- [Dave] Do you feel safe doing kind of what we did?
- We can try.
- [Dave] Okay, so before you start,
think through your intentions,
What are we going to try to do?
You're going to try to get him to target.
Try to get him to target gently.
So to do so, you're going to approach
from the top and slowly pause every once in a while.
Once he's engaged with it, you can slowly bring it in
and meet him him part way, but not too far.
- Okay.
- And the moment that that happens,
you're going to let him touch it
with his upper mandible.
Even better if he hits it with his tongue.
(training clicker sounds)
- [Kaylee] Good boy!
(Sam's claws clicking on chair )
(upbeat techno music)
- [Kaylee] Oh Uh-uh,
You're going need to give a treat.
- So isolate exactly where the treat is.
- [Kaylee] Okay.
- See how I slowly got to where he could reach it?
- [Kaylee] Okay.
- [Jamie] The intention wasn't the same.
- And you have this, that's an easier target.
- [Kaylee] Okay.
- So just really,
- [Kaylee] Okay.
- You're trying to isolate that treat.
- [Jamie] You're talking-
- [Kaylee] So like this?
- [Dave] Yeah.
- [Kaylee] Okay.
- [Jamie] Your talking is a total trigger.
You can't speak.
Like so sorry, but every time you do
(Sam squawks)
It gets
- I don't know how to tell you this.
But could you just not talk.
- [Jamie] It gets, it got really bad
and I think that's why
you couldn't deliver the treat successfully.
is you said like "good boy Sam"
and his feathers just went and he pinned and it just
I was like terrified for you in that moment.
- [Kaylee] Okay, yeah, me too. (laughing)
Okay.
- [Jamie] So just try not to talk.
- It's still right there.
(training clicker sounds)
- [Jamie] I think you should give the treat Dave.
- [Sam] Good boy.
- [Jamie] Did you hear that?
He just said good boy where you said it last time.
- [Kaylee] Yeah, he's almost taken,
he's taken parts of my fingers at first.
(upbeat music)
- Try to basically get outta your head
as much you can and think, think logically.
If I'm holding like this,
from this distance he cannot get me.
If I'm here, he still can't get me.
If I'm here, I watched him try to get Dave,
like try to think through the logic of it.
And again, I'm going to naturally push you.
If you feel like you're gonna get bit
then by all means we can change that.
Also, I think we'll do a full size one on the next one.
- [Kaylee] Okay.
(training clicker sounds)
- [Dave] Can I help you?
Nope, I'm gonna help you.
- [Kaylee] Okay.
- [Dave] Okay, so curl these, hold between your thumb.
You're sweating.
- Oops.
- [Dave] It's okay.
You didn't pull it away from him, which is good.
But did you feel how you weren't actually named there?
- Yeah.
- [Dave] Okay, let's try again.
- [Jamie] Yeah, he was going for the treat.
- [Dave] Good.
See, his lower mandible couldn't reach you.
So logically set yourself up for that.
You're so sweaty.
- I know! (laughing)
He's got me so many times.
- [Jamie] Like I could feel it.
- I can tell.
That lower mandible is fixed.
- Okay.
- And so just think like
I know the fear is there, believe me.
But in these circumstances he cannot bite you
if you do just how we just did.
- Okay.
- Whenever you're pushing a bird,
through uncomfortable or fears
you want to end on an easy note.
So, I think I'm gonna try
to end on a relatively easy target.
See if he does it for me.
But we'll see here.
(training clicker sounds)
See that lower mandible again,
it's like I've got the distance gauge with him now.
We'll get there.
But yeah, so we'll pause him on that,
because he had a really good session.
You both really pushed through some things.
He's been hormonally triggered unknowingly
for call it a year and a half
and it's just progressively gotten worse.
And going back to the checklist,
there's whatever it was a one final one put him over
the edge and he's been living at that edge with no outlet.
(training clicker sounds)
- [Jamie] I love how long it takes.
You guys both communicate.
He's like I'm doing it, I'm doing it, I'm doing the thing.
- I know, he likes it.
- [Jamie] You were just saying, that like, this scenario
is the worst that it's gonna look like.
It should be the worst it's gonna look like.
- Yeah, it should be the worst as you guys do training,
Keep in mind, food, water, shelter.
Probably not best to train him
in the room where he sees his cage.
