- [Man] How'd you hear about this?
- I follow you guys. - Okay.
- Kind of religiously.
(laughs)
It's not awkward.
(bright country music)
Follow you guys because the whole goal is to free fly her.
- [Man] Okay?
- But I'm an kind of an animal trainer,
so I've been doing a lot of it.
And I feel like her flight feathers have come in
and she's become amazing indoors.
So I'm really like, future.
I hope you guys move here to the future?
- [Man] Yeah, well, we can definitely talk about that.
So, if your goal is free flight, what's your goal today?
- Today, one big hurdle,
we've kind of a hiccup we've come into with training
is that she starts making this awful noise, awful noise.
And it's usually triggered by training,
as soon as she sees that I have my, a treat or my clicker
or anything, she starts going (screaming) and it's like,
I'm hoping she'll do it.
I assume it's hormonal.
And that I think, but I'm not sure, but it's awful
and I it's like, I just have to quit.
I'm like, okay, we get like a couple reps in
and then she was just like, I'm done
and I'm going to scream at you.
And it's not like screaming, but it is the static you sound.
- [[Man] Are you the only person training her?
- For the most part, I've had like a boyfriend that'll
kind of play with her and attempt to stuff with her.
And she works for just about anybody, but--
- [Man] Does she do love your boyfriend?
(sighs)
- I don't think he's done a long enough training,
like, a full training session.
- Do you know?
- I don't remember it happening.
- Okay? - I can't remember,
I feel she may have, but I may have jumped in there too.
It's definitely usually me.
- When you seen him in the trigger?
- Yeah.
- How long are your training sessions?
- 10 minutes.
- Okay?
- Flight training is the only time she doesn't do it as bad.
So, if I go into flight training and I call her,
she usually calms down once she's taken a flight.
But like, I've been trying to teach her to roll over
and she's almost there, but I can't get my finger.
I'm like phasing my finger at it,
'cause I've done it with her doing like a wave
and then she grabbed me and then she kind of flipped over.
And so, now she waits for me to put my finger out there,
so she can reach on latch onto it
and we get a couple of rolls
and then she starts doing this noise in that way.
- What is your, you said you've done some training before
like what's your training history?
- So, I have, I mean, I'm a dog trainer.
- [Man] Okay, that makes the best friend to students.
- And then I also work with, I mean, I coach kids skiing,
I do all sorts of training and coaching and teaching.
- I have a theory for why you're getting the screaming
like the bird.
(screaming)
Yeah, that.
(laughs)
- That's awful.
I don't even know what to call it.
'Cause almost like has the staticky nobody's doing,
I feel like it's like a radio
or a broken record that we literally have today.
- What are the favorite treats?
- I'm not 100% sure what her all-time favorite traits are.
- Her whole demeanor just changed teaching rapidly?
- I know, she like you go, where are you gotta be like--
- She's like, yeah, let's do this.
- Are you ready?
- Are you ready for government.
- I didn't give you water.
Huh.
(laughs)
Just since walking in here, she had water.
Hi, (kisses).
Well, you can guess as she gets.
Whoa, are you excited?
- [Man] I'll have you just locked that door for a moment
just in case somebody comes barreling in, thanks.
- Now, mom's spot home.
All right, what do we know how to do?
Start from the beginning.
Oh, you grabbed it that fast, that's a short bird.
She was not very far to go.
Awesome, thank you.
Yeah, you're motivated.
Let's try.
Let's try and trick her too.
She's waving, that's like I, first thing I taught her
and now it's all she does.
I almost don't even click for it,
she just constantly clicks.
Okay.
- She spin both directions up there?
- Yes, yeah, she spin both direction.
Do you wanna try it, see if she'll fly?
- Yeah, but she terrified.
- That's kind of almost all we practice anymore.
(bird tweets)
Hey, galah (indistinct).
I think these are mostly sunflower seeds right now.
- You fly her back to the bird whichever?
- Yes. - Okay.
- I just don't know that perch.
So I didn't know if she, she probably would go back to it.
You don't know that per tray, do you?
That's kind of mostly what we do.
- [Man] So I'm curious why you didn't click there.
(laughs)
- Once we get rolling, clicks are optional.
- I salute you.
- Clicks are optional.
I don't know, I think it's probably,
it starts to become just this thing that we do
around the house.
And then I stopped clicking because I'm often doing stuff
and I make her station and then I'll randomly call her
and I'll just reward her for coming.
- [Man] Okay.
- [Kelsie] That's probably the,
I use my clicker for fine tuning, very subtle behaviors.
But when it's something that's a longer kind of
more fluid behavior I sometimes drop the click.
- [Man] Okay.
- [Kelsie] I do still use a verbal marker from time to time.
Yeah, what else do we know?
That's just about it.
So I don't know what you guys want to see there.
- [Man] Yeah, can you give her one more recall?
- Yeah, that's good for you.
- [Man] Nice, sweet.
- Hmmh.
- [Man] Yeah, that's very good.
- That's really good.
- So if you want to put her up for a little bit,
we can just kind of debrief,
everything would just sell real quick.
