- [Dave] We'll start with you guys.
What is your, what's your main goal with Cassidy?
- So Cassidy is a really old rescue bird
and she's disabled and has a lot of balance problems.
And so our main goal for the class today is
she's a big shoulder hog,
and we wanna be able to figure
out how to catch her and have her
on our fingers and not have her just always climbing
up to the shoulder and hanging out there.
But we've been having trouble training it
because she feels unstable with, she doesn't have claws.
(techno music)
- When we first got, her she couldn't fly at all.
- Yeah.
- And now she can fly really well
but she's using that to fly to our shoulders and fly around.
So that's our main goal.
Our second goal is get her
to bathe, because she needs to bathe.
- Yeah.
- [Dave] Did you guys happen to bring a spray bottle?
- Yes.
- [Dave] Okay. Awesome.
- [Jamieleigh] Ooh, a really cool spray bottle.
(laughs)
- [Jamieleigh] Cool, and all of you guys, in your goody bags
you have little sample sizes of our pellets
and our freeze dried seasonal feeding.
So especially for those of you, which is this class
with tiny little birds, it doesn't necessarily make sense
or it might feel overwhelming to make the huge batch
of seasonal feeding that we say to make.
But our freeze dried is obviously, you guys got
a little sample pack, but that's just something where
shelf life's 25 years, you get to just add a little water.
You don't have to use your entire freezer storage
to make food.
- [Dave] Or buy another freezer like we did.
(Laughing)
- She can bathe in her water dish, her tiny water dish.
And she does it maybe once a week
but she's had some bad experiences falling
into water 'cause, the balance issues.
And so now she really doesn't wanna take a bath
and she's afraid of the spray bottle.
- [Dave] Okay.
- Even this new spray bottle,
we tried an older one and then we tried this one.
She doesn't like getting sprayed.
- [Dave] Yeah.
- [Jamieleigh] Okay. Well she does seem super mellow.
So I think maybe introducing the spray bottle
and using the seasonal feeding, 'cause she at least was
like looking in and investigating and starting to
eat it, just that we took it away.
So what are your thoughts?
Well, we just might ruin her motivation
for your shoulder rushing stuff.
- [Dave] Implemented, I think we can make progress
with the bathing. - [Jamieleigh] Yeah.
- [Dave] And I think we've given some example
of what to do to start to avoid the shoulder rushing
that you could continue. - [Male Client] Yeah, for sure
- [Dave] So probably the bathing.
- Okay, yeah, let's fill that water bottle.
- [Female Client 1] So for the spray bottle I've mostly just
been working on her, not freaking out being near it.
- [Dave] Okay.
- [Female Client 1] It took us three months to
get her target trained
because she was really afraid of the stick.
- [Dave] Okay.
- [Female Client 1] So she's kind of afraid
of any new things and I've been,
so now I can put it on the table and she's okay.
Usually. Yeah?
- [Dave] Do you wanna take lead on the spray bottle stuff?
- [Female Client 1] She also had some minor feather
destruction issues slash over preening issues
that the rescue also helped her through.
But
if she starts preening
sometimes that means she's stressed.
- [Dave] Oh, okay.
She seems totally chill there.
- [Female Client 1] Yeah, she's chill. You're chilling.
- [Dave] Are you all for this 'cause she seems to like me.
- [Female Client 1] Yeah. Oh, is it the silver bowl?
But also the spray bottle?
- [Jamieleigh] I mean she's not giving a huge response.
- [Dave] Can I see the silver bowl?
Okay.
- [Female Client 1] Sorry Dave.
- [Dave] That's okay.
- [Female] We're not able to hold them easily, but
usually our staff takes them out for you to touch them.
- [Dave] Do you want some?
- [Female Client 1] Yeah. I mean she isn't showing
like severe discomfort.
Aww. That's a bathing response.
- [Female Client 2] You never did that for us Cassidy.
- [Dave] Solved. (clients laugh)
- [Female] And they grow to like three feet long give
or take, so we're working with him a lot while he's a baby.
- [Female] Yeah,
(background chatter)
- [Dave] You're doing awesome.
(bird chirping)
- [Dave] So one of the things that you're experiencing here
is that we're just, we're starting with whatever is working
and then trying to enhance it from there.
- [Jamieleigh] Nice. Good job.
- [Dave] Good job.
- [Jamieleigh] Good stuff.
- [Dave] So part of the reason you're seeing success
with this is that when food, water, or shelter
are disrupted, - [Female Client 1] Yeah.
- [Dave] Then you can get away with a lot more.
They'll be seeking the opportunity to
- [Female Client 1] Get it back?
- [Dave] To earn that back.
But in the process like she's discovering like, oh
this kind of feels good.
- [Female Client 1] We've also been trying to train her to
make her farting noise on command.
- [Female Client 2] Farting noise?
- [Female Client 1] Yeah, I gotta show you a video of it.
- [Female Client 2] I would love to see a video of that.
(chuckling)
- It's just observational learning at its best.
- [Jamieleigh] Aw.
- [Dave] Hi.
