training course from birdtricks.com

[jsrcksaaf]

Has anyone tried using the training course from Birdtricks.com? What is your opinion?

 

[Shyra]

Run! Run fast and far away from those nut jobs!

 

[Nikki]

Do not give them your email or you will be swamped with spam! RUN!

 

[birdlvr466]

You would be better served to check out Barbara Heidenreich Training Parrots | Parrot Training DVDS & Books

 

[Chantilly Lace]

They are known to steal other people's training techniques and then sell them as their own. I am definitely not a fan.

 

[Jumper]

Soo we bought the first training course a little over a month ago, but honestly haven't tried it yet.. we've just been doing very basic clicker stuff. BUT they pretty much tricked my mom into ordering a "trial" period of their full package. They asked her 3 times throughout the ordering process if she wanted to partake in it and she said no but they sent it anyways. It comes with like 4 discs and a big training manual. the catch is that you can keep it for 30 days or after that they charge you $200. Well, we sent it back but they charged her anyways, and it cost $10 to ship back. She called them yesterday and they're refunding us but its just a hassle. They sent us another "newsletter" thing too thats $30/month. The material seems good but honestly its such a hassle to deal with. I would just say get something else.. I wish we did! I was following them on Facebook/twitter and really liked what they were posting so we decided to try them but a lot of the posts on those are from David/Jamie who are the magicians, and NOT Chet who runs the training... so it's different people.

 

[TITANIS]

I haven't looked into their methods in depth but heard they employ flooding techniques. I recommend other sources of information such as Barbabra Heidenreich that Pat linked before.

Jen, sorry what your mom went through. The ordeal you posted is a classic method of entice and trap with the idea there's nothing for the customer to lose. This occurred a lot even with mail-order back in the days before the Internet. Since the advent of the Internet, these kinds of cons have skyrocketed.

 

[jsrcksaaf]

thanks everyone! looks like i wont be getting that

 

[Ariahna]

Well I hate to admit this because I consider myself to be a pretty smart individual, but in my quest to learn all I could about being the best bird owner I could be, I bought their package which was over $100. I watched some of it, and while it seemed okay, I found stuff later on the internet that was very similar and free. Some of the videos included edits that they did to their original material which apparently included a lot of "flooding" techniques.....replacing them with positive reinforcement which is what most bird lovers would recommend. I think their stuff is okay for someone very very new to birds like I was, but once you learn more and know about the clicker training material from Melinda Johnson and Karen Pryor, and the excellent teachings of Barbara Heidenreich (Good Bird Inc.) their stuff looks like very borrowed and piecemeal which is what it is IMO.

 

[Robo Hip]

Glad I read this - I too asked the question to a couple of friends last night and this was their response too. I came so close to ordering in my quest for a happy healthy RB2. What a dope I could have been

 

[GlassOnion]

Honestly, I have used flooding and found it effective. At least with my smaller birds, flooding to get them desensitized to my touch has definitely strengthened our relationship. My Cockatiel's previous owner said that he hated being touched and would flip if anyone tried, but now I can pet him and grab his face to give him kisses

 

[Ariahna]

Anita, I also have to admit that I used "flooding" in order to hand tame PJ. I describe how I tamed him in my blog. He probably would have eventually become hand tame, but it might have taken a long time. Doing it the way I did, we were able to progress into clicker training within the second week he was home (11-12 weeks of age). I don't regret it at all, but I have used positive reinforcement for everything else after that initial hand taming. Kiwi and Max were already willing to step up and accepted hands when we got them.

 

[DerekAndBianca]

Anita, I also have to admit that I used "flooding" in order to hand tame PJ. I describe how I tamed him in my blog. He probably would have eventually become hand tame, but it might have taken a long time. Doing it the way I did, we were able to progress into clicker training within the second week he was home (11-12 weeks of age). I don't regret it at all, but I have used positive reinforcement for everything else after that initial hand taming. Kiwi and Max were already willing to step up and accepted hands when we got them.

What is 'flooding', I have never heard of it? I saw the birdtricks thing and didn't like the guys attitude, he seems to treat the birds like...objects to be conquered, if that makes sense. I didn't get how he did what he did and my husband said that he was using hypnosis. So never got into that, good thread though, settles my mind.

