He’s Training Us with Negative Reinforcement

We’re slowly solving Cairo’s hormonal issues. We wiped clean our interactions and began drilling into positive interactions - avoiding any forced or negative interactions.

However, it seems that Cairo has been trying to train us.

Let’s start from the top:

1. We give Cairo kisses on the curve of his beak - it’s really just a press and dramatic “muah!”
2. Cairo started making the sound, and I turned it into a trick where I say, “kiss,” and he presses his beak against our face and makes the “muah!”
3. Cairo learned that kissing our faces get him treats. (He learns such things quickly, so we’ve heard nonstop chicken sounds, motorcycle sounds, and seen nonstop waving, recall, etc).
4. When Cairo kisses me without prompting, I don’t give him a treat. I just tell him “I love you” or give him a kiss back
5. When my partner receives a kiss from Cairo, he used to always give Cairo a treat. (My partner and I disagree on how to train Cairo sometimes, so I didn’t speak up.)
6. Whenever Cairo gave my partner a kiss and missed the treat, Cairo would put pressure on my partner’s fingers or beak his face. (My fault I never intervened - I would just tell my partner, “What do you expect?” And he would defend his training method.)
7. Now…… whenever hormonal Cairo doesn’t get a treat after giving my partner a kiss, he bites and attacks.

Luckily Cairo still listens to most commands that we engrained from the very start. In order of preference:
- Most responsive - recall
- Moderately responsive - “perch” or “balcony” (he flies to either his training perch or his cage)
- Least positive response - step up*


QUESTION:
How do we try to untrain this expectation of receiving a treat from my partner after self-initiating a kiss? He does not exhibit this expectation from me nor does he exhibit this expectation for any other trick with my partner.

For now, I’ve told my partner to:

1. Not let Cairo on his shoulder. Either send him to his “perch”/“balcony” or ask him to step up onto a perch.
2. Respond to a Cairo-kiss by asking him to fly to his perch (this is happening when I’m at work, so I can only him from afar instead of intervening properly).
3. Not do the kiss trick at all until he can be sure he's settled with his hormones. If that takes a few years, so be it.

Any thoughts?



*(Step Up is a whole nother thing we’re working on. I’m starting him from scratch - I put my hand on the opposite side of where he’s perching, show a treat, ask him to step up, hide the treat. This doesn’t force him into stepping up, and he hates being forced. So it allows him to take a breath, walk over, and step up calmly).

I’ve got s whole thing that will help , plus a diatribe against your partner who is really screwing things up here for you.

Driving so it’ll wait for later, but for now I’ll point you to your #4 above and ask you to think about this scenario it terms of positive reinforcement and see if something doesn’t jump out at you regarding your reaction to this situation.

Yep, you're not alone. They work at training us the same as we work at training them. Very tricky they are. Lol!

Okay, the three steps you've already advised your partner to take are spot on. Safety first, so you definitely want to do whatever is necessary to minimize any danger to him.

As for what else you can do going forward, I think a big part of it comes down to consistency. Specifically, that you and your partner put yourselves on the same page insofar as training is concerned. He must not deviate, as doing so sets him up as an exception to your rule. Like people, birds are capable of dealing with different people in entirely different ways.

Untraining a behavior tends to be far more difficult than the initial training had been. So success will largely depend on perseverance. Birds are stubborn. Some more so than others. So change likely won't come overnight. Your partner will have to accept this and commit to seeing it through. From what I've seen in your posts, he is also very invested in Cairo. So I'm betting that won't be a problem.

But aside from acknowledging and acting on the need for consistency and perseverance, there is also dealing with the reality of a bird who has taken to nipping or biting to get his displeasure across. So, it's not just about getting Cairo used to approaching the kiss trick with your partner in the same way he does with you, but also about training out the biting response.

First, here's a very informative link that deals with ways to avoid bites in the first place: http://www.parrotforums.com/training/57935-brainstorming-biting-parrots.html

Now, on to the present reality of the biting. When he applies pressure with his beak that goes beyond your partner's personal comfort threshold, he should tell him "no" in a firm yet even tone. The 'even' part is important, since a loud response can either frighten or amuse Cairo. The former can lead to him biting down harder out of fear, and the latter can result in repetition of the behavior in anticipation of triggering the amusing response.

Once he's said no, he should remove Cairo's beak from his skin (If Cairo's a 'clamper'). *Never just ignore the bite. The behavior is not okay, so it should never be treated as such.* Cairo should then be put on an immediate timeout of 5-10 minutes. No eye contact, no interaction. Either in a separate room or with his back turned if he must remain in the same room.

