Siobhan
New member
Rocky's saying more new things all the time and I don't understand all of them yet, but one of them is probably going to get us in trouble, LOL. He makes this gesture with his beak and if you don't respond, he says "Come 'ere!" He gives you several chances to obey. If you don't, he starts squawking, and the longer he has to wait, the louder the squawking gets. He can't fly because his feathers are in such bad condition and also he can't stand to be more than a foot or two away from his cage (it's the only constant in his life after all the homes he's had, I suppose). I'm trying to not jump and run every time he wants me to so that he'll learn that I will come, and he will get attention, but to not reinforce behaviors like screaming for attention. He's stepping down on request now and I'm using "step down" as the verbal cue and praising him effusively when he does it. He's intelligent and I don't think we'll have any real difficulty as long as we're all trying our best to figure each other out. He's even learning to put up with Hubby. The problem there is that he lived with an alcoholic whom I suspect was a violent drunk -- there's a huge dent in the front of his cage that he could not possibly be responsible for. Someone threw something at it/him. It's a California Cage, very sturdy, not easy to dent accidentally. And this man was roughly the same size and shape and coloring as Hubby. So, knowing that he's had a troubled past, I'm trying to teach him things gently and make him want to cooperate.
