then went to explore the gym on top of his cage. He is currently eating his dinner quite contently there right now.
So, my question being this- what is the next step to take to eventually work toward not needing the towel wrapped around my arm for him to step up? Has anyone had any experience with any behavior like this before, and if so, any steps to move forward from here?