Once he's served his time, your partner should be the one to let him back out. This is important. He should get to be the 'good guy' too. He would then start fresh, showing Cairo all due enthusiasm. But a repeated incident gets him put back on timeout. Every time, without fail. As long as he's consistent, Cairo will eventually make the association.

As for stepping up, your technique sounds like a good one. You do want to work on that a lot with Cairo, as I believe that step up and recall are two things with which you want some measure of immediacy. Emergency situations often require a fast response, so those are two areas where I'm not really happy until I have 100% reliability. This can take time, but it should be the ultimate goal.

My methodology for this has always been getting myself and my birds on the same page. The thing about birds is that they do what you want when you can get them to believe that it's their idea. It's not domination. It's them wanting what you want.

Working on his stepping up between meals, when he is at his hungriest and most responsive to treats, will set up the association of stepping up with tasty treats. Done frequently and consistently enough, he will eventually associate stepping up with the joy of treats. Now, the trick here is to scale back the treats a little once he gets a bit more reliable with stepping up, so that you're not having to give him a treat for it every time. This will hold up, though, because he'll still be getting treats for other, more complex, learned behaviors... all of which will start with an initial step up.

Also, make sure to give enthusiastic praises with each treat every time he does the right thing. Associating the enthusiasm with the treat also sets up something of a Pavlovian response wherein he will begin to derive food-based pleasure from the enthusiasm itself.

So sorry you're having issues with this.

In my opinion, a hormonal bird would not be allowed around my face, period. I try to take out all situations that would entice a bite. So, maybe cutting back on the kisses would help curb the demanding behavior and instead focus on other training like stepping up and flight recall to take away some of that frustrated energy instead of inflicting it on your partner for not giving treats when he gives a kiss.

Fabulous advise above. Stephen gave about half of where I was going to take it.

To cast this from a slightly different angle will give you a complete perspective of where stephen and I are advising:

You acknowledge you've turned it into a trick, but you don't seem to understand that the begging for treats is actually a natural progression of putting a behavior on cue.

Say you want to have Cairo spread his wings on cue, like when he stretches:
1) You click and reward whenever he stretches.
2) DOESN"T REALIZE ITS A TRICK, JSUT THAT HE GETS A TREAT WHENEVER IT HAPPENS. So begins the begging phase, where he performs stretching constantly to get the reward.
3) Cue implementation: once the begging begins, THAT is the time to introduce the cue/command, since the behavior is happening so frequently. Its impossible to implement a cue when the behavior is so infrequent. During this time, only cued stretching gets a reward. Stretching without a cue gets no reward.
4) Begging settles down once they learn that stretching without the cue doesn't get a reward.

You're on phase 2, begging. You don't WANT to stop the begging, you want to harness it into a cued trick. Get him to do it in response to "Gimme a kiss" or something like that.

Now your partner....:headwall:

Sounds like hes actually partially doing the training better than you, hes got a motivator that has Cairo begging. But he's not seeing the training through completely. By waiting for Cairo to bite him before giving a treat, hes training Cairo to become aggressive for treats. What? Biting gets me treats? I'll do this all the time now!.

He needs to either get on the training train property, or stop kissing/rewarding altogether. Stephen is 100% correct: you need to both be on the same page with training, or you're going to undo everything.

Someone from another post put it very well. Training is: "making them think what you want them to do was actually their idea".

Context of the trick

Cairo knows that if we say, “kiss,” to give us a kiss. Just like he knows to make a clucking sound when we say, “chicken,” or a vrooming sound when we say, “motorcycle.” It’s been a trick in his repertoire for months now. We even play around with using the word in sentences, and Cairo knows what to do if he hears it as the last word of a sentence. “Are you a chicken?” “Do you ride a motorcycle?” “Can you give me a kiss?”



Kiss > Bite

For me, the key problem is that he learned from my partner that he can farm treats just by kissing (my partner doesn’t give treats when Cairo randomly self-initiates a chicken sound or a motorcycle sound - my partner anthropomorphises Cairo’s kissing a little bit). By doing this, I feel like my partner has led Cairo on, a bit unfairly. By giving Cairo treats for 80% of uninitiated kisses, he has led Cairo to believe that any kissing = treats. And by not giving treats for 20% of uninitiated kisses, he’s made Cairo get confused about the rules of the game. And Cairo can give kisses until the end of time - he would sit on my partner’s shoulder and just keep giving kisses for a good 15 minutes.

I already warned him (trust me, we’ve butted heads over this and other training) that Cairo doesn’t get why 20% is missing. And when Cairo puts pressure on his fingers, my partner goes, “OW!” And either then gives in with a treat or puts Cairo in time out. It’s terribly inconsistent on his part, and tbh I’ve been trying my hardest not to hold it against my partner. I understand why Cairo bites then attacks on step up request (biting for the treat expectation, then attacking for the time out expectation*).

