First go ever at target training Kiwi

Kiwibird

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So Kiwi and I both had a first tonight-remidal parrot training and now I'm kind of confused:confused: I spent quite literally my entire day researching the matter, and there's really nothing out there about what to do with such a unique specimen of a parrot as Mr. Kiwi. :green:

I decided to start with target training using a knitting needle, since he's not too familiar with those. Hoping he might remember the coffee table as a "learning" area from when we did step up drills when we got him, I plopped him down and gave it a go. I'm kind of unclear how it went:20: The first thing he did was run over to me and lift up his foot (apparently he DID remember). Once I had his attention, he was super interested in the knitting needle and REALLY wanted to play with it. I tried to tell him "touch" and give him praise and a treat when he did. He chased the knitting needle all over the table, and I gave him a treat each time he touched it "on command". I'm not sure if he was actually understanding though:52: He may have just thought he was a doubly lucky bird tonight to get to play with one of mommy's toys AND get treats:20:. O well, I'll try it daily over the next week or so and see if I can tell if he's just goofing off and getting free treats or if something is actually firing up in that feathery head of his. If nothing else, at least I learned an activity with him-chasing a knitting needle around the coffee table. It wouldn't be the first weird thing he likes doing. This is the crazy bird that MUST sit next to me whilst I do dishes just so he can put his beak on every clean plate, bowl and cup before I place them in the dish rack and only speaks when he's taking a shower with you:30:
 

jenphilly

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Ummmm so Kiwi is an OCD peeping tom if I read that correctly....
 
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Kiwibird

Kiwibird

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Kiwi is an OCD peeping tom

Laughing so hard I spit my tea out there. But yes, that does describe Kiwi amazingly well. I love him dearly, but he is a VERY strange bird I'm at a loss of what to do with at times:09:.
 

MangieSun

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Did you do it with a clicker? By "loading" the clicker it gives it meaning. To load you click and treat over and over. Then they associate the sound with the treat. So when Kiwi touches he would immediately hear the clicker and know a treat was coming next. I find it works better than just saying good or yes. By marking the touch with the clicker they immediately get the yummy treat. The click helps finalize the trick and they know it's not time for their reward. Maybe that helps?
 

MangieSun

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Oh and as soon as the touch is made , I pull the stick away.
 
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Kiwibird

Kiwibird

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Did you do it with a clicker? By "loading" the clicker it gives it meaning. To load you click and treat over and over. Then they associate the sound with the treat. So when Kiwi touches he would immediately hear the clicker and know a treat was coming next. I find it works better than just saying good or yes. By marking the touch with the clicker they immediately get the yummy treat. The click helps finalize the trick and they know it's not time for their reward. Maybe that helps?

I made a click with my mouth when he touched it and then told him "good boy" as I handed him his treat. And yes, I did pull away the needle (or else he would've stole it and not given it back). Honestly, I'll give this a try, but I hold out little hope. Kiwi is not exactly a "ideal candidate" for training and I'm not unhappy with his behavior now. He's a slightly neurotic oddball for sure, but VERY well behaved in the areas that really matter (screaming, chewing, biting and potty trained). If he can't or doesn't want to do tricks, I'm not concerned. He had a rough life before us, and I try not to force anything on him and give him more freedoms. I really just want to be able to have something to do with him that HE enjoys so he doesn't miss my husband so much. If he actually turns out to enjoy learning tricks, then that's what we'll do. I know birds in the trick training videos sure are cute doing the little "bowling" thing or playing dead, but they also seem to enjoy doing it. If he wants to chase a stick around a table and finds that more fun then we'll do that instead. I think he will enjoy going on walks in the carrier I'm ordering most (in fact, I'm sure he will LOVE it), but on days it's raining or in winter, I'd like some alternative activities as well.
 

MomtoPercy

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Don't feel bad - Percy is also muuuch more interested in grabbing the target stick (when he decides not to be afraid of it) and tossing it to the floor :D. I've not had much success with target training but I do find the clicker useful for other 'tricks'.

I find training works best in my bedroom - we only go there for training and super short visits. I usually take him with me to the bedroom when I need to change or just get something from the room and then I put him on my bed. He ALWAYS gets half a peanut when he's sitting there so he loves 'going to the room'. When I say 'wanna go to the room with mommy?' he gets very excited and I've learned to only ask it when I'm close enough to offer my hand immediately otherwise he will 'fly' to me and since he can't fly with his bad wing, that always ends in big frights for us both ;)

I suggest you get a clicker - the human mouth and vocal cords cannot perfectly and identically reproduce a sound every time. Percy has also learned to recognise the clicker so if he sees it, he knows what's coming.
 

