- She's almost four.
I've had her since she was four months.
I've only kind of found you in the last year or so,
so all the trick training and everything that we've done
has all been positive reinforcement and stuff like that.
(upbeat music)
So, she doesn't do stick training or anything like that.
- [Jamie] She's never done the target training?
- She's never done target training.
She's free-flighted,
so she comes to work with me.
We live on a boat, so,
I essentially live in the Avery,
she has free reign in the boat, free reign at work.
Haven't flown her outside,
so there's not really that kind of support network up north.
- [Instructor] So, fully flighted, not free-flighted?
- Yeah, fully flighted. Yeah.
I have lost her outside four times,
and each time has been quicker and quicker for her to come,
so, the last time she flew,
I didn't replace the door fast enough
when I was getting off the boat,
and she flew straight past me and went, "Oh, Whoa, Whoa!"
and landed in the mangroves,
and I just sat there for five minutes
with my cup of coffee, shaking my sunflower seeds,
and she flew down to me.
And the time before that,
she was up in gum tree,
but because I've been teaching her ups and downs
and all that kinda stuff,
she actually ended up flying down to me,
so that was super, super, super cool.
- [Jamie] And all four times were accidental, yeah?
- Yeah, yeah. - [Jamie] Oh, wow!
- So, she's only had her wings clipped once.
All the information you have is just amazing,
but I'm like, I don't know where to start,
so, and I'm always in for learning more
and all that kinda stuff,
but I guess it's more just finding out where she's at,
and then, kind of, where I can go from here.
I do have an issue with her biting,
not me, because I can read her body language,
but when she goes to people,
she'll just, you know,
anybody I give her to,
so, my mom or any caretaker or anything,
they're all afraid that she's gonna bite them,
just purely because she's completely unpredictable and all,
(Instructor chuckles) Unpredictable, per se.
Like, I can tell when she's stroppy or anything like that,
but If I leave her with anybody,
I'm really worried about that,
and they're obviously really worried about that, as well.
- [Jamie] So maybe focus on socialization today?
- Yeah, yeah.
So, I've made sure that,
so, she's harness trained,
I've made sure since the get go,
so, her first trip out in a harness was to a marketplace,
so lots of noise.
She doesn't freak out easy,
she doesn't take off when there's loud bangs
or anything like that.
She's really cruisy.
Loves loves the car.
We'll talk incessantly at the time she's in the car.
- [Jamie] Yeah!
She sounds really desensitized.
- Yeah, yeah.
Peas, and corn, and zucchini, and broccoli,
and all that kinda stuff,
and then that's all the soaked seed on top
and stuff like that.
- [Jamie] Yay! Good diet! - Cool! Yeah, it looks good.
I think the only thing that I would, maybe, do
is pull the nuts out
and use those more for training.
I'd like to see what she does.
I wanna see how you train,
how you cue things,
and you direct us, where you want us to be or not be.
I wanna see how you control that environment
or how much you need to control that environment.
I just wanna get a feel for what you do,
and then we'll go from there.
- Okay.
So, you want me to take her out?
- Yeah! - [Jamie] It'll be interesting
with all the bird noises, what she,
- How she'll react? - You coming?
(birds chirping)
What's going on? Hi!
Hi! Stretch!
Stretch!
- [Jamie] Oh! There we go.
- [Owner] Good girl.
Heads up!
Good girl.
- [Instructor] So, I'm gonna just pause it for a second.
Every time that she has ignored a cue of yours,
you go in and you pet her. - [Owner] Yes.
- So, one of the things we've talked about
in the family-friendly course
is understanding the training quadrant.
What positive reinforcement, negative reinforcement,
positive punishment, negative punishment,
understanding what is actually happening.
Even though your focus is using a positive
or a plus reinforcement of a treat,
there's a lot of other things happening
that may increase or decrease
the likelihood of behavior you're trying to get,
so if she likes being pet,
then you're reinforcing ignoring the cue.
If she doesn't like being pet,
then you're punishing her for ignoring the cue.
So, just being aware that you're doing that
will, hopefully, help you move forward.
- Oh, you've gotta wave. Right.
Show us your pretty wings!
Good girl. (Jamie giggles)
(laughs)
- [Jamie] She only made it halfway.
- Good girl.
- [Jamie] She's like, "I want this".
- [Instructor] Perch this
whole thing for it. (chuckles) - Batman!
- Good girl.
Show us your pretty wings!
- [Jamie] Nice!
Wave!