- Yeah.
- So it's always kind of strange for me to coach people
that are already professional trainers?
- Yeah.
- So I'll come at this from a standpoint of what I would do
slightly differently for free flight.
- Okay, yeah.
- Like everything looks awesome.
You could tell when she was ready to be engaged for flight.
And I was like you recall her?
And she was just waiting. - Yes.
- Which is cool, you don't usually get that with gloss.
So that was want we've seen.
- Yeah, she was like, come on.
- Yeah, for preparation for free flight.
I would just out of what I saw, I would just encourage
that you click every single time she lands on you.
- Okay.
- If it was, I use the phrase of like
take a flash photography shot that exact moment.
So as long as that was perfect,
- Yeah.
- then click, which these all looked great.
- Yeah.
- The reason I would do that is when you get outside
you can start losing the clicker.
But for like clarity for confidence,
I guess is like telling her,
hey, we're in a training session, this is a formal session,
here's a click, that would be the only thing I saw there.
- Okay. - Clearly you don't need it,
but when it goes to free flight,
I find that that's really helpful.
- [Kelsie] Yeah.
- Have you seen our video on the birdie bubble,
you just want talk about?
- Mm-hm.
- Okay, I'm being anyway.
- So, the birdie bubble bird trick best tick
explain like this,
and I know you were explaining stuff to us,
but it's just something subtle that I noticed.
- Yeah.
- So when I approached the purge,
there's some distance for the birds,
like, okay, cue me, cue me, right?
And for her, you could see, she was like...
(laughs)
- What are you probably doing?
- And so that's really good,
but you can blow out your bird's training threshold,
- Yeah.
- if you stay there too long,
like having a conversation with somebody else.
- Hmm.
- So what I do is I pretend there's like a bubble
and you can step out of it
and change your posture to like more blacks.
- Okay.
- This is like, all right, I'm gonna cue you, right?
- Yeah.
- But this is, hey, I'm gonna just hang out,
we're not training.
- Yeah.
- And so just in your casual conversation with us,
you're still in this like training mode,
- Yeah.
- and in her bubble.
And so, one of the reasons you may be getting
that like, (screams) is if that frustration builds
from being in that birdie bubble without queuing.
And obviously this scenario is different, right?
- Yeah.
- Because you're trying to have a conversation with us too.
But I find that if birds are in training mode
and they're showing you that they want to train
like you're seeing, you're getting a little wave.
- Mm-hm. - You're getting the kisses.
Like, this is definitely (indistinct)
(laughs)
- She gets the kisses all the time.
- There's like, she definitely knows when
that it's a formal session.
- Yes.
- And so that would be the first observation
that might lead towards, why you're getting that screaming?
Which we haven't got yet.
I'm sure we'll get it throughout today.
- Maybe.
- Is like building frustration,
just formal training sessions,
which should be three to five minutes.
- Okay. - Not 10
- Yep.
(laughs)
- Try, and I'll give you kind of an example
of how you break, like do a formal session that's longer
but we'll get back to that.
So it's formal sessions, typically three to five minutes.
- Okay. - There's informal sessions,
which is anytime the birds out of the cage.
- Yep.
- The bird is learning, right? - Yep.
- So we have a lot of people leave their birds
out of caves all day thinking they're doing the best thing
for the bird? - Right.
- But it becomes an informal session all day
where they're excellently, punishing
cause the birds getting into stuff.
- Yep.
- Then that still as a fed training session
and then capturing, as you know
is kind of the third one where it could
be all the time he was waiting for that behavior.
But when it comes down to the formal sessions
for specifically flight training,
you're getting all the goods on this one,
specifically for flight training,
a formal session can be 10 minutes
if it's repetition based.
- Yes, okay. - Meaning you're not like,
if you're going at the pace
where you're just doing that for 10 minutes,
you're probably gonna burn out her willingness.
- Yes.
- And that might be, you said that trigger is,
it like three minutes?
So, what we wanna do is,
we want to avoid hitting that trigger.
- Yeah.
- And we can jump back to that, right?
- And it's easily with little micro concepts,
- Okay. - like teaching her to,
oh, that's the other thing she does.
She patches, she has her little coin.
I wood coin that I toss it
and she'll like retreat from almost anywhere.
- [Man] Nice and she got frustrated with that.
- She was frustrated with that,
when I first started teaching my tour,
Once she's got the concept, she was great
and she won't do that thing anymore.
But like the rollover has been really frustrating for her.
And that keeps triggering it.
I think when I first taught her to spin
and she was like, I don't know what you want?
She'd go into these...
- Maybe we could watch a session on the rollover.
(talks over each other)
- Yeah, I'm willing to try.
- Do you think that she willing do at someone here,
like I have even that she would be willing to do
at somewhere here?
Like have you been using anything similar
to the, I don't know for sure.
- I don't know--
(indistinct)
- Okay.
- What do you see?
We flip upside down.
She might be a little uncomfortable in this scenario.
- What's happening?
Why don't you spin?
Okay, here we go.
Nice.
We get a couple and then you're gonna to the noise.
