- I mean, I do work from home.
So, we spend a lot of time together
and the problem is I think I'm the hormonal trigger.
(techno music)
I've had him his whole life
and we've done everything together.
So, I've been around birds most of my life.
I adore them, it's a passion,
but I had a lot of really bad information.
(bird chirps)
- [Jamie] Yeah.
- And that led into it and so now I'm 28
and I'm trying to get rid of all the nineties information
that I have and move towards the twenties, you know?
- [Jamie & Jamie's Boyfriend] Yeah.
- Into the more,
like modern behavioral work.
Eventually I'd like to free flight.
- [Jamie's Boyfriend] So then today, what would you
wanna get the most out of today?
Like, is there some specific direction you want us to
kinda look at your flight-
- [Jamie] Do you want us to focus
on flight training?
- [Jamie's Boyfriend] and help clean that up or.
- I think, yeah, I think the flight training
would be a focus.
Here.
(Mowgli flying)
Good job
- Here.
(Mowgli flying)
Great job.
I try to make him wait until I tell him to come
and here's his trigger to come, or his command to come,
click whatever you wanna call it.
Wait, we've been still working on the wait.
So it just honestly depends.
- [Jamie's Boyfriend] Okay.
- Here.
(Mowgli flying)
Great job.
And wait.
- Mo.
I'm not gonna command you if you're not paying attention.
Well, here.
Interested in the plants.
- [Jamie] Mhm.
(laughing)
- [Mowgli's Owner] Ready?
You see me?
Mowgli, ugh.
- [Jamie] He just got way more content.
- [Mowgli's Owner] Yeah he's done.
- [Jamie's Boyfriend] Just take three, four more steps back
- [Mowgli's Owner] Here.
- [Jamie's Boyfriend] One more.
- [Mowgli's Owner] Mowgli.
- [Jamie's Boyfriend] Oh, one more step there sorry.
- Okay, yeah.
- [Mowgli's Owner] Here.
(laughing)
- [Jamie's Boyfriend] He's like what?
- [Jamie] I'm gonna try moving.
- [Mowgli's Owner] Mowgli, he's like nah I'm good
on this stand, this is great.
- What I see is an opportunity to work on
specifically with a clicker and doing what we
refer to as perfect recall.
So the way we do it in, in flight trainings
I get Velcro bird where you can't leave the room
and the birds is flying after you.
- Yeah.
- And then we assign a queue to that,
into basic recall, which you're you're at.
And then perfect recall is, is a little bit different
in how we teach it, how we implement it,
and when we implement it and it's based on,
like if there's a lack of response or a delayed response
we use that technique to clean it up and tighten it.
- If he does it on the first time he's asked, then
I give him two treats.
And then if he only does it, if I have to ask him
a couple times and he still does it, I only
give him one treat.
So I'm trying to teach him he'll get more
for doing it the first time he's asked.
- [Jamie] Faster response. - Yeah, for a faster response.
- [Jamie's Boyfriend] That's why perfect recall will
be great.
So how often do you allow failure in your training sessions?
Like if he, if he doesn't.
- Honestly we haven't had a lot of failure.
- So if he doesn't do something, do you, how do you react?
- I walk away and then I train with the other birds.
When he's not paying attention or he's distracted or
he hasn't come when I've asked him,
then I just say, okay you're done and I'll walk away.
And then I usually train with my macaws
and then also my little canaries.
- [Jamie's Boyfriend] Is that usually the end of
your 20 minute sessions.
- I kind of sporadic, cause sometimes I make him
wait for his turn.
So, cause I'm trying to teach him to again,
be cued to fly which he's doing so great.
I'll just rotate.
Eventually he gets interested again.
And then when he is full he's full,
then we just stop the session.
- [Jamie] So you're waiting for him
to end the session? - For the most part, mhm.
- [Jamie And Jamie's Boyfriend] Yeah, okay.
- But our sessions don't normally last more
than like 15 or 20 minutes at a time.
- [Interviewer 2] On days where you can't train him,
how does he do the following day?
- I would say he's probably a little bit more dialed in.
- Ill draw you the larger picture.
And then we'll try to fine tune where you are within that.
So with recall, you typically start with
with Velcro bird meaning.
- [Bird] Hi.
- There's a distance where like if you're far enough away,
he's coming after you no matter what.
Awesome, you keep reinforcing that every time he
lands on you, since you already have a basic recall
go to whatever distance you know he's most likely
to recall to.
- Yeah.
- And if we need to change where he is in the room
like when he was on the perch, near the plants
he was like, eh, this is great.
