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