Alex S
Checking out the neighborhood
- Joined
- 1/2/21
- Messages
- 4
Hi all,
first post here and in a bit if desperation (probably common for newbies). The backstory is not great, but I'm hoping people will see that I'm here trying to do the right thing.
The abridged backstory:
Poki is a 22 year old male cockatiel. He was bought for me when I was 10 as a replacement pet, but unfortunately no research was done. Poki was poorly treated for the majority of his life, yes in large part my fault. I recognize that and feel endlessly guilty for it, I assure you. I lived with him until college, where he since lived with my mother. I saw that he wasn't living well and took him back in an attempt to give him the life he needed/deserved and in hopes of repairing our severely damaged relationship. He is flightless. My mother used to get his wings clipped, but he either hasn't grown his flight feathers or loses them before they're long enough to do any good because he hasn't had long wing feathers in probably fifteen years.
What I've been doing since taking him back:
- I started clicker and target training which he caught onto surprisingly quickly. He will even ring a bell on command. This is the only good thing that has come of our relationship thus far.
- I've been trying to improve his diet. He was on an all seed diet the majority of his life. I switched him over to pellets as fast as I could, just to find out that the pellets I had converted him to were not considered good by the community.
- I am since in the process of switching him to new pellets, the ingredients of which are much higher quality. I also feed him sprouts, fresh broccoli, fresh swiss chard and cooked beans and peas every morning. I hope to add other foods once he starts eating some of the fresh stuff
- I have been endlessly and relentlessly watching videos, particularly BirdTricks, as they seem to have the most experience and the widest breadth of knowledge available on training, fixing bad behaviors, etc. I also bought their book on diet to try and make sure I am moving in the direction of a "perfect" diet.
- I have been trying to give him toys for shredding and foraging to keep him preoccupied.
- I work from home and we live in a tiny apartment. My bedroom is my office is Poki's home as well.
- I've been trying to monitor and understand his behavior/routine/body language. It's definitely helped me to understand his habits and helped our training, but I still have a long way to go.
What I'm really struggling with:
- Poki is extremely aggressive, especially towards me. I attribute this to my bad behavior, prior to understanding the proper way to train birds. But he is aggressive towards all people.
- He is extremely object possessive and gets attached to the strangest things. I made him a perch outside of the cage which we used for our training sessions. After a while, i realized that he had actually become attached to the metal nub on the inside of the cage that attached the perch to the cage. He would rub his face on it and cling to the side of the cage by it all the time. If I came close to the cage, he would attack it in what I can only assume was his instinct to "scare his mate away from danger". The problem was, he was actually attacking it so aggressively that it was causing damage to his beak, so I took it away. This of course makes me the bad guy for removing his "mate".
- since removing his mate, he screams non-stop. and I mean for hours. I tried the "leave the room" negative reinforcement technique but as I said, I work at home, as does my partner and we both have meetings throughout the day. Last week he screamed for three and a half hours straight, no breaks.
- I've been trying the positive reinforcement technique while remaining in the room where I click and treat after he stops screaming and returns to normal chirps. Doesn't seem to be helping. In fact, I'm wondering if it's actually reinforcing bad behavior.
- He is so aggressive that even when I try to treat him, even through the cage bars, he tries to attack, before, during and after partaking in the treat. I'm wondering if I should be removing the treat when he takes aggressive moves toward it (hissing/aggressive biting/wing spreading), or if that would just upset him more and break his trust in the reward process.
- I am trying the "power pause" as BirdTricks refers to it, in order to get him more comfortable with my approaching the cage. The progress is two steps forward, one step back kind of thing. Feels like two steps back most of the time.
- I stopped letting him out of the cage, as he just tends to attack either myself or the world around him when he's out and I don't want his outside cage time to be a long series of contentious interactions between us.
- He screams first thing in the morning, even though we have blackout curtains which I purchased for this reason. So I started covering him, but then he became possessive of the cover. When removed, he would scream frantically, climb to the bottom of the cage and run back and forth following the location of the blanket with his eyes and movement. And when stored away, he again screams relentlessly. When covered, he starts his flirtatious whistling. Why is he obsessed with his cover?
- He is terrified of being alone. I attribute this to a few things. 1, as I mentioned, he's been flightless for probably 15 years at this point, so he knows he's vulnerable to predators. 2, because of COVID, I've been working from home for almost a year now and he's used to me being in the bedroom 20 hours a day most days. 3, he's bored/lonely. He doesn't interact much with the toys I have for him. I've tried different things and I'm trying to reward him for interacting with them, but again, he hates me so I can't tell if me approaching the cage makes the situation worse.