Take him to the kitchen or somewhere else.
On a tee stand. Do you guys have a tee stand?
- [Kaylee] We've got a wooden one. We need to a
- [Jamie] A metal one.
(upbeat music)
- The base is 17 pounds. So if you get into flight training
with him in the future, he's not gonna knock it over.
And then the three pieces are aluminum.
So that's all really lightweight.
And we use metal because he can't passively aggressively
shred the wooden purge because he is mad that you're close.
There's like, there's nothing,
it really isolates, as does this chair,
it isolates how much he can move and what he can destroy
and it makes him focus on what we want from him.
It's taken us like 10 years
to find somebody to build these right,
and it actually ended up being an aircraft mechanic.
I landed with his field, and it's like a dirt field,
and I'm like, this is north Idaho,
this is not landable in about a month.
What do you do in your off season?
He's like, Oh I do whatever.
And I saw some of his welding
and I'm like here's a project and it couldn't be better.
So, they're built by aircraft mechanics now.
But yeah, do the training in a separate room.
- [Jamie] And I think what Dave means by that
especially is because once you get that diet right,
he's gonna be way more enthusiastic about these treats.
Like I know you guys said
that he loves these pistachios and stuff, but like he
should be eating them where he's consuming the whole thing.
Not breaking them apart where he doesn't care
how many pieces fall to the bottom.
Like the enthusiasm that I'm seeing, or the lack thereof,
towards these treats is like
darn no wonder you're terrified,
because it might be more reinforcing to nip you
than take an actual treat.
So I think once you do have that diet
and that sleep solidified
the neutral zone that he will be functioning in,
you get to see.
'Cause right now you just get all the feathers.
And it's really intense and I think it's
you guys are scaring each other.
- [Dave] Power pause?
- [Jamie] Yeah we could do that because yeah,
it's really intense and
we don't have food motivation so yes.
- [Dave] Yeah, so we don't have as much food motivation.
So when you look at the the training quadrant,
you have plus and minus reinforcement,
plus and minus punishment.
Birds do things for two reasons, gain pleasure, avoid pain.
Reinforcement, That whole upper half,
(training clicker sounds)
encourages, sorry it's time. He's figured it out.
Oh sorry, that was too small.
- [Sam] Uh huh.
- [Dave] Yeah I know. Here try that one.
Hello.
There.
So reinforcement increases likelihood for that behavior.
Punishment decreases likelihood for behavior.
So if you're looking at the whole quadrant,
we really want to work with reinforcement.
The plus and minus side of things is technically
called positive reinforcement or negative reinforcement.
If you guys leave here, you had a positive time
Means you had a good time, right?
If you guys left here and you said we had negative time
it means you had a bad time.
Well positive and negative reinforcement
don't mean good and bad reinforcement.
So we refer to it quite often as plus reinforcement.
We're adding something that is, what is reinforcement?
Going to increase the likelihood of that behavior,
or we call it minus reinforcement.
Which is subtracting something that is going to
increase the likelihood for the behavior
we want to see more of.
So what we're about to do, we call the power pause.
It is working in the reinforcement half of the quadrant,
but it's technically minus reinforcement.
The reinforcement that we're getting getting rid of,
we're subtracting, we're taking away is you.
- [Kaylee] Oh, okay.
- [Dave] And the thing you're gonna like most
about it is you don't have to deliver a treat.
(laughing) (Sam squawking)
The treat is you leaving.
For Daniel, we're going to add you to the equation
by additionally adding a plus reinforcement.
So after you hear a click,
you will be administering a treat. Okay?
So the idea behind this is there's some distance where
Sam's okay with the presence.
It could be hundred feet, it could be hundred yards.
We're gonna find where that is.
- [Kaylee] Okay.
- And we're also setting up this scenario where
he's like, hey, favorite human's right here, let's get it on
and you're gonna interrupt this, right?
So there's some things that dynamically we may need
to change, that's why training is so fluid
and it's really difficult to give like
this is exactly what we do.
We're gonna walk together carefully here
just very slowly, slowly slowly.
We're looking for the first sign of fear or discomfort.
And let's pause there.
So we didn't get anything like aggressive.
But he's so hyper-focused on Daniel
that we may have to adapt and change something.
Daniel, I'm have you come back here with all the treats
and I think I want you in the chair closest to me.
