Top 5 Reasons Why I Do What I Do... Number 2

One of the most satisfying experiences working as a parrot behaviour and enrichment consultant is when your clients achieve success with a behaviour management issue that you have been working with them on. It’s particularly pleasing when the result is the repairing of a relationship with the bird when the owner had taken a few too many hits, or `bites’ to probably be more accurate ☺ It’s not just the trust rebuilding that brings the reward for all concerned, but the richness of the learning journey when you and your client investment in the time, commitment to the goal, and show the perseverance you sometimes need to stay on the pathway to success. It can be really challenging when you take a few backward steps when managing parrot behaviour, or working towards a training goal. But it’s exactly those moments that really bring out some of the most enriching and special learning experiences for me as a consultant, and hopefully likewise for the client.

Sometimes just getting a pet parrot to step back up onto the hand of an owner it has lost trust in is a monumental achievement and worthy of celebration. What most parrot owners consider the `simplest’ of behaviours that their parrot will present for them is also, in my opinion, one of the most important foundations of their relationship, and undoubtedly the best example of how good learning and relationship building is achieved through small, positively reinforced approximations.

Success in supporting a client to achieve a goal with their parrots, whether it be behavioural or environmental, is absolutely one of the top 5 reasons why I do what do ☺

Check out the neat little sequence below as an example of the approximations that were reinforced to achieve the final goal of this Quaker stepping onto the hand of a client I was working with – without the bite!