MomtoPercy

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Don't feel bad - Percy is also muuuch more interested in grabbing the target stick (when he decides not to be afraid of it) and tossing it to the floor :D. I've not had much success with target training but I do find the clicker useful for other 'tricks'.

I find training works best in my bedroom - we only go there for training and super short visits. I usually take him with me to the bedroom when I need to change or just get something from the room and then I put him on my bed. He ALWAYS gets half a peanut when he's sitting there so he loves 'going to the room'. When I say 'wanna go to the room with mommy?' he gets very excited and I've learned to only ask it when I'm close enough to offer my hand immediately otherwise he will 'fly' to me and since he can't fly with his bad wing, that always ends in big frights for us both ;)

I suggest you get a clicker - the human mouth and vocal cords cannot perfectly and identically reproduce a sound every time. Percy has also learned to recognise the clicker so if he sees it, he knows what's coming.
 
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Kiwibird

Kiwibird

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Don't feel bad - Percy is also muuuch more interested in grabbing the target stick (when he decides not to be afraid of it) and tossing it to the floor :D. I've not had much success with target training but I do find the clicker useful for other 'tricks'.

I find training works best in my bedroom - we only go there for training and super short visits. I usually take him with me to the bedroom when I need to change or just get something from the room and then I put him on my bed. He ALWAYS gets half a peanut when he's sitting there so he loves 'going to the room'. When I say 'wanna go to the room with mommy?' he gets very excited and I've learned to only ask it when I'm close enough to offer my hand immediately otherwise he will 'fly' to me and since he can't fly with his bad wing, that always ends in big frights for us both ;)

I suggest you get a clicker - the human mouth and vocal cords cannot perfectly and identically reproduce a sound every time. Percy has also learned to recognise the clicker so if he sees it, he knows what's coming.

I'm not too concerned about it. Kiwi already knows and responds to several verbal cues- the "kiss" noise, "yours" and "mine" (in regards to chewing/playing outside his cage/stand), "no", and "get out" as I tap my hand on the floor if he gets under something like the bed or couch. I'm sure if he's interested in tricks, he will learn on my voice the same way he did with the rest of it. He's not stupid, just stubborn. Though, all of those things had very practical purposes and he needed to learn them, especially the kisses:10::09:

He may not be super regimented, but I kind of prefer a little more of a organic relationship with him where he "leads". I find his "natural behaviors", for the most part, quite fascinating. Clickers just seem really unnatural to me and I actually find the noise they make highly irritating. I don't know too much about their natural vocalizations, but I'm sure they have some simplistic form of verbal communication (and I'm sure it isn't the same identical sound each time) and I think they are intelligent enough to exercise "selective hearing" if they aren't inclined to do something (even if they understand the concept). I look at super regimented clicker training on a bird who's uninterested kind of like how I'm sure I COULD have learned calculus in school, and someone running fingers down a chalkboard to "cue" me to do it and then offering me a brownie if I did might have made me more inclined to do so, but I still wouldn't have enjoyed it. But it would't have taken much for my art teacher to get me interested in something because I enjoyed art and a brownie for doing a good job would've just been awesome:32:. If nothing else, Kiwi seemed really excited and he did seem to remember the coffee table being where he learned stepping up, so hopefully it leads to something. We only messed around for about 15 minutes, so I'll have to see over the next week or so if he's ACTUALLY responding to the target or if he's just having fun and go from there. Either way, him having fun is the entire point of the exercise ;)
 

MomtoPercy

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I'd LOVE for Percy to learn "yours" and "mine"!! How did you do it?? I wish Percy would learn that my shirt and the zipper on my pants are MINE ;). Also - if you figure out a way to teach Kiwi that nibbling is OK but ripping your finger off during a hissy fit is less so, please share! :)
 
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Kiwibird

Kiwibird

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I'd LOVE for Percy to learn "yours" and "mine"!! How did you do it?? I wish Percy would learn that my shirt and the zipper on my pants are MINE ;). Also - if you figure out a way to teach Kiwi that nibbling is OK but ripping your finger off during a hissy fit is less so, please share! :)

Kiwi only has one bite pressure-hard and you best no catch him on a bad day! When he's being playful with Joe's hands, sometimes he gets a little TOO into it. Same with my poor toes:( But we've never trained on the bite pressure, just the bites, and that more a matter of him not being scared of us anymore and fear-biting and us watching his behavior for signs he's in a foul or overly excited mood and not messing with him till he calms his butt down.

The "yours" and "mine" was easy enough. When he would start chewing something (or even being overly curious with something that he could potentially chew), I would (gently) push his beak away while telling him "no!" and then tap the surface he wasn't allowed to touch with my hand while saying a FIRM "mine". I also always have a bunch of small foot toys (buttons, beads, plastic keys off baby toys ext...) floating around, so I hand him one of those as a distraction. I kind of shake the toy at him first and tell him "yours" and tell him he's a very good boy when he takes the toy. Now, even if he's across the room, when he touches something he's not allowed to touch, I just tap my hand on my knee and say "that's mine" and he backs off. It's not a 100% science, but he understands the concept enough he rarely bothers anything he KNOWS isn't his to be bothering.
 