Now, if Cairo wants to play a sound game, I do let him. He can initiate with a fun sound (clucking like a chicken) but I don’t give a treat ever for uninitiated tricks that he knows solidly. I instead ask for one of his other trick sounds (“motorcycle”), and we progress happily from there within the rules of the game (I ask first, Cairo does, treat happens). I think because of that, Cairo doesn’t get upset if I don’t give him a treat. I keep the rules consistent and clear for him to understand I’m not cheating him.



Triggered Biting

When Cairo got really hormonal, he no longer gave my partner any chance. Cairo would give me warning, gently pushing my finger away with no pressure at all. And I would listen (birdie doesn't want to interact right now). My partner didn’t really heed those initial warnings, so Cairo just learned to chomp down in order for my partner to listen to him (leave me alone, human).

When Cairo first starting getting really bad hormonal, I staged some training sessions between him and my partner outside on neutral territory. After that Cairo started giving gentle warnings again sometimes (not all the time - I don’t think the trust is won back just yet, but he’s willing to give chance maybe 60% of the time).

My partner, however, always yelps/shouts when he gets bitten :/ I had been trying to tell him not to give such reaction, but just immediately say, “no bite” and let me put Cairo in time out. Unfortunately Cairo recognises the phrase “no bite” as “we’re going to time out now in the cage”, so just saying those words can upset him to the point of aggression. When he gets upset at us, sometimes he would growl, "no bite!"

Our new game plan is to not say “no bite”, maybe just calmly say, “no, dear”, and just calmly remove him. My ultimate goal is to avoid these situations entirely by tackling this the originating cause, rather than teach “no bite”. Cairo already knows how to not bite and how to gently express himself. We just have to train him to trust us to be reliable humans.


*Step Up Problems

For stepping up, we actually kinda ruined it for him. He was perfectly fine with stepping up without hesitation. But then sometimes when he’d fly to a place he wasn’t supposed to be, we wouldn’t even give him the option. We’d get a step up then put him on his “perch” or “balcony” the first few times. If he kept repeatedly going to a no-go place, after repeatedly putting him on his yes-go places, we would ask for a step up and put him in his cage for a few minutes. Then start again. We would also force a step up if he put too much beak pressure, then immediately put him in his cage. So because of using step up during times of correction often leading to cage time out, he’s gotten a negative association with it. In fact, when he gets upset at us, he sometimes will still growl, “step up!” at us. Purely our mistake, not his fault on building that kind of association.


I’m really trying to build everything ground up from a positive approach (opportunity for negative interaction forbidden). Luckily Cairo’s recall is spot on even when he’s upset (he’ll even recall to my partner - not something I advise unless I’m at work and he’s trying to interact with Cairo).


Struggles are:

1. My partner says his sharp reaction is uncontrollable. This is a point I can’t argue with him (I’m not him, he’s not me - I just go silent when in pain).
2. Cairo’s visceral reaction to time-out exacerbates things. One part the reaction to step up, one part the reaction to “no bite”. All related to time out.

   
   When I take Cairo to put him in time-out, I sit him on my arm, so he can’t nail my fingers, and face him towards my stomach, so he can’t bite or fly off.
   
   However, I need some way for my partner to be able to handle Cairo when I’m at work (he keeps trying to interact with Cairo without understanding what will make Cairo upset - I love that he wants to work on their relationship, but it worries me).

For now, the ban of kissing remains. However, Cairo still self-initiates kisses, and my partner is still afraid to remove Cairo from his shoulder (the little guy just flies or climbs right up). *sigh


That being said, ignoring the kissing problem, yesterday was again a very good day for Cairo... it might have been the pellets after all.

Normally, you would want to thin the reinforcement out (change it to a variable ratio---AKA, roughly 1/2 of the time he gets a treat, then 1/4 of the time, then just occasionally--slot machine-style once acquisition occurs). That having been said,he is getting mad about the lack of reinforcement, which means he must really like whatever you are giving him.
I would try pairing a new stimuli with the treat so that it seems like a totally new "trick" (perhaps one that doesn't require so much up-close contact) and then quickly start thinning after the trick is mastered. You could also try playing a chime or clicking right before you are going to treat him (following the trick) so that you set the parameters for rewards..If you don't do your part, then technically the trick has not been completed and no treat is earned... I have to get stuff done for work but I will try to say more later.
If you know he will bite/attack, you can also try to put yourself in a position where you have an exit route or protection ahead of time--keep that in mind when giving kisses (if he has access to easy biting, that is a bad time to kiss). A ban and no shoulder time is good for now.