That's not quite eight, but it is that,
she starts kind of doing that and then it gets worse.
And I kinda where she won't do it
'cause she didn't eat breakfast.
So, there's sometimes if she's like extra motivated,
she doesn't do it, she stays in the game.
But then her frustration builds if she's,
I just, can't get my finger out of there.
I'm not trying that.
- I think part of the reason is,
because your rollover is not like it's not straight.
- It's not you trying to convey.
- Yeah, It's definitely not.
I've been trying to
and she's totally reliant my plan being the cue to.
- It's almost like she's rolling towards her.
- Like somersaulting? - It's not a--
- [Man] Can you pick her up and then,
let me see if she'll do it (indistinct) trace.
- Now, they're starting it.
(laughs)
- [Man] And then try to get the rollover
as you sat her down,
instead of having-- - Okay.
- [Man] Instead of having her follow from spine.
- Oh, we are gonna...
Oh, my God, that's so good.
(chuckles)
- This is what we do and then it's like--
- That's what it is.
- Is the baby and I-- - It's the same.
(bird tweets)
- You don't want to set up dear, okay?
- So what I would do is--
- I'd like to have a cool down letter.
- We'll use this, so I would try to use your other hands.
So she's spinning, right? - Yeah.
- So try to bring your other hand in
to help like stop the spin. - Yeah.
- And if you need to use the treat to like show,
you gonna understand what you're trying to say like,
you gonna use the treat to help direct her attention.
She doesn't know me well enough, I'm gonna do it.
- She might, if you were to start it
before she got into frustrated mode.
- Yeah. - Now she's...
- Yeah, so what I was thinking is that,
when I teach the rollover, it's very much here
and they're rolling over this way.
What you're doing is like you're providing the finger
but she's almost rolling towards you.
So you don't have the behavior isolated enough
to remove your finger.
- Yes, yeah. - If that makes sense?
So I think if,
(bird tweets)
I want to make you mad.
I think if you can shape the rollover.
Yeah, if you can shape the rollover.
- Yeah.
- Which you understand how to shape her behavior.
- Oh, yeah.
- If you can shape it from going towards you
to going isolated to the side. - Yeah.
- I think that you will have more clarity in the behavior
and you'll be able to get rid of your hand.
- [Man] More success as well, as long as--
- Yeah, can you explain to me how you taught the behavior?
Break it down from approximations for me.
- Yeah, so I think I started with a step up,
it was the initial as I started with step up
and started to roll her. - Okay.
- And, I don't know where are we got this spinning thing.
I guess it was cause I was trying to,
it was when I started trying to get my finger at her.
- Your trying to face your finger--
- 'Cause I was like, okay, I don't want you to step up
as much and I want it to click for their lean or shoulder.
- Yes.
- And so I was clicking for that, but I still took cue it,
she only knew it by my hand being there.
- Yeah.
- So I was putting my hand there...
- Do you feel like it morphed from,
when your hand fully guided her,
was that the clean rollover that you wanted
and then it transitioned when you started to phase out
that she changed it to rolling towards you?
- Yeah.
- Okay. - Yeah, that hand down.
- So, we need to go back. - Yeah.
- I think we need to go back to when it was clean
and your guide for the entire time
and then we'll work on shaping and phasing it out
from there.
Then I wanna see like a clean rollover that space away
from your body, that's an exact rollover that you want?
- Yeah.
- I wanna see that, I think we need to back it up.
- Yeah.
- And not cute this one. - Yeah.
- 'Cause I do think that part of the reason for rollover
is sloppy, is because she's in a hurry.
- Yes.
(laughs)
- So, she's circling you in frustration
and then she just kind of rolling
within that bubble of frustration.
- Right. - It's like this messy thing.
- Yes.
- So let's go back to where it was clean and really clear.
- Yeah.
(indistinct)
(laughs)
- I know she is asocial bird.
(indistinct)
You can imagine (indistinct).
- I guess this is one of the games that we enjoy to get--
- So, now let's try clean rollover back to,
the initial phases of the tree.
- Yeah.
hmm, galah, what's up?
That's how (indistinct) you don't wanna work on that?
- Yeah, kind of, I think she got a little confused too.
'Cause she was like, do you actually want me to step up.
And so there's some like, are you asking me to roll over,
I'm gonna get sassy.
If you're asking me to step up,
I'd gladly do that without anything--
- Okay, just step up.
- I'm just going to. - Yeah.
- Yeah, wow, I wasn't up, but she was...
(bird tweets)
The more I look at her, she does that.
- Another thought was bringing in Bondi
and having her work on the rollover with Bondi
to see what it looks like.
I know it's gonna be a lot slower-paced.
Bondi, already had breakfast.
- Yeah, let's do that.
- But it will show you the behavior isolated.
- Yeah.
- And Bondi and I would probably allow her to go back
and be able to hold on and then phase it out.
- Yeah, retrain it.
- Yeah, so I almost want you to like retrain it with Bondi,
so that you can see what it feels--
- It's a great idea.
- You like that?
- Yeah, let's do it.
(ambient music)