- Good morning, everybody.
We are on our way to the big city,
(car engine roaring)
not so much,
but we are heading out it's about a five hour trip
round trip from our house for an in home consult today,
where we're working with a couple of some Conyers
and a male military macaw.
(bird cooing)
And it's kind of a good thing that we're heading out
to the middle of nowhere because they wanna talk
a little bit about free flight conditioning
as well as just some basic questions.
- So apparently the military macaw
is between 15 and 20 years old,
he doesn't like the husband.
So I'm curious to see what his response is to you
so we can find out if it's all guys
or if it's just specifically the husband
that the bird has a problem with.
(upbeat music)
Hey guys,
we're really excited to share this video with you
about Monte, who is between 15 and 20 years old.
He's a military macaw now Z and Josh
are his fourth or fifth home. Originally.
He was actually given to a 12 year old
as a birthday present.
- Terrible present.
- Yeah. So what we know is he's never flown before.
And luckily for us working with Z and Josh,
they actually come from the dog training world.
So that kind of helps an understanding training concepts
as a whole.
- The problems that we're going to work through
in this video is that Monte is really good
with Z and Josh individually.
But whenever they're together,
he wants to murder Josh.
- So first off,
our very first impression or Dave's first impression,
he notices immediately that Z has a very high energy
when interacting with Monte.
And his first note to her is, Hey,
try to keep your energy level and your just overall energy,
calm and cool and collected because military macaws
are already high strung.
They don't need that extra burst of energy.
(laughing)
So you guys are gonna see exactly where this note went.
- Every time we do an in home consult,
we get to certain stories from the clients,
but we really wanted to see what it looks like for
ourselves.
(parrot screeching)
- Good boy.
(parrot screeching)
Good boy.
- You see what happens
(parrot screeching)
so I'm gonna do a quick reaction okay I want a quick picture
(inaudible)
(laughing)
- [Narrator] And have you been working on talking with him?
- [Instructor] So he knows hello
but it's not and the more I try I think its a high end thing
- [Narrator] It is
it totally is
- alright. I related hard to Z on this
with the high energy and coming at the bird
so excitedly, because I've recently been doing
this with Jinx and didn't realize how much
it was gonna backfire for those around me,
because it wasn't negatively impacting my relationship
with Jinx.
And it wasn't until Dave came to me and said,
Hey, Oh, you are ruining it for me, man.
So anyways, I feel you on this one Z.
- And I think you're gonna have to see how Jamie works
through that on our Oh Flock series on Patreon.
So hello,
It was, is typically very heightened
or with Bandit that he's be like, come here.
We're like, Oh, the man he's going to kill us.
Right.
(laughing)
so when you hear those
behavioral mimics.
So like speaking or the laughing,
it's usually gonna be a little bit higher
(parrot screeching) emotion.
I think where we're probably gonna take you down today
is starting to try to pair like really calm behaviors
with stuff, as you notice,
as I'm talking I'm trying to bring everything back down.
(parrot screeching)
Right.
And I think that will hopefully translate
to better relationship with Josh
because what'll end up happening is let's say
kind of going back to a previous reference
with the Eclectus parrot that we worked with
in Australia training was hormonal.
And so every time they put the bird on the perch, the bird,
the first favorite perch, you know what I mean?
- [Instructor] yeah
- And so
we had that,
I think the bird didn't like men either so it was like,
okay, how I train and it's on a flat surface.
So now we totally took this whole thing and retrained
the targeting on a flat surface isn't hormonal.
And then she was able to step back in and kind of reshape
that whole behavior without pairing hormones.
- [instructor] Okay.
- So my goal here is to try to find what the truth,
(parrot screeching)
but more importantly, what to behavior that's calm.
- So on that first interaction where Z
actually finally calmed herself and started work with Monte,
I noticed that his target was actually really gentle
to where he would just kinda touch it with his tongue.
How's that for your impression?
- Oh my gosh.
(laughing) did you just do an impression?
- And his way was really calm too. And theirs,
his whole energy change when he did the wave specifically,
(parrot screeching)
- [Instructor] Wait
(parrot screeching)
- see how calm that was.
Just make a note of that.
- [Instructor] Okay
(parrot screeching)
When he does that,
you might want to ignore when he gets like that
cause I don't know what that is
and its after he does that then he becomes more heightened.
- So after seeing the interaction with Z,
then Josh gave it a try because we did notice
that the wave was really calm and Dave's like,
Hey Josh, why don't you go ahead and cue the wave.
Well, you'll see.
- Yeah. My approach with this too,
is that with everything being calm,
as far as the tricks go,
I wanted to have Josh to the wave on cue
and you'll see how that turns out.
