Maya’s Training Diary – Accepting `Touch’

I’ve had an incredibly `full’ time over the past few months and one aspect of my lifestyle that tends to take an unfortunate back seat during busy times is focused training with some of my own birds. Kinda happens when you have a pretty demanding 22-month-old daughter and 3-week-old twins to take priority over `other’ stuff. Over the past couple of weeks (in between hospital visits to see `me boys'), I had a few windows of opportunity to work with my Green-winged Macaw `Maya’. Check out some older posts for the background with this bird. Thanks mostly to the inconsistency of my training time with her we hit a speed bump in getting some behavioural momentum in regards to stepping on to hands consistently without aggression. There were obvious behavioural indicators from her that suggested that I was more than likely setting myself and her up to fail if I stuck with the criteria schedule I had set. Sometimes when you are working with a really challenging bird and have reached stagnation in behavioural momentum towards a specific training goal it can help to change focus and work on something completely different that has a lower set of expectations and greater opportunity for success in order to build back the trust and momentum you were previously working towards. This is beneficial not just for the bird, but also for the trainer or owner to avoid the frustration that can settle in when you feel like you’re not getting where you want to go. The interesting dynamic with training animals is that it’s not just about reinforcement for the animal – the trainer needs it continually too to keep their own confidence and behavioural momentum progressing positively and maintaining that sense that they're succeeding as well. One goal I was keen to achieve was for Maya to be less sensitive to hands and hopefully even accept some tactile touch in the form of a head scratch. She had never allowed this – at any time in her life thus far, and certainly any attempt to put a hand near her head would absolutely result in an aggressive `jab’ to deter it from intruding into her personal space. It still does actually, but with some careful and patient training I can actually get some really cool tactile head touch without aggression. A big milestone for us and something that will hopefully pay off as another reinforcement option and a growing level of trust between her and my hands. The following sequence of images gives some insight into where we're at with Maya. I won’t go into elaborations as I’d like to do some writing on working with her for my ABK column next year. Good magazine that – go buy a copy! www.birdkeeper.com.au