- He has now gotten to the point where he screams even when I'm in the room some days, nonstop, whenever he feels like it. I assume this is because he wants me to interact with him, but the problem is, this hasn't prompted a reaction from me in years, so I don't know why he does it. And when I tried leaving the room to get him to make the connection that his screaming causes me to leave, that just causes him to scream more. The cycle continues.
- This bird is terrified of literally everything. Introducing anything to his cage or even nearby his cage is arduous. Nothing comes easy with this bird.
It's getting to the point where I'm really worried about getting thrown out of my apartment because of the screaming. My landlords live above us and rented out the space as a favor, but they're practical people, not pet lovers, appreciate their quiet and space and definitely don't need the income, so I'm waiting for the day when they say it's us or the bird. And anywhere I've looked for a place to rent and I ask about the bird, the first question they ask is "is he loud?" I know there are people who will probably suggest rehoming him, but he's 22 and the MOST crotchety old codger I've ever heard of, so I can't imagine someone willing to take him. Not only that, but in case it isn't obvious, I am truly willing to put the work in, I just don't know if my efforts are helping or hurting in most cases, particularly training. I have also considered getting a companion bird, obviously kept in a separate cage. My partner believes and I agree that the reason this has been so hard is because there are many years of trauma that I am trying to make up for. I'm wondering if fostering a bird with whom I could start the relationship off right would help Poki to see that I'm not the enemy. But my partner is obviously VERY hesitant about this because of her experience with Poki. And I'm very worried that his bad habits will carry over to any bird we foster, instead of the other way around. I'm also not sure my landlords would even allow it for the same reasons my partner is against it. I've considered getting a stuffed animal and just playing bird noises, but I'm not sure it would help. I'm also concerned that he'll become attached to anything, even outside the cage and become aggressive toward me again in his attempts to defend it as has happened with every other thing he's become attached to. I've tried music and bird soundtracks in the past and they don't help.
Is this relationship beyond repair? Is he just too old or the damage is just too much that it's pointless? Is there something I seem to be missing that could be preventing him from building trust with me or encouraging his screaming? If you made it this far, I appreciate it. I know this post is long.
first post here and in a bit if desperation (probably common for newbies). The backstory is not great, but I'm hoping people will see that I'm here trying to do the right thing.
The abridged backstory:
Poki is a 22 year old male cockatiel. He was bought for me when I was 10 as a replacement pet, but unfortunately no research was done. Poki was poorly treated for the majority of his life, yes in large part my fault. I recognize that and feel endlessly guilty for it, I assure you. I lived with him until college, where he since lived with my mother. I saw that he wasn't living well and took him back in an attempt to give him the life he needed/deserved and in hopes of repairing our severely damaged relationship. He is flightless. My mother used to get his wings clipped, but he either hasn't grown his flight feathers or loses them before they're long enough to do any good because he hasn't had long wing feathers in probably fifteen years.
What I've been doing since taking him back:
- I started clicker and target training which he caught onto surprisingly quickly. He will even ring a bell on command. This is the only good thing that has come of our relationship thus far.
- I've been trying to improve his diet. He was on an all seed diet the majority of his life. I switched him over to pellets as fast as I could, just to find out that the pellets I had converted him to were not considered good by the community.
- I am since in the process of switching him to new pellets, the ingredients of which are much higher quality. I also feed him sprouts, fresh broccoli, fresh swiss chard and cooked beans and peas every morning. I hope to add other foods once he starts eating some of the fresh stuff
- I have been endlessly and relentlessly watching videos, particularly BirdTricks, as they seem to have the most experience and the widest breadth of knowledge available on training, fixing bad behaviors, etc. I also bought their book on diet to try and make sure I am moving in the direction of a "perfect" diet.
- I have been trying to give him toys for shredding and foraging to keep him preoccupied.
- I work from home and we live in a tiny apartment. My bedroom is my office is Poki's home as well.
- I've been trying to monitor and understand his behavior/routine/body language. It's definitely helped me to understand his habits and helped our training, but I still have a long way to go.
What I'm really struggling with:
- Poki is extremely aggressive, especially towards me. I attribute this to my bad behavior, prior to understanding the proper way to train birds. But he is aggressive towards all people.