- [Jamieleigh] She seems to actually be enjoying it.
- [Female Client 1] Yeah, that's great.
(water spraying)
- She has a similar like presence about her as Gideon.
Like the eclectus, that I'm working with right now.
He just looks deep into your soul.
He doesn't look at you.
He looks into you and she has the similar like gaze.
- [Female Client 1] Yeah.
- Or is that good?
- [Female Client 2] Yeah. That's gonna be the next thing.
Luna and I work on
cause she doesn't take very many baths
When she does, it's usually in her water dish.
- [Female Client 1] Yeah, and our vet keeps getting on our
ass, on our butt about because her, her feet are so dry
and her beak can get dry.
Yeah. So she's like use aloe, get her a spray bath.
- [Jamieleigh] Yeah.
- [Female Client 1] Figure it out
because she needs it way more often than she's doing.
- [Jamieleigh] Yeah. And it might be something when she's
getting her breakfast that maybe it's Theo
because you're saying that she's more receptive to him.
- [Female Client 1] Yeah.
- [Jamieleigh] He holds this and does exactly
what Dave's doing and you just kind of gauge her.
- [Female Client 1] Oh my God.
That's a lizard on the floor.
- [Female] Yeah
- [Female Client 2] He got free.
- [Female Client 1] Sorry.
- [Female] Yeah. He got free, he fell.
- [Female Client 2] He fell.
- [Female Client 1] I'm so sorry.
- At least it wasn't the rattlesnake.
- [Female Client 2] Look! Just falls all the way down.
- [Female Client 1] That lizard is faster
than a rattlesnake.
(laughing) - Yeah.
- [Female Client 2] Luckily I missed coming up for that.
- We landed, right? Like we must have just missed it.
Cause I looked at the weather report like partway in route.
I'm like, we can't land in lightning
but it had cleared enough.
- [Jamieleigh] Good stuff, good job.
- [Female Client 1] Oh my goodness.
- [Jamieleigh] Good job. Good job.
That's the most you've ever been wet Cassidy.
She usually looks like a crackhead.
- [Jamieleigh] So a lot of it is gauging it
and a lot of it too is making sure that every time you pick
up the spray bottle, doesn't necessarily mean a bath.
- [Female Client 1] That's yeah.
- [Jamieleigh] A lot of this is me just waving
and being like really big.
And obviously I don't need to be this big
with the water bottle,
but I'm just gauging her responsiveness.
And if she's gonna freak out.
- I wish you could see what's actually happening just
out of the shot.
- [Jamieleigh] But just seeing like, is she worried about
it coming near her?
Is she worried about me pointing it at her?
And her reward is me just not doing anything.
Right? So it doesn't mean that every time I lift
up the spray bottle or every time I pick it up
I'm gonna soak her.
It just means that it's like a possibly and then
just doing it where you have a ton of reinforcement.
She's in a really comfortable state.
She's staring at Dave adoringly.
- And she's putting even weight on her feet too.
- [Female Client 1] That's yeah.
We've been trying to do that.
When the rescue told us that when we first got her,
the only things in her cage was a rope perch, a wooden bell
on her bowl.
And she'd spend all of her time on her bowl.
Not on anything else.
And so she ended up getting that crook foot from
- From this. - [Female Client 1] Yeah.
- Yeah. This looks easier to stand on for her.
- [Jamieleigh] Yeah. I mean she's pretty soaked.
I don't know how much more I need to really do.
- [Female Client 1] Yeah.
- [Jamieleigh] She's--
- [Dave] We keep getting a response.
- [Jamieleigh] The point is getting her just
like drenched rat status or?
Feels like we've kind of accomplished it.
- [Female Client 1] Yeah, this is great.
- [Jamieleigh] She's pretty happy though.
- [Dave] Yeah. To me, it's about the response that
we're still getting.
- [Dave] Well almost too much.
- [Jamieleigh] Almost too much.
- [Dave] You're not gonna be able to fly very well.
Until you dry.
- [Female Client 2] Oh, there's some nice shaking.
- [Dave] Yeah. That's the end of it there.
So some things to consider
at home is changing the environment
that you're trying to give the bath in.
And then as Jamie said
- [Jamieleigh] You need to up the reinforcement
and the environment at the same time.
- [Female Client 1] Yeah. We did a couple things wrong
when we first got her
And just moving her bedroom to a different bedroom
completely started her over for us.
It was really great.
When we first got her, we would offer the finger and
if she didn't want it, then we'd just give her
neck scritches, cause she'd go like this.
And so she would do this if she wanted neck scritches
but then she also learned to do this
if she didn't wanna step up. (laughs)
And so we had to change the body language
for stepping up.
- [Dave] You could tell the, the positive association
with that bowl though.
- Yeah. Yeah.
- [Dave] It's interesting like the different color bowl
was, wasn't enough.
It had to be this one.
- Yeah. And, and when she bathes on her bowl
she can only get this front part.
Because she has, she can't balance further than that.
And she used to bathe in a bigger bowl, but she fell
in that and then started associating that with bad things.
- [Jamieleigh] Okay.
(Cheerful music)