Walk forward together.
Until we see the very first signs of fear.
He's so distracted. I think it might be Daniel.
Yeah, I'll just have you sit,
that chair's kinda nasty,
You may wanna bring a chair over.
- [Daniel] Okay.
- Are you see anything that I'm missing?
- [Jamie] Not so far.
I am wondering if you are more comforting though.
- that was the next thing.
Okay, so I'll have you stand here.
- Okay.
- And then I'll have you just slowly walk forward
until you see a sign of fear or discomfort.
If I see item before you,
I'll just simply tell you pause.
- Okay.
- and just stay right where you are.
Awesome, okay, So now we're gonna wait for calm.
Or disinterest.
(training clicker sounds)
Go ahead and walk back.
Okay, so we don't necessarily have to do a treat here yet.
Let's get a little further then we'll bring in the treats.
The treat was you leaving.
Okay? So this is where we're training fluid.
We had the intention, we knew what we were gonna do,
and we had to find the best way to get there.
And it looks a little different
than how our first plan started.
So I'm gonna do the same thing.
You saw the signs, right?
Okay. And Jamie if you wanna assist with that too.
Okay. So whenever you're ready.
(training clicker sounds)
I'd definitely love it if I got like a ruffled feather
and had that be the cue for you to leave,
we've seen that happen before.
- Uh huh
- we're not just getting like super chrome.
But we're not getting a few feathers.
- [Kaylee] Okay.
- [Jamie] So the first rep, it was like
most of the top of the head that went up
that was really obvious like sign.
This time it was just like
the nare stuff that just barely puffed.
And I knew that if you stopped there
we could get calmer quicker.
- Okay.
- [Jamie] Than last time I felt like
it took a while for us to get him to.
- Okay.
- [Jamie] Diminish. So that's why
I called that a little earlier.
- Okay.
- [Dave] So watch Jamie
and I'll just be a backup if you miss her.
- Okay.
(training clicker sounds)
- [Jamie] Nice.
- That was a content sound
- [Jamie] That was nice. I liked that a lot
(upbeat music)
(training clicker sounds)
- Gentle blow and notice he's like focused on me.
Super calm.
This is great 'cause you could put no on cue
which effectively triggers him back to calm.
So the more calm behaviors you can train,
the more you can use those behaviors to put
get him back into calm.
That's, that's a good one too.
But not what we're working on.
(training clicker sounds)
- [Jamie] He's associating me possibly too.
So this is like
(training clicker sounds)
- He offered it. He offered it. Did you see that?
- [Jamie] No, but my camera got it.
That. He just did it with no prompt.
- Didn't, I didn't blow in his face.
He just did it there.
He's definitely not a lost cause.
there's just a, I don't even wanna say
if there's a long way, he just offered it again.
- [Jamie] Mm. You ran out of treats?
- I'd say there's a long way to go,
but you do have a lot of work in front of you.
But it's again intentional, intentional work.
- Step up.
- [Jamie] Yep.
(training clicker sounds)
- [Dave] And I'd put, like just drop another two in there.
Whenever we put our guys back after free flight,
it's like, hey here's, here's a handful.
- Okay.
- [Dave] Because again, in the outdoor world,
we wanna make sure that they want
to go into their travel carrier.
- [Daniel] Right.
- Otherwise, they're not gonna come to me because they know
that eventually I gonna put them in the carrier.
We want the carrier to be so positive.
And then sleeper time cage
if it is a larger version of this, it's gonna feed right
into that same idea of like, hey, a travel cage is awesome.
- My name's Daniel.
- I'm Kaylee.
- We brought our bird Sammy in.
- He's a green wing Macau, and he's 25 years old.
- I was concerned, honestly, even just getting him here.
He has major hormonal issues and I honestly
didn't even think we'd get him out of the cage.
And we had a whole list of things to ask,
but once we got rolling, you guys addressed everything.
And even getting him out of the cage
and all those interactions, I didn't think we
were gonna have any interactions at all.
I thought we were just gonna be talking.
- Yeah, I never, I didn't think we were gonna be
able to get him out of the cage at all.
We didn't think, We didn't even know
if we would get him in the cage to come here.
- To come here. Yeah.
- So, that was amazing.
And being able to interact and we just learned so much.
- Yeah. Thank you guys.
(light upbeat music)