- Yeah. - So if we need to put him
in the area where he's like, yaknow
I'm not so comfortable over here.
Cool, that's when it increased likely, likely he applies to.
Okay, so I will, I will click for you.
- Okay.
Wait.
Here.
(clicks) - Good job adjusting for that.
So you saw too far, you lost attention.
You came close, you had the attention.
So this is like, seems like the right distance.
So let's do, the next one I'm going to
intentionally allow failure.
So he's gonna fly to you, catch him, don't treat him,
don't queue him, just wait until he flies
and we'll reset him.
- Cool.
(Mowgli flying)
- [Jamie] Okay.
(laughing)
- Go ahead and call him when you're ready.
- Here
(rustling)
Here.
- In free flight all my students hear this every day.
When you hit failure point, we push too far too fast.
Go back towards last working well and slowly
rebuild it from there.
- Okay.
- Since the clicker is a new concept for Mowgli,
want you to hold that, we usually hold it
like this on top of the target stick.
- Okay.
- I want to have you start doing,
every time that the exact second he touches
go to click.
Again we're looking for precision.
(bird squeaks)
- He said, no.
He says, no thanks.
- [Jamie] You pulled it behind your back.
- Yeah, I want him to get used to it though
because he's scared of the, he's scared
of the box altogether and he's scared of the noise.
(clicks)
- Good job Mo, good job.
(clicks and Mowgli flies away)
(laughing)
I swear he well, so much more behave in the house.
What's going on?
Ready, is this better?
- [Jamie's Boyfriend] Can you stand on the other side?
- Yeah.
- [Jamie's Boyfriend] Kind of reset his mind space there.
(clicks)
Nice.
And then same thing with you once you've done
the treat or the, the target make sure the stick
comes out of you before you get the treat.
He's smart enough to know.
(clicks)
Yeah, perfect, yeah.
- Okay, ready?
(clicks)
- [Jamie's Boyfriend] So see how your left hand
is still queuing?
- Oh, I see, I see what you, gotcha, gotcha, gotcha.
You can do it.
(clicks)
- [Jamie's Boyfriend] Perfect, that was a lot cleaner.
- Yeah, got you, okay.
- So at masterclass like this one, the end goal
is definitely a free flighted, parrot outdoors for her.
However, I think something that gets overlooked
when people are looking at the concept
of outdoor free flight is it's not just about
your bird flying well outdoors.
It's actually about your bird not getting
easily spooked or scared and also being a
very adaptable bird where they can overcome
the newness of places and just easily adapt
to new surroundings.
African grays especially tend to be more on the
phobic side and so it's something that African gray
owners have to work probably twice as hard at.
And I think that this African gray is so well desensitized
but then there's also gaps in that.
And there's always going to be gaps in that because
as a free flighted parrot, they're always going to come
into contact with a scenario that's completely different
and they're gonna have to learn to adapt.
So there's always gonna be a slight element
of discomfort or fear, and the interesting thing
about this class is we're getting flights
we don't want based on fear and discomfort.
And I loved how we got to work through the T stand fear
because he was a little uneasy about being on our T stand.
And she knew that it was important to work through that
versus make him comfortable and switch T stands.
I thought that was fantastic.
Especially knowing what her end goal is.
It's really important that her mindset is such as,
okay identify the fear now, how do we overcome it?
The other thing is that we weren't getting flights
that we did want based on overly being comfortable
or discomfort and fear.
So there was a lot of mix of things going on
in this particular environment that were leading to
flights we didn't want and not getting
the flights we did want.
And so I just wanna draw attention that is
really important to look at the desensitization
side of your bird in all aspects even if your goal
isn't outdoor free flight, having a well desensitized
parrot is just important for the everyday life
of having new people in your home or when you
have to move you don't want your bird to be so
traumatized by change that it just literally
can't handle it, and it lends itself
to using very unhealthy coping mechanisms.
So, just wanna draw attention to that and hope
that you guys are introducing one new thing a day
in a very positive way where your bird can really adapt
and overcome discomfort and or fear.
- So this is a, a new concept I'm trying to teach.
- Trying to figure out how to teach it.
- And we're trying to figure out the best way to teach it.
But essentially what we have discovered is that 50%
of those words, reinforcement comes from the environment.
50% comes from your treats.
So orange is gonna be environment and the environment
can be the actual environment, or it could be the fact
that your presence close to him is reinforcing.
It can be anything within the environment
that the bird finds is reinforcement
- Like for you it would be that stand
that is in his environment.