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Kiwibird

Kiwibird

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We went for round 2 this morning, and I watched his reactions much more carefully this time, and I think he may actually be doing more than chasing the stick for kicks. His eyes pinned when I gave him the "touch" command and pinned when he touched it. This time, I also hid the treats until AFTER he touched and he seemed less confused about which to go after. If he continues to enjoy this activity and consistently follow my command after next week, I will try directing him to touch another object with the stick, and we will see if he's REALLY learning ;)
 

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Aww, he's learning!!! It's gonna be great! Wait till he fully understands, and it's going to open up a whole new world!
 

MonicaMc

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Stepping up is a trick! ;)


Almost any bird can be trained as long as you can find the right reward! It can be food, treats, scritches, verbal praise, a toy, going somewhere, etc. In fact, the more the merrier!



Any updates? It's been a week now! :D
 
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Kiwibird

Kiwibird

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Stepping up is a trick! ;)


Almost any bird can be trained as long as you can find the right reward! It can be food, treats, scritches, verbal praise, a toy, going somewhere, etc. In fact, the more the merrier!



Any updates? It's been a week now! :D

He's done MUCH better than I would have thought, that smart boy of mine:54: We have moved on to spinning and retrieving. Well, actually, we started the spinning 2 days ago and I introduced the "fetch" thing today. I have been discussing it in this thread, since I needed a little more instruction and though I might do a little better in the "training" section (which I completely missed when I posted this in "behavioral":09:)-http://www.parrotforums.com/training/42637-target-training-what-do-next-2.html#post374721
 

MonicaMc

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Awesome! =D


He must be doing great if he's taking up more tricks already! :D
 
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Kiwibird

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He's doing surprisingly well. I've been trying to "show" him what he's suppose to be doing by imitating these "tricks" myself and giving myself a treat, and he seems to take note of the action. He's quite the observant thing. I did a couple spins to refresh his memory this morning, and he managed to follow the stick in a complete circle a couple times. I felt like a darn fool picking up a ring off a tray with my mouth to start the "fetch" trick out. I think if a parrot could laugh, he would have been in hysterics this morning judging by his demeanor:20: But it prompted him to show me how much better his beak worked than my lips:roll eyes: We will have to work on him going the ring back though.... He just held it in his foot while he took the treat, so after he really seems to grasp the concept of taking the ring on command, we will have to work on getting him to put it back down.... But hey, he's made fast progress. I was guessing a couple weeks to understand the stick, a couple weeks to work on the spin but he's picking these things up in a couple days:D Who knows, maybe by summer, he will be riding a birdie bicycle down a high wire (yeah right! I can't even ride a bike myself, I'm not imagining the bird would learn better than me):54:
 

MonicaMc

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LOL! It's great that he's so observant!

What I've read in regards to the retrieve though is that you give the bird something and when they take it and drop it, you click and reward. Once they get the idea to take the object, you then put your hand (or a cup/container) underneath his beak so when he drops the item and it lands in your hand, you can click and treat. Once you are at that point, only click and treat *IF* the item lands in your hand. If the bird doesn't, repeat giving the object to the bird. Once the bird understands the concept of dropping the item in your hand, you then start moving your hand to a different location.



Although you are training more like the Pepperberg way, which seems to be working out quite well for Kiwi!!!! I can only imagine you trying to imitate Kiwi to try and teach him new behaviors! :D
 
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Kiwibird

Kiwibird

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Although you are training more like the Pepperberg way, which seems to be working out quite well for Kiwi!!!! I can only imagine you trying to imitate Kiwi to try and teach him new behaviors! :D

Well, the way I figure it's probably a lot easier for him to comprehend what action will get him his treat if he's given an example rather than through trial and error.

I've watched a few documentaries on her and Alex, but they more went over his level of comprehension, not necessarily her training methods. Not that I ever expect Kiwi to reach anywhere near that level (he's not a research animal!) but I would be interested in reading more about her methods if you have any good links? I mean, she really managed to bring out the intelligence of the 'smartest' parrot on record. It would be interesting to know more how she did it:)
 

MonicaMc

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Dr Irene Pepperberg used Model-Rival Training. Alex got to watch Pepperberg teach someone else the behavior, then asked him to do it. (a bit more complicated than that)


Alex The African Grey: Model-Rival Training Technique


Essentially, the behavior was shown to Alex, then Alex was asked to do the behavior.
 

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