- He is extremely object possessive and gets attached to the strangest things. I made him a perch outside of the cage which we used for our training sessions. After a while, i realized that he had actually become attached to the metal nub on the inside of the cage that attached the perch to the cage. He would rub his face on it and cling to the side of the cage by it all the time. If I came close to the cage, he would attack it in what I can only assume was his instinct to "scare his mate away from danger". The problem was, he was actually attacking it so aggressively that it was causing damage to his beak, so I took it away. This of course makes me the bad guy for removing his "mate".
- since removing his mate, he screams non-stop. and I mean for hours. I tried the "leave the room" negative reinforcement technique but as I said, I work at home, as does my partner and we both have meetings throughout the day. Last week he screamed for three and a half hours straight, no breaks.
- I've been trying the positive reinforcement technique while remaining in the room where I click and treat after he stops screaming and returns to normal chirps. Doesn't seem to be helping. In fact, I'm wondering if it's actually reinforcing bad behavior.
- He is so aggressive that even when I try to treat him, even through the cage bars, he tries to attack, before, during and after partaking in the treat. I'm wondering if I should be removing the treat when he takes aggressive moves toward it (hissing/aggressive biting/wing spreading), or if that would just upset him more and break his trust in the reward process.
- I am trying the "power pause" as BirdTricks refers to it, in order to get him more comfortable with my approaching the cage. The progress is two steps forward, one step back kind of thing. Feels like two steps back most of the time.
- I stopped letting him out of the cage, as he just tends to attack either myself or the world around him when he's out and I don't want his outside cage time to be a long series of contentious interactions between us.
- He screams first thing in the morning, even though we have blackout curtains which I purchased for this reason. So I started covering him, but then he became possessive of the cover. When removed, he would scream frantically, climb to the bottom of the cage and run back and forth following the location of the blanket with his eyes and movement. And when stored away, he again screams relentlessly. When covered, he starts his flirtatious whistling. Why is he obsessed with his cover?
- He is terrified of being alone. I attribute this to a few things. 1, as I mentioned, he's been flightless for probably 15 years at this point, so he knows he's vulnerable to predators. 2, because of COVID, I've been working from home for almost a year now and he's used to me being in the bedroom 20 hours a day most days. 3, he's bored/lonely. He doesn't interact much with the toys I have for him. I've tried different things and I'm trying to reward him for interacting with them, but again, he hates me so I can't tell if me approaching the cage makes the situation worse.
- He has now gotten to the point where he screams even when I'm in the room some days, nonstop, whenever he feels like it. I assume this is because he wants me to interact with him, but the problem is, this hasn't prompted a reaction from me in years, so I don't know why he does it. And when I tried leaving the room to get him to make the connection that his screaming causes me to leave, that just causes him to scream more. The cycle continues.
- This bird is terrified of literally everything. Introducing anything to his cage or even nearby his cage is arduous. Nothing comes easy with this bird.
It's getting to the point where I'm really worried about getting thrown out of my apartment because of the screaming. My landlords live above us and rented out the space as a favor, but they're practical people, not pet lovers, appreciate their quiet and space and definitely don't need the income, so I'm waiting for the day when they say it's us or the bird. And anywhere I've looked for a place to rent and I ask about the bird, the first question they ask is "is he loud?" I know there are people who will probably suggest rehoming him, but he's 22 and the MOST crotchety old codger I've ever heard of, so I can't imagine someone willing to take him. Not only that, but in case it isn't obvious, I am truly willing to put the work in, I just don't know if my efforts are helping or hurting in most cases, particularly training. I have also considered getting a companion bird, obviously kept in a separate cage. My partner believes and I agree that the reason this has been so hard is because there are many years of trauma that I am trying to make up for. I'm wondering if fostering a bird with whom I could start the relationship off right would help Poki to see that I'm not the enemy. But my partner is obviously VERY hesitant about this because of her experience with Poki. And I'm very worried that his bad habits will carry over to any bird we foster, instead of the other way around. I'm also not sure my landlords would even allow it for the same reasons my partner is against it. I've considered getting a stuffed animal and just playing bird noises, but I'm not sure it would help. I'm also concerned that he'll become attached to anything, even outside the cage and become aggressive toward me again in his attempts to defend it as has happened with every other thing he's become attached to. I've tried music and bird soundtracks in the past and they don't help.
Is this relationship beyond repair? Is he just too old or the damage is just too much that it's pointless? Is there something I seem to be missing that could be preventing him from building trust with me or encouraging his screaming? If you made it this far, I appreciate it. I know this post is long.