The "One More Time" Rule

Dave and I have a saying, if you ever say, "That was great, let's do ONE MORE..." that you do NOT do one more, that you in fact put your bird away and stop training!!! Why? Because without fail, that next time is a total bust. And makes it nearly impossible to send on a high, and/or good note. I'm telling you, when you are feeling so happy and...
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Stop BABYING Your Bird! Let it FAIL! Don't Help, ENCOURAGE!

I've talked about this before, because it comes into play every single time we flight train a bird for outdoors. But the last time I really talked about it was years ago regarding an older Moluccan cockatoo, read the article here. I've never ever met a parrot owner that we haven't had to drill this lesson into. It's normal. It's hard for us, as...
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How to TRAIN Your Bird to Let You Pet Him

Can you actually TRAIN a bird to let you pet him on the head? Yep. You can. Is it really so hard to believe when people train goldfish to swim through hoops and dolphins to do double back flips (on cue)?  It's important to look at this training in a certain way: You are simply communicating to your bird through the language of training, what yo...
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Teaching BRAVERY To a Parrot

Just like raising a child, you want them to be confident beings, it's the same with your parrot - you NEED to teach bravery to instill confidence. A confident parrot is a much healthier parrot in body and mind.  When we bring these animals into our homes to live, there is so much that is crazy to ask them to be OK with: running, screaming childr...
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Can I Train a Macaw To Like ME in 1 Day?!

Long story short: Dave and I met this macaw, Amur, who immediately loved Dave for being a male and hated me for being a female.  I told myself, this is fine, I don't have to even work with this bird anyway.  ... right, self? Right?!  Um, have an entire day with this bird and not TRY to work with it? Yeah, that's not gonna happen! See bird, mu...
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How a Training Pouch SAVED My Training Sessions

First off, this is not an ad for this training pouch but seriously, it saved our training sessions recently.  MANY people fumble or lack coordination in holding treats, a clicker, a target stick, more treats... and then being able to actually use each of those tools successfully and timely!  I've heard of people attaching a clicker permanently...
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