 

[rikkitikki]

Flooding is basically desensitizing someone or a pet, what/whomever, by making them be around something or do something they're adverse to against their will. It would be like getting someone to get over arachnophobia by locking them in a closet with a bunch of tarantulas. Eventually they will calm down, but it's because their mind has "shut off" and they've gone to their "happy place." Positive reinforcement would be like having a tarantula far across a room and offering $10 if you take a step closer to it, and another $10 if you take another step closer, eventually you're standing right next to it, and if you decide to try and touch it, you'd get $100, etc. (associating the tarantula with good things)
-this is a bit of over generalizing, but it's the same idea.
ETA: btw, many people will choose to use a flooding technique because they see faster results that way as compared to positive reinforcement, however their results aren't always as solid. ie- someone screaming at a dog and/or putting them on their back when they bark - dog learns that barking is a bad thing and when it gets into a situation where it wants to bark, maybe a stranger approaching them, they might not bark, but if the stranger gets too close, he may go straight to bite without a warning bark. On the other hand, positive reinforcement would be like taking that same dog and when they want to bark when they see a stranger, the moment they stop barking (or even better, before they've gotten the chance to start), reward them with a treat for the good behavior. Eventually the stranger will be able to get close enough to the dog for the stranger to be able to touch the dog, however since the dog has associated the stranger's approach with treats, a bite is a whole lot less likely, and the bark still hasn't been trained out of him, if he ends up feeling uncomfortable enough, he can choose to bark (as that warning that a next step might be a bite) and not be afraid of a horrible consequence.

 

[RainaLynn]

Helpful explanation Erika!

 

[DerekAndBianca]

Flooding is basically desensitizing someone or a pet, what/whomever, by making them be around something or do something they're adverse to against their will. It would be like getting someone to get over arachnophobia by locking them in a closet with a bunch of tarantulas. Eventually they will calm down, but it's because their mind has "shut off" and they've gone to their "happy place." Positive reinforcement would be like having a tarantula far across a room and offering $10 if you take a step closer to it, and another $10 if you take another step closer, eventually you're standing right next to it, and if you decide to try and touch it, you'd get $100, etc. (associating the tarantula with good things)
-this is a bit of over generalizing, but it's the same idea.
ETA: btw, many people will choose to use a flooding technique because they see faster results that way as compared to positive reinforcement, however their results aren't always as solid. ie- someone screaming at a dog and/or putting them on their back when they bark - dog learns that barking is a bad thing and when it gets into a situation where it wants to bark, maybe a stranger approaching them, they might not bark, but if the stranger gets too close, he may go straight to bite without a warning bark. On the other hand, positive reinforcement would be like taking that same dog and when they want to bark when they see a stranger, the moment they stop barking (or even better, before they've gotten the chance to start), reward them with a treat for the good behavior. Eventually the stranger will be able to get close enough to the dog for the stranger to be able to touch the dog, however since the dog has associated the stranger's approach with treats, a bite is a whole lot less likely, and the bark still hasn't been trained out of him, if he ends up feeling uncomfortable enough, he can choose to bark (as that warning that a next step might be a bite) and not be afraid of a horrible consequence.

Thank you very much for explaining! That's actually really sad that the 'person/bird/cat/dog' has to go to a 'happy place' to deal with it. I kind of had an idea of what it indicated, but I didn't realize it was so drastic. Before you I expalined I was trying to figure out if I had done that with my animals. I figured that for instance when I brought in one of my cats, I had to establish dominance with him because he would follow me and attack me, so I would play fight back with him instead of backing down and then pet him and he just had to deal with it and drop the attitude. It was the most difficult of relationships I have had with any of my cats but we have it worked out now. I wish we could have done it differently. So I can see that that is similar but still different. Yet doing something like this with any of our parrots would actually be even more 'complicated' and have more long term affects. So from my understanding, is this something that happens but isn't 'well thought of'?

 

[snackies]

I agree that the people from birdtricks.com are nutjobs, I have seen a few of their channels on youtube and facebook pages and like mentioned before, they seem to treat birds as objects or something, it's hard to explain... lol. They also run a circus type-thing, they have elephants and lions/tigers which I think is cruel; making elephants bend, kneel, stand etc... but that's another discussion, lol.

 

[Welshanne]

They have what I call a "hard sell approach" and are still trying to entice me into parting with a lot of money for some kind of bird training or other. I completely ignore their emails but they still insist on bombarding my email address now they have it. Wish there was something I could do to get rid of them but hopefully in time they will just give up contacting me?

 

[Renae]

They have what I call a "hard sell approach" and are still trying to entice me into parting with a lot of money for some kind of bird training or other. I completely ignore their emails but they still insist on bombarding my email address now they have it. Wish there was something I could do to get rid of them but hopefully in time they will just give up contacting me?

You should be able to block their email so they won’t be able to send emails through to you. I wouldn’t count on them giving up either.

 

[HungryBird]

Haha or just spam them right back! Keep sending them random e-mails that they wouldn't be interested in at all. It's like mailing washers to companies that keep sending junk mail.