- [Instructor] you want to grab those purple.
- And it can be on his lower part, is fine.
- [Instructor] Okay.
- I just wanna see
(parrot noises drowns out the speaker)
give a treat
- okay
- (inaudible)
- I'll click for yah, how about I click for yah.
- And actually this time don't like,
but once he touches, go take it away.
- What sometimes it does with me too with the.
- We'll see if he'll do a wave for you.
If he waves.
Actually see it quicker
(parrot screeching).
- Josh step back around the Island.
- [Josh] Okay.
- And see if you wanna cue the wave?
- Ready? Can we wave?
With your other foot.
Your right foot?
(parrot screeching)
Wave
- Okay so what I'm seeing
is that, and let's go and actually put him away.
- Okay
- Okay.
So what I saw is
this by no means like a full diagnosis,
just some observations,
and we're starting definitely tight with you.
But I think the wave he only does
when he's willing to be calm,
cause we lost him once he got heightened
and have you step back,
he was willing to do it when you were
in that exact spot before, but when,
after he was heightened and he started to talk more,
he wouldn't do the wave.
So I think the wave might be one of our solutions
for right now.
One of the things I'm playing around with my head
will do is it'll steer more towards,
if you do more of your interactions are wave.
He's gonna be more calm.
So like if you do nine out of 10 repetitions or wave
and one target,
you'll start to get a more calm target
because he's already in this calm state from waiving.
- [Z] Okay.
- If you can transition a wave over to Josh,
that emotion may transition with it.
It also might not.
But right now I would try to get as much as you can
within this calm body language,
make that really solid with you so that we can start
to transition that over to Josh and to Jamie and I
and other people in general.
- [Z] Okay.
- So it probably wouldn't go straight to Josh
and probably have Jamie or myself do it
and then go to Josh
- [Z] I see yeah.
- what are your thoughts?
- [Jamieleigh] I don't know part of me thinks
that I'd like to see the distance
at which he doesn't get heightened.
If that exists.
- As soon as he came to that Island, he had changed.
- [Instructor] So is that yeah,
but is that the distance or is that the barrier?
Do you know what I mean?
Because part of him might be reacting to this barrier.
Like I have to go all the way around to get to Josh.
So that makes it longer
versus what if Josh
was there without the counter
- Have you guys trained on the counter?
- [Instructor] I haven't Because
(laughing)
because the one time he did,
when he was here,
he tried to hold,
he tried to use the handles to climb down.
He was hanging from here. He was like,
I'm going to kill him.
He was like damn whatever you gotta do.
- It's when it's really sunny out or whatever,
triggers him to be calm do the training in that,
in that moment versus like, when you come in and he's like,
hi, you're right.
And you're like, woo, lets train.
Like, so let's avoid those and go more for like,
just trying to like only train them when it's really calm
and then training those behaviors that like he would do
the wave calmly,
but he wouldn't do it when he was heightened.
So it tells me that I think so far on this brief part,
I've seen that if you did more of that,
it would help put him into calm mode for training.
Which also means it be calmer mode
when he's out of the cage,
which means there's less chance that he's gonna
be trying to go after Josh.
- [Narrator] What's helped me with Jinx lately,
since Dave was pretty much doing the same thing with Jinx
is whispering.
Like, you know, he was greeting me like,
cause apparently that's what I was doing.
And I was so excited to see him.
And so now I've been like
(whispering)
(parrot screeching)
really gently quietly.
And now what he does is he doesn't
and he kind of goes into baby mode like.
- [Narrator] Okay.
- Feel and hear how you are, right this moment.
That's the energy that he needs.
- [Narrator] Because if you quiet down
and you say it really softly.
(whispering)
Okay.
He's gonna be intrigued.
- Okay.
(laughing)
- Yeah. And it's been whispering,
it's been whispering. It's been working for me.
yesterday I just barely heard it.
- [Instructor] Okay.
- [Narrator] And I was like, Oh my gosh.
And that was after
two days maybe.
- [Instructor] Okay. So yeah.
- [Narrator] That's gonna be huge for you.
Cause I even noticed when you tell stories, he just
was wild
- Yeah
- [narrator] and he laughs at the right moments.
- So I thought it would be really interesting
to break this in-home consult into parts for you guys.
Now this first part is really diagnosing
what we think the problem is
and the plan for how to fix it,
which is basically using training calm.
But how do you do that? What does that look like?
And I'm so excited to share that with you guys in part two,
because we made amazing progress,
but it's not when any of us expected it.
- Yeah.
And I wanna hear from you guys in the comments below
what you think we are going to do,
or if you have no clue,
what would you do?
- Yeah.