(Jamie laughs)
- Didn't have a good grip time!
- [Jamie] No.
- [Instructor] Okay.
I'm seeing enough
that I think we have time to work through it.
- Wave! There we go.
Good girl.
- You guys are doing awesome.
A couple just little things to clean up
from what I'm seeing initially
are that
you have a tendency to cue things before she's done eating,
so, what that does is it delays,
- [Jamie] The response time.
- It makes it feel like she's got a slower response time,
but she's actually got a pretty quick response time.
Just wait 'til she's done eating.
- Yeah, yeah.
- I like to see when people have a clear line of,
this is the minimum of the behavior,
so, anything that or above, I'll reinforce,
whereas, I caught you reinforce a couple of things
that were like, well, she kinda did it, so, here.
And so, eventually, that'll decrease how well she does it.
So, if you want the wave to be here,
but the minimum is here,
don't reinforce for the light one.
There was a bug by this side. (Jamie and Owner laugh)
- You'll get those here.
- Yeah, so, does that make sense?
- Yeah, yeah.
- For socialization training,
one of the things that we recommend with everybody
is to teach target or touch training,
and you were mentioning that she doesn't know that yet.
- No.
- Okay. Is there a reason you haven't done it?
(Jamie chuckles) - Hi, baby!
Just purely that I didn't know about it
until, like, she'd already been doing all this kinda stuff,
so, yeah.
I didn't know about it.
- So, one of the reasons
that we really encourage people to target train
is it allows a random stranger
or somebody who you want her to become social with
the ability to communicate on her level
in a language that they both understand.
- Right.
- Right now, you guys have a very clear communication,
but she and I won't have anywhere,
We have nothing.
So, by you training her, or me training her,
to touch the end of a stick,
now anybody can hold that stick
and it tells this bird,
when somebody approaches in this manner with that item,
I know that I'm gonna get something I want,
even though I don't know who that person is,
and we just did this in the last class,
and our daughter was able to,
at the end of a two and a half hour class,
she was able to go up with the stick
and the bird to go over and target to her,
and the bird had never targeted before,
so this is helpful for getting birds
that are lost in a tree,
it's helpful to get 'em down,
it's helpful to get them in and out of a crate
if they don't like it,
it's helpful to introduce them to strangers,
and not necessarily to make them social with a stranger,
'cause you don't necessarily want somebody
to come on your boat and steal bird,
you don't want her that social,
but you do want people who are gonna care for her to,
you could target the bird away from the door
so they can open it up,
take out something that needs to be removed,
close the cage without worrying about being bitten,
because it gives that person
a clear communication with the bird,
- This is where you wanna be. - that this is what
I want you to do, and here's the promise,
you'll get a treat.
So, I think that's where we'll start,
and then, while we wait in between stuff,
we can kinda go through the steps I would take
to get her to do a boomerang.
- Yep. - That sound good?
- Okay! Cool.
- Now, you haven't done
any clicker stuff before, it looks like.
- No. - Okay,
so, then, she's gonna be like, "What is this?"
So, what I'm gonna do,
I'll explain it to you first,
and then I'm going to do my best to stay back,
since strangers are a concern for her.
I'll stay back and try to walk you through it.
- So, I'll have customers come into the office,
and some, like, it's her space,
and she'll just sit on the perch,
and others, she'll fly down and be straight up their arm,
and on their shoulder, and on their head and stuff.
I don't know if it's a sixth sense
or she's like, "Yeah, I wanna know this person",
or, "I don't wanna know that",
but, like, it's just random, completely random,
and some of them, I'll ask,
"Do you have birds," or whatever\.
I don't know what it is.
Generally, it's male, though,
but, most of the time, most of my customers are male, so.
- Okay.
Well, so, then, do you want me to go ahead and train her?
- Yep! - Okay.
Let me grab some of your treats from you.
These are a decent size.
Will you take it from me?
When you're teaching target training,
some birds will bite the stick because they're aggressive,
some will bite it 'cause they're curious,
some will run from it,
and so, there's a lot of different ways
to get the bird to get there.
The way I always approach is,
you want the bird to touch the end of the stick.
You don't want them to grab anywhere on the stick,
you want them to touch here.
That is the specific target.
I don't want them to chomp down,
(train horn sounds)
so, to keep them from chomping,
there's a train that's gonna be loud here for a sec.
So, to keep them from chomping down,
I will start by having it just out of their reach
as they try to get it, try to get it,
try to barely touch it.
It's not starting here.
They can go anywhere,
it's just barely coming into their space.
