First walk!

[Quantumcat]

I have spent a long time trying to get Scarlett to not mind her harness. All the hard work is paid off now! I took her with me for a walk to the local shops to buy bread and milk. She was incredibly well-behaved, she did not pick at her harness once and let several people give her a pat without complaining. When I first took her out, she flew off twice and came to an abrupt halt at the end of the leash, I hope it didn't scare her too much! I brought a pocketful of sunflower seeds with me, intending to give her one every thirty seconds/minute but she was so interested in her surroundings she didn't even notice me holding seeds right in front of her beak!
When we first got the harness I tried taking her for a walk immediately but she spent the whole time trying to bite off the harness and fell off me several times because she was spending so much concentration on trying to bite it off she hadn't enough left to remember to hang onto me. But, those days are gone now and I can look forward to taking her for a walk every day!
By the way, if taking her for a very long walk or an outing to town, what should I do about her toilet needs? She has three or four places in the house she is allowed to poo. 'Hanging-on' for longer than an hour will probably be very unhealthy and that's what she'd try to do. She 'hung on' the whole walk this morning and that was about half an hour.

 

[HRH Di]

Wow, hard work paid off. I'm glad this worked out for you.

As for the potty needs...do you use any vocal cues when she goes at home? You could teach her to go while holding her out over some grass or something and say "potty" or whatever.

 

[Aussie Ben]

Awesome! Great Work!

I am so excited about harness training and CAN'T WAIT to take Eddie on walks with me. I was supposed to start training the harness a month ago, but have been so held up with other stuff. You have now inspired me to get off my bum and do it lol. Which harness are you using... Aviator?

Eddie does the same thing with holding poop in. He only likes to go in his cage or on his stands. He once held it for 1 1/2 hrs on a vet trip. I'm thinking I'm gonna have to add a verbal command like Di suggested.

 

[Quantumcat]

Yeah I guess I will have to specifically teach her to 'go' over tissues or something before I take her for any long outings.

It's not an aviator, it's a feather tether. I wish I had been more patient and not bought the first thing I saw, cause I found out you can get aviators for $35 US and free postage worldwide. I paid $50 for the feather tether at a petshop, and with the US and aussie dollars the way they are the aviator would probably be only $40. I might get one anyway and give the feather tether to my boyfriend's sister for her galah.

 

[etse20]

I trained Willie to 'go' on trash cans. He does that on command when we're out, just hold him on top of a trash can and tell him to poop.

 

[Bobby34231]

Well good on ya, glad the percerverance paid off , as for the potty question, I've found that if anytime I observe my birds doing their thing, I give out a somewhat excited call of "Poop" , it gets them to asscociate the word with the act, if you have your bird on your shoulder, arm or hand, what you can do is about every 15 minuets or so, hold the bird away from your body, or place it on an object such as a perch or cage top ect and say the word "Poop", it may take time, but I've found it to work with most birds that I've worked with, good luck with that