New Tricks - need ideas!

charmedbyekkie

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May 24, 2018
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Cairo the Ekkie!
Cairo is my infinite source of joy. (dead serious)

But I can't keep up with him!

It took him 1 minute to learn 'shake', 5 minutes to learn 'wave', two 10 minute sessions for 'put' (in terms of stacking cups) to become solid, less than 1 minute for 'give', 10 tries for 'flip'. We don't add new tricks every day - I like to get him confident about doing the same tricks in different environments. So we only about once every two weeks or so (basically whenever I can think of how to teach him something new, and 'how-to-teach' is the trickiest part for me).

He loves learning new things. He enjoys practicing tricks yes, but his eagerness goes through the roof when he first 'gets' a new trick. He's currently flying around the house with his cups, stacking them and giving them to us. I'm so unbelievably proud of him - mind you, I kept my expectations to thinking that he'd be an antisocial, slow-learner, only say "hello" kind of bird.

I'm lucky I live so close to China, where I can get the exact same parrot trick toys, but for the price of 2-10 USD (Cairo's grandparronts in the US paid double to triple that price for when they bought him toys). He already has the stacking cups and the shapes/abacus box. We'll probably get him a ring toss set, a basketball hoop, matching colour circles and box set, and anything else we can find. My big concern is that, with these toys sets, the only new thing he'd be learning is mainly colour association and, for the shape/abacus box, shape association.

I've seen Salty's videos and have been inspired by them (though a deck of card aren't really common/kosher here and Cairo is not a touchy-feely ekkie to roll over).

Any other suggestions on what tricks to teach? Don't worry - recall training is a daily thing as well, and harness too. But what new things to excite him with?
 

LordTriggs

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May 11, 2017
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you could try teaching him to play fetch? Or maybe even teach him how to play hide and seek, building on your recall training
 
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charmedbyekkie

charmedbyekkie

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How should we train for hide and seek? I assume it would only be me hiding. We already do training where we're in separate rooms and I call him over to me. Is it something similar to that?
 

wrench13

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Aint it great when that spark ignites and they start to lovelearning new things just for the sheer sake of learning. They are like sponges after that. The real thrill came for me when Salty started to make up his own tricks. THe whole thing we do with flipping the rings over his head, and him balancing a ring on one end to walk thru it were both made up by him, not me!!

We'll need a video of Cairo pretty soon !
 

FlyBirdiesFly

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Try teaching him to go through a hoop, turn around, and lift his wings on command. You could also try teaching him to hang upside down if he’s comfortable with it.
 
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charmedbyekkie

charmedbyekkie

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Looks like rings are next on the shopping list then!

How would you teach him to lift his wings up? When he stretches both wings upwards, we say a cue phrase, but he doesn't yet associate the two together (not sure if we should give him a treat when he does it - is it healthy for him to keep doing the upwards stretch, or might he strain himself?). He also doesn't like being touched; we practice "sayang" for touching him and "wing" for when we move his wings around - he associates those with treats, but doesn't like it if he isn't aware that treats will be offered.
We would LOVE to train him to spread his gorgeous wings on cue, but haven't quite figured out how to teach him that.

However, he has already learned how to flip upside down. Now he freely does it on his perch to get a different angle to bite at it, and he's taught himself how to fly out of 'bat position'. This boy is crazy - he applies whatever he's learned to new things. Now he practices stacking cups all by himself, upside-down flips by himself, occasionally waves at me by himself....

He's only reaching 1.5yo! Five more decades of this? Wow! We're going to have to get creative haha

Hopefully his incoming foraging toys will occupy his mind for a little bit until we get the hoops and ring toss set. I can already tell that he'd have to get his own separate room/aviary if we shift countries.
 

FlyBirdiesFly

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For the wings trick there are several ways to teach: one is to put your hands under their wings so they lift them up, but Cairo doesn’t like to be touched. The other way, which I used with Ducky, was where I had Ducky on my hand and I lowered her down to the ground. She would naturally spread her wings to keep balance, and I said “wings” every time she did it so eventually she learned to do it on cue. It takes a lot of repetition with this method; it probably took a week or two of training every day for Ducky to master the trick.

Here is an example of Ducky spreading her wings on cue:

[ame="https://youtu.be/Ap-oqIqlYFA"]https://youtu.be/Ap-oqIqlYFA[/ame]
 

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