And he finds that incredibly enforcing
or it might be his cage, just things in the environment
- With Jinx, our Blue Throated Macaw.
Jamie is by far the favorite person.
So where I might be, my value might only be 50% for him.
Okay, but Jamie's is the favorite.
So let's say we know his favorite treat is in almond.
If I give him his absolute favorite treat in the world,
he should fly to me.
But if given the choice and Jamie gives an almond,
where is he gonna fly?
- Yeah to Jamie.
- Right, cause there's, it's not the value of the treat.
It's also the environment that's playing a factor.
So the way we get the value, the treat to be hard
for us to have success is through the proper diet.
So that's why we always stress like diet and sleep are huge.
And if we don't have it it's really hard for us
to move forward at all.
But also just kind of realizing, I think as trainers
most people have always been focused on like,
okay what treat can be the best?
Like with Jinx, everything's totally different.
Even though I'm doing the favorite treat and we're doing it
in the exact same room, he'll go to her every single time.
And it's because part of the environment is that
he prefers her.
So on the flip side of that, we'll see
in flight where like this actually might apply more to you.
I have a client with a green wing who would only fly
to the ring stand over here.
And she's like, why is this bird not flying to me?
I was like, go stand in front of the ring stand
because the bird's wanting to go there.
Whereas if she was standing on the other side
of the ring stand, the bird would just go the ring stand.
But if she was in the way, the bird chose to land
on her and then she was able to reinforce that
and shape it and get more what she wanted.
So like, that was why I had Mowgli switch sides.
Cause over here you seemed to get content
after one or two reps.
But ultimately I think this just comes down to
to just really dialing in that diet
for offering performance.
Keep it in mind too, that it's not about hunger.
It's about increasing the value of the treat.
If you're doing flight training
I'm giving you direction specific to that.
It's gonna look different for everybody else.
I tell people to do five perfect repetitions.
What that means as well is you might get five perfect ones
over 15 minutes.
It might be a two minute session.
But the thing that's really important to understand
that we wanna leave the birds wanting more.
We want them to be like, oh, they have five repetitions.
We want the anticipation to be high.
So when I was asking you, you know
what does it look like if you don't train one day
the next day should be higher anticipation.
- Yeah.
- We also refer to it as like the dating principles.
So when you're dating, you'll drop everything.
Like I was 14 or 16 hours away in San Jose.
I finished a show, I got in my car drove nonstop
to spend 30 minutes with her on Valentine's day.
That's the anticipation we want to see.
So when you do five reps we build anticipation
for like, I want more.
Now when we get into perfect recall
then what I'm asking is still five perfect repetitions
but I intentionally want failure.
So you've taught weight on Q already
which looks great in this environment.
I don't know what it'll look like in your house
but what I would do in perfect recall is go
to whatever distance, you know a hundred percent
of the time he's going to land on you.
And then this is the only time we switch where
the click is coming from.
You would give the, the audible cue at the exact same time
you give the visual cue because they're more visual.
They usually learn it off the visual.
You're counting your head.
One, 1000, two, 1000.
If, if he jumps within two seconds, click the instant
he leaves the perch as long as it's less than two seconds,
and give the treat.
The other thing I notice is when I offered,
offered by hand for him to land on me,
and you let him land on your shoulder, don't do that.
- Yeah, the only reason I did this
cause he didn't land on your hand and so I was worried.
- He wouldn't land on yours either?
- Yeah, that's the only, I didn't want him like
flying around the room, scared on T.
But normally the only time he flies like that is if
I'm not paying attention, like if I'm not looking at him.
So he flies to my shoulder when I'm like walking
out of a room or I'm walking to the kitchen
or something and then he'll fly to my shoulder.
I give him usually like a second and then
I'll usually grab him and then put him on like the
above the sink or I've got like a door that we've made into,
cause he likes high spots so.
- Yeah.
- More valuable for places.
But the mainly the problem is I've got like
seven years of him being on my shoulder.
- Yeah.
- And so I, I'm, it's it's more comfortable for him
to be on the shoulder so.
- Yeah.
- Yeah, and I think you feel guilty for some reason.
- Oh yeah.
- About like removing him from it, so I think as long
as you remind yourself when you don't do it
it's just increasing that hormonal behavior.
And I think you also feel guilty about the plucking.
So overall I think you'll feel worse
about allowing it in the long term
then removing him from it or just intercepting that sucker.
- Right
- That's what I would do, id be like wabam.
(laughing)
(upbeat music)
(upbeat music continues)