My experience with the aviator harness and how patient you need to be

Hello everyone,

I haven't been posting all that much lately because life has just been busy, however I wanted to post this today just to share my experience with the aviator harness. I know for me and I think for many others, harness training can be very frustrating and requires so much patience. I started harness training with Moonie probably in March so it's been a good nine months. For the longest time, he would only agree to pop his head through the loop, grab a treat, and quickly yank it out again. I have had to back up a few times in training because we had a couple of incidents where he would try to pull his head out of the loop and kind of get stuck and freak out. Then we would go back to square one. Well, now he will actually stick his head through the loop and eat treats while the loop sits around his neck. I'll even give it little tugs to get him used to the "pull" that he is likely to feel when wearing it. We haven't got to putting the wings through yet, but I'm taking this baby steps at a time. They weren't kidding when they said some birds take months or even years to accept this thing. I must admit, there were times I was ready to go into a dark room and just shove the harness on and see what happened, but this breakthrough gave me hope. Soooo, if anyone out there is thinking of giving up, perhaps your little guy/gal just needs months of stubborn training like mine did

Hope this post was useful and have a great day everyone!

That is awesome progress with the harness! Patience truly does the trick Great post.
Maybe by Spring Moonie will be wearing it outside!
So good to see you back

Congratulations on the progress!
I'm currently harness training my 10 month old CAG and it's taken us 5 months to get the harness on fully (which happened for the first time last week!). For her, getting her head in the neck loop and keeping it there was the hardest part. The wings were a breeze afterwards. Since she's a baby and I knew before I got her that I wanted to harness train her, I have been petting and playing with her wings since she would allow me to, in an effort to normalize her wings being poked and prodded while I put the harness on. I guess that worked! Obviously you can't do that with a mature bird ):

I also had to bribe her with almonds to stick her head through the neck loop at first. Then after a few successful sessions of that, I'd leave the neck loop on her and slowly count to 5 out loud before removing it and giving her the almond. If she fussed or yelled, I'd wait for her to stop, then start the count again. She quickly realized that the harness isn't going to eat her and that I'll take it off quicker if she holds still.
Now that I can (usually) get her wings in, she gets one almond when the harness is fully put on, then one more when I can successfully take it off. Today was her 2nd successful attempt at wearing the harness fully fastened and tightened to where it needs to be. I made her wear it for about 3 minutes while I walked around the room with her on my arm.
We train every single day, sometimes two or three different times during the day, depending on how receptive she is to training on a given day.

Patience and consistency are key! You got this!

It's good to know that Kyo isn't the only one who does this. SHe happily puts her head through for a treat, but after that she's done.

I sure hope that he'll be wearing it by springtime! He would love the outdoors of that I'm sure

You give us minions hope!

This is a good thread. I am reteaching the harness to my 10 month old CAG. He used to have no problem with it and then one day he wouldn't let me put it on him. They talk about this in the DVD that comes with it.

I started training him all over again to wear it, usually one or two times a day. I've found that the best way to do it is on a very low perch instead of a table top because there's just too much room for him to move around and get nervous.

I'm at the point now where I can get him to slip his own head through the harness and wear it while I give him three treats, then he starts biting at it so I don't want to push it on him too much.

I figure it will take a while to get him to fully wear it but I want to make sure he's 100% on board with it before I even start doing his wings. In the mean time, I have been training him to let me lift and hold his wings..... I figure it's a good start before doing it with the harness.

I just wanted to add my own experience and say thank yo to all of those who provided good info. Thanks!