That's for a bird that's curious enough
or aggressive to try to touch it.
I'm just gonna see what happens, here.
(button clicks)
So, curious.
That's a good one.
So, we saw her kinda look at it, wasn't really sure.
Eh, what is that? Let's explore it.
Clicking the exact moment she touches it
tells her, and will tell her,
that click equals treat,
and the click marks the exact moment
that she did what I want her to do.
- [Owner] Right.
(distant birds chirping and cawing)
- And we're accepting if she bumps it.
(button clicks)
There. She bumped into it.
- [Owner] She's just listening to all the other birds.
- [Instructor] Yeah. - [Owner] Like, "Oh my God."
- [Instructor] There's a lot happening here.
- [Owner] Yeah, yeah. Yep.
- [Instructor] In some ways,
it's a challenging environment to train in,
but, also, if they get it in this environment,
they'll do great at home.
(button clicks)
- [Jamie] Nice!
That didn't take long. - You saw her body
language changed, tell me she was ready to work.
- [Owner] Yes, yes. - So, now, I'm gonna put this.
I'm gonna try not to flash the treat, you know?
I'm not gonna show her the treat right beforehand,
and I'm gonna see, if she does get it,
she'll move one or two steps to her right.
Let's see.
(button clicks)
Now I'll try to get her to one or two steps to her left.
There we are.
(button clicks)
Grab a few more treats from you.
See if we get three or four steps.
(button clicks)
It's that easy. (Jamie and Owner laugh)
The last one took two and a half hours,
- [Owner] Oh, really?
Yeah, she just picks stuff up so quick.
- Yeah. You can tell you've done a lot of training.
There's also a difference in the approach.
She was curious, so she wanted to touch it,
and she clearly understands training.
The more a bird understands training,
the faster they learn.
- [Owner] Yeah. Yeah.
- We'll get her to move back over here,
then I'll have you do it.
(parrot caws)
- [Owner] See ya!
Bye!
(button clicks)
- And I'll click for you for now,
so keep in mind what I want you to do
is I want you to point straight at her face,
and that means, if you're over here,
you're pointing towards her face.
You're not like this, 'cause then she can bite
any part of it.
You're gonna point straight out
or try to her to get the tip.
- Okay.
- And I would suggest, based on where she is now,
try to get her to move two or three steps to this position,
and I'll click for you.
(button clicks)
- [Jamie] Good job making that adjustment.
- What's that?
- [Jamie] It was a good job making that adjustment,
'cause she asked her to go really far,
like, where you left off.
- Yeah. So, here. Step back a sec so we're out of her bubble
for just a second.
So, as Jamie was saying, you started too far,
she wasn't quite sure.
Plus, since we just switched trainers,
she was like, "What am I doing?"
So, this tells her, hey, we're in training mode.
Let's do this.
Just one minor adjustment is,
it's better to get closer to her,
to barely touch the end of the stick,
than it is to give her too much stick to bite and pull back.
- Right.
- 'Cause it comes off like taunting.
- Okay. - So, let's end
with one good repetition, here.
So, whenever you're ready, go ahead and signal her.
Let's let's do this, here. I'm sorry.
If she ends up coming this way a lot, demoed,
then we'll switched sides,
but I'll have you put the stick
at this angle on this end,
and slowly bring it to where she can touch it.
- Okay.
Want me to shake first?
Shake!
- [Jamie] Woo!
Got some serious wings.
Whoa!
(doors clattering)
- [Owner] It's just a door. - [Instructor] That's why the
doors open different directions.
- [Owner] Are we good? - [Jamie] She handled that
like a champ.
She's getting another gust, though.
- [Owner] The wind, isn't it?
(button clicks)
- [Instructor] Perfect!
So, in that session, there,
we like to try to keep it to two to five minutes.
Since we only have you for a few hours,
we're gonna try to extend how long those sessions are today,
but when you're training at home,
just to keep it at two to five minutes,
or you can cause burnout.
And then we'll get everybody else to do a target.
(upbeat rock music)
She touched it.
- How do these things work? (owner and Jamie chuckle)
Oh, sorry. Whoops, sorry.
- [Jamie] Did you give her a treat? Oh, it's too late.
- [Instructor] (laughs) Okay,
you were fired from the clicker.
(all laughing)
- [Jamie] Dang. That was short-lived.
- Sorry, man!
- [Instructor] How does it work? Well, you get it to click.
- Yeah, yeah. (all laughing)
(upbeat rock music)