Excellent question, I am very happy to hear of this good plan. It is easy, fun and good excercise.
My Emerald had been trained to come when called in door. This literally safe her life. While I took her outdoor for a walk one morning, she chewed her chain free. She then flew to pearch on the top of a few big trees. But during this accidental escape, she flew back to us, phewww......
In door flight, for Emerald, started from short distances to longer, more difficult ones. We train her every morning, before breakfast. This is when she is most alert.
Her wings were never clipped and had good excercises. Before training, she understood simple commands like good girl, Noooo, turned when called her name, and good night.
At the beginning, place all kinds of seeds for her to eat, once we notice which kind is her first pick every time.........That will be use as her reward in her recall training. (You can either call her name or use whistle.)
Here are the steps....
1) we started by encouraging her to fly from my hand to my spouse's hand.
let her choose her own comfortable distance. If she did not come when called, move closer.
We use seed as reward if she comes quickly when called. If not, let her rest. I also lower my hand on 3, as I count 123 after my spouse called Emerald.
2) increase the distance, once she get the idea, encourage her to fly to another room or at advance level, hide, so she follow the commanding voice. This took about 2to3 months to perfect.
3) reduce the seed and use praise as reward, at this stage she is more acrobatic and shows strong confidence in her flight. She fly from room to room in search for the caller. Here, we train her both morning and any time we can by every family member. We love seeing her new moves such as turning at a wide or sharp angle, or zigzag, or even infinity eight!
At bed time, I stand at the door saying to her " Emerald, good night" ...and she would fly to my shoulder so I can put her in her dark and quiet sleeping cage.
4) call from upstairs. After about 6th months of in door flight practice, we decided to let her go upstair.
To our surprise she was afraid of height. So we started step 1, again but this time, with the caller standing on the higher ground. And keep increasing the distance until she can master her fear. It took her only 1 month to fly upstairs. Each trip, she got a free ride on the shoulder of the caller to come down as a reward. (This stage, we only use praise and kisses and headscratches )
5) call from downstair. It turned out that she was comfortable standing on the shoulder as I walk down the stairs, but shaken with fear if I put her on my hand. When I lower my hand, she flew in circle and land on my shoulder. My bird's mind reading said, "let's go downstair with me on your shoulder as usual. I DON'T WANNA FLY DOWN. It's more difficult than flying up"
So I told her that, "I will not let go, just want to show you that it is ok" Then I said step-up and had her in my hand and walk down the stairs. On my hand, I could feel the tension on her legs got lesser every day. So each day, I increase the distance of my hand towards my left until I can stretch the whole arm.
Then for the next week, I moved my hand left and right, and higher up as I walk down the stairs. Until she no longer tense up standing on my hand as I go down the stairs, I knew she was ready. When called she could a couple of steps down on her own.
6) After about 8th months, she can fly confidently upstairs and downstairs to the caller. And if the door is opened for her, she can help wake some sleepy member up. From here, we take turn to practice calling her up or down stairs. At the beginning, I hear her shortness of breadth after only a couple of flights. But she got stronger, flying with more accuracy and speed as we practice each morning.
The process of indoor flight training was very easy, a lot of fun and bonding. We hope you will enjoy it as much as we do.
Also, I know this is just a subforum, I just typed really fast.