You are (potentially) in a position to teach him totally new tricks, as he clearly wants the food...but it does sound like there is some aggression and hormonal stuff going on.

Finally, if he does attack or something and he doesn't get the food or a reaction, then I think he will eventually learn that he cannot bully you into rewarding him, but that may take some time.
The only time you ever want to give 1:1 reinforcement is when a skill is brand new. After that, you need to start thinning and you want to keep things a bit unpredictable so that no expectation exists and so that satiation doesn't occur.

My advice, when Cairo goes to your husband and kisses him, have your husband immediately cue some other trick and reward THAT trick instead.
That's how we dealt with the same issue while we were potty training the boys. We didn't want to give treats every time they pooped on their perch so instead we'd say Good Boy for the poop then immediately cue a "Hi Yoda!" Or Turnaround, something they were very likely to respond to correctly. Essentially we trained them that if they fly to their perch, poop then beg, it was their way to get attention and training time.

Looks like, for the most part, you've recognized where the issues are and what needs to be done. So it's largely a matter of time and consistency to get his behavior where you need it to be.

Regarding the biting, while he may understand the concept of acceptable bite pressure, that is step one. The completion of that training is when he can be made to reliably understand that biting is not acceptable. When you (or your partner) can reliably expect that you will not be bitten by your bird... absent circumstances of extremity, of course. A bird in pain may bite the heck out of you, for instance. Or a bird that has just been through a trauma. But those hardly count as a breakdown of bite-pressure training.

Neither of my birds has bitten me in years, (never for Jolly, and Maya only once, around four years ago) but I still don't consider Maya's beak pressure training complete. Why? Because while she understands beak pressure very well, I still can't be reasonably confident she won't bite my wife or children.

As for the struggles:
1) I wouldn't say his reaction is uncontrollable. It's just something he has not learned to control yet. And I'm not saying this judgmentally. My wife, for instance, had an easier time controlling her reaction to things than I did. It's not even about pain threshold. I just react. And my natural reaction is to get whatever the heck is causing me pain as far away and as fast as physically possible. Obviously not an ideal reaction for someone who is going to keep parrots, right? So I had to make a focused effort to change my mindset in that regard. It is not easy. But it can be done.

2) Cairo's visceral reaction to timeout. Yeah, this one's tough. On one hand, his hating timeout is pretty much necessary to the process. People with birds who would rather be left alone have a much tougher time of it, training-wise. But Cairo sounds like he has that famous ekkie stubborn streak. (Maya has it too. I remember how hard it was to train her to get off my finger once she was on. Even to the point of just flipping backwards and upside down whenever I tried using the perch against her chest to get her off. Lol! Needless to say, I needed to rethink my strategy.)

I would suggest strategic training, here. Yes, if stepping up 'always' seems to lead to timeout, it makes sense that would lead to a negative connotation in his head. But what you can do to offset that is to initiate a sure-fire activity immediately upon bringing him out of timeout. So, you'd have him step up, encourage him enthusiastically once he does, and then have him practice an activity that he usually gets right. Then treat away. Then put him down on his tree/play stand, and then have him step up again to another round of praise, possibly even a treat, and then back to another sure-fire activity. Wash-rinse-repeat.

The intention here is to have a bunch of positive interactions for him to associate with stepping up.

Oh, and I personally wouldn't change the 'no' command. My opinion, but while he responds negatively to it, he does obviously understand that it is your way of expressing that his behavior was not acceptable. And the fact he throws it back at you when he's annoyed with something you've done is actually awesome! Not so much the aggression that comes with it, I know, but still! He's actually speaking to you contextually! He's communicating to you, in your own language, that you're pissing him off! Lol! I know I'm a bit obsessed with contextual communication, but the intelligence involved there just wows me every time.

The fact that your partner is fully motivated to work with Cairo is a beautiful thing. Especially after getting repeatedly nailed! His technique and consistency needs to be worked on, no doubt. But it's easier to work on that than to try to drum up interest where there is none. But yes, he'll need to try his best to enforce that no shoulder rule. There is just too much damage that can come of a biting bird up on one's shoulder. Cairo's not exactly a budgie or cockatiel.

And I'm so glad that Cairo had another good day, yesterday! Each day is a foundation for the next, right? And by the way, Charmed, I think you are an exceptional parront. Cairo's lucked out with you.

Thanks, guys! A lot to think about and digest. We already started to implement a few recommendations this evening when I got back from work. I think, even though we're still working through planning/syncing on a lot of stuff, just the new suggestions y'all made contributed to a Good-Cairo-Day No. 4.

He's a much happier bird now, and my partner is happy (though reserved) to see the old Cairo shine through.