Yep, and unfortunately there is a chap in Darwin who works at one of the petshops who is so highly regarded by everyone for his 'training' and yet all he does is flood the birds into submission. I never let him near Danny
All the customers see are the results and not the problems that will come from it.
Right. That's really sad. There are dog trainers that do that too. See, now he is calm....no he isn't, if you can read body language AT ALL you can see that he is experiencing learned helplessness and has given up. I wish I could put a heart rate monitor on the animal so that people could see that they aren't "calm" they have just stopped fighting because they didn't have a choiceYep, and unfortunately there is a chap in Darwin who works at one of the petshops who is so highly regarded by everyone for his 'training' and yet all he does is flood the birds into submission. I never let him near Danny
Sensitive subject for me
That is pretty well my take on it too. I would never force them to do anything if for one thing I did not know them well and we do trust each other. At this stage they "know" I am not going to put them in danger and I am the leader of this flock by example and by setting boundaries as the leader.
) all they need to hear is change in the tone of my voice and I tell them to "get down" they actually do because I mean business. They are immediately rewarded for doing it with praise and a scritch.
John,If they go up to the ceiling to enlarge the hole they already made (it's in a spot that I can't readily patch at this time
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It is going to be hard not to talk about it at my weekly behavior/training meeting tomorrow with all my trainer friends
This is a great quote
The word "no" is a conditioned punisher, the birds know that when you say "no" it will be followed by being on the floor which is punishing. If I pet a stimulated bird, or I scritched in a way that hurt them or made them uncomfortable then there is my trigger and I would work to learn the birds body language and avoid doing those things that provoke a bite. I believe that for my birds, being on the floor is scary and they feel insecure and unsure, I would never purposely put them there.
When did you do the workgroup Tanya? Always nice to see someone else using the same language!i always think..ABCs of training ...if i dont want the behavior i change the consiquence or anticedent to get the behavior i want...it really makes life simple i dont try to figure what they are thinking or why they did it i just change things around to get the behavior i want...if any one is interested..Natural encounters with Steve Martin....i went to his ranch for couple wks of training it was with him and Susan Friedman it is a wonderful experience....Susan has a online class also
I was there in Jan and caught up with Chris, Amy and Megan last week at Animal Kingdom
I just can't figure out how I'm hurting her. I'll pet her in the exact same place for a few minutes and all of a sudden she'll freak out. Maybe I'm not hurting her and it's excitement?
If he were doing something dangerous like that I'd probably progress to either toweling him (which he's comfortable with) or forcing him off-balance and onto a perch. I try to prevent those situations though, and if it were something like an electric cord, I'd be willing to take a bite to get him off it.
I missed Susan Friedman when she was here, but I did see Steve Martin. In fact, I posted about the Great Minds lecture in Texas that he (and a bunch of other AWESOME speakers) will be speaking at in another thread.i always think..ABCs of training ...if i dont want the behavior i change the consiquence or anticedent to get the behavior i want...it really makes life simple i dont try to figure what they are thinking or why they did it i just change things around to get the behavior i want...if any one is interested..Natural encounters with Steve Martin....i went to his ranch for couple wks of training it was with him and Susan Friedman it is a wonderful experience....Susan has a online class also
I'm sure it could be that she just gets aroused or excited and then bites, I think you would have to look at the rest of her body language and see what happens before the bite.
I think that the birds have learned that when you say "no" if they don't stop or change the consequence will be that they will be put on the floor. That is what I meant by conditioned punisher, the word "no" is the conditioned punisher. I would probably see if I could detect and look for earlier signals before a bite so you can stop petting before she has to go to that.
No, I totally get that about the force. It is different (in my mind) if the animal just would rather play on my computer keyboard and is arguing about getting off than an animal that is fearful, unsure or needs to be left alone. That was sort of my whole point in this thread, the art of how and when to make those decisions. I loved that someone (I think you actually) said that it depends on if the animal just doesn't want to or is nervous or fearful. It's just that in order to make that call, we have to be good at reading body language.Great discussion everyone! I love getting more info about it. I work with and rehab rescued GSDs, and I think that real training (ie- teaching the animal behaviors is a way that they WANT to do them) is similar across species in the basics. ABCs indeed.
I'd like to rephrase my earlier comment. I suppose I never really 'force' anything on Jasper, even though I sometimes make him do things that he'd rather not. It might mean going and getting a treat or a perch if he's reluctant or excited though. Then he'll step up, grudgingly, but he will. If he doesn't (and it only happened a few times when he first came home) I leave the room and let him sit by himself for a few minutes. So far, when I come back with that treat again, he's more than happy to cooperate for the treat and the attention after being temporarily 'abandoned.'
Not to go all nature's best on anyone, but after watching my budgieflock for so long, it seems like birdy 'punishment' is pretty much saying 'fine, I'm taking my ball and going elsewhere.' Jasper seems to understand it fairly well anyway. Granted, he's not having a blast chewing a hole in the ceiling either.
Now 'taking my ball and playing elsewhere' has resulted in him getting dumped off my lap and onto the floor a couple of times when he decided to pinch me too hard, resulting in me getting up and leaving him for a few minutes. I have trouble feeling bad about that though. Should I? Is there a better way? I warn him to 'be gentle' when he's getting too rough for me, and 9/10 times that's all it takes, but he's a Zon and gets a little carried away sometimes, which isn't really a problem since his 'carried away' is still gentle enough not to bruise/bleed.
Yes, I learned so much from that discussion about flying over to the other birds cage. I try and look more for ways to change the antecedent, thank you for that99% of the time I also just change the antecedent like Tanya. They can't chew the buttons off the remote if the remote is not there. If I don't want them to get down behind the couch to chew the wires I take away their ability to climb down there by blocking it off.
We talked about this before when a bird was flying over to another birds cage to intimidate them. By taking away that ability and setting up a barrier there is no need to change the behavior. Remove the source of the problem and the problem just goes away on it's own.
As far as why do they listen to me. It started out as me saying get down only once or twice and if they didn't I went right over there and got them on my arm or stick (depending which monster it was) and just changed their focus by a quick travel to another area and some short interaction before going back. Rinse and repeat if necessary.
They just know now that when I say get down that they are going to have to get down because the situation is going to change otherwise whether they like it or not. Tika is still defiant the odd time but Amanda just listens. To me it boils down to respect for what the leader wants. I still don't use any kind of "punishment".
I take no offense, I appreciate different points of veiw I may not have considered yet.
that's good, so it sounds like you developed a relationship with her and reinforcement history ("trust account") before moving on to the handling. I offer Argyle my hand just about every day now, I don't push it, I just place it there for a moment, he doesn't step up yet, but I think he will eventually. At least now he beaks it a little and shows some interest instead of running away. Also, I feed him from my hands
