Parrots, the same as dogs

[Michael]

The bird wants to go to those places and you guys are being the jerk that makes bird not be able to be there. Not only something that causes the nip but also makes you bad in the eyes of the parrot. The best solution is to prevent the problem in the first place. Training, toys, busyness, time management...

[Wolf]

Well Michael brought up a valid point in that prevention is the best way to deal with this. If the things that you don't want the bird to chew on are not accessible to her the problem would cease to exist. And yes, these are natural behaviors for Penny so you are in fact the bad guy in the birds eyes, and her nips are her trying to tell you that.

Now, I was working on the assumption that there was no other place to play with Penny in. Also that by distracting her with a treat that she might accept the treat as a reasonable trade and no one has to be the bad guy. I have no other place to work with and play with mine because of the small size of my house and this was the method that I used and everybody is good with it. The bird still gets something to chew on so she is happy with this trade. I have since built a tree for them and this seems to eliminate the entire problem for the most part as they play on the play areas on top of their cages or on the tree or on the floor or on us. They by far prefer to be on us.

[Pajarita]

Well, for one thing you need to explain to him that 'trying' for a few hours (or a few days or a few weeks and, sometimes -it depends on the damage done- a few months) doesn't work with parrots. Parrots timetables are completely different from humans'. What to us seems a reasonable length of time, it's nothing to them. It's the way it is with undomesticated prey animals... they are VERY distrustful and once we screw up, it takes a long time for them to trust us again. They are also not 'grateful' animals -LOL- It's not that they are not, they are, it's only that they don't regard good treatment as something to be grateful for -LOL

Now, as to the nipping AFTER she steps up. For one thing, it's normal and natural behavior. My birds do it, too. It all goes back to their not accepting bosses. For example, my Senegal loves to steal fruit from the canaries cages, tip over their clean bath bowls before I put them in and climb all over their cages (now that the days are long, she can come out early in the morning to 'help me'). She means them no harm but she scares them so, every now and then, when she is been worse than usual, I have to ask her to step up and put her on my shoulder - and she doesn't like this so, she does step up and, almost immediately after, she would pinch the skin on my hands (particularly the knuckles) and just look at me while holding the skin in her beak to let me know she is NOT happy about it -LOL. All I do is put my face close to hers and looking into her eyes say: "Awwww, Zoey girl, be nice to momma, baby!" She immediately lets go of the skin (not that she even nips, mind you).

Like I said before, the trick is to find the way of doing what you need to do without getting hurt or traumatizing the bird so I suggest you get yourself a T perch (it's just two sticks put together in the shape of a T - the bird perches on the horizontal stick and you hold on to the vertical one) and use it whenever you have to remove her from a place where you don't want her to be. As she steps on it, praise her and tell her what a good girl she is, make kissy noises or whatever it is that you do to indicate your love to her and have a little treat ready in a pocket and, when you put her down in a 'good' place, give her the treat. This will prevent her from nipping you and, as she learns to anticipate the treat and gets used to not nipping in the process, you will eventually be able to use your hand. She will be happy and you (and your boyfriend) will be happy.

The thumb and index finger thing is called 'flicking', I think (English is also not my first language).

[cml]

Well, for one thing you need to explain to him that 'trying' for a few hours (or a few days or a few weeks and, sometimes -it depends on the damage done- a few months) doesn't work with parrots. Parrots timetables are completely different from humans'. What to us seems a reasonable length of time, it's nothing to them. It's the way it is with undomesticated prey animals... they are VERY distrustful and once we screw up, it takes a long time for them to trust us again. They are also not 'grateful' animals -LOL- It's not that they are not, they are, it's only that they don't regard good treatment as something to be grateful for -LOL

I agree 100% with Pajarita here.
What your significant other thinks is him putting an effort in is nothing, because these things take time. An evening, or even a few weeks is not going to see a difference in any likelyhood.
I dont say this to be harsh, or diminish the efforts your boyfriend was making, but because its the truth. I suspect you already realise this, as you seem to be a reasonable person from your posts, and seem very willing to learn and do the best by your parrot.
You, as in both you and your BF, needs to work on these issues for a long time, and it will be a tough process.

Reverting nipping isnt impossible though, Ive worked through biting (I havnt read all of this thread but nipping to me isnt breaking blood, nor a very hard bite) from Stitch and turned it around. It took us months though, and lot of blood loss. I am not kidding, his bites broke skin almost everyday and I have the scars to prove it . The biting was a result of dealing with nipping in the wrong way, inadvertantly reinforcing bad behaviour - much as you are doing now.

How to deal with your situation is a thread of its own, but some quick advice on how to avoid reinforcing bad behaviour (in this case biting):

*Dont put yourself in situations where a nip/bite is likely but learn to work around it. This means from what Ive read and understood that you will need to redecorate and take parrot proofing measures to ensure your parrot doesnt get to places you feel you have to remove it. Less biting means your parrot wont learn to use biting as much.

*Practice on seeing the signals that lead up to the nipping: It can be puffed feathers, a change in the parrot's stance, pupils getting smaller or pinning and many other different things! You will learn to read your bird, trust me .

*Re-inforce GOOD behaviour and praise and treat your parrot when its doing the right thing, such as stepping up without biting! Use positive reinforcement, I reccommend you to read up on Michael's blog http://www.trainedparrot.com/taming. Targeting is an invaluable training tool which you can use to get your parrot to step up WITHOUT nipping as it will be pre-occupied with something else.

*Keep talking with your BF, its important that he understands all this and that you two are on the same page. Consistancy is very important with parrots.

*Finally, realise these things will take time. You havnt failed because it can take months, infact I am sure you will succeed !

[Elaihr]

Hello again,

A big thanks to all of you for your replies!

I've considered everything you've written, and since I last wrote I've both been talking to my boyfriend, and tried different approaches to see what works best with Penny.

After telling my boyfriend that I had written in these forums to get advice, and then told him what you all said (I skipped the parts about him needing psychological help though, he's already in therapy for anxiety issues so um, no need to add more pressure), and it seems like he finally understood that I hadn't just been talking rubbish because I'm too "nice" to show her who's in charge. I also told him that there's a very big difference between dogs, cats and parrots, as both dogs and cats are carnivores whereas parrots are prey animals. When I told him this it was like flicking a switch, he seemed to find this argument rational and understood that one can't approach all animals in the same way. In a dog - owner relationship a struggle can be more "fair", the dog is a carnivore and can potentially hurt a human badly, and vice versa. Note that I am not saying that it's ever okay to hit even the most fierce of carnivores, I think all human - animal relationships should be based on trust, but in cases where you and your dog get into a conflict I don't think it's super harmful to sound and look angry. With a parrot however it must be completely different, as they are prey animals. If an enormous creature (one you don't know very well yet, at that) comes toward you, growling and showing their teeth, it's probably very scary. After all, being eaten is one of the possible outcomes in the world of a prey animal.

We also agreed that whenever Penny does something we do not like, he will just leave it be and I will take care of it. This is because I'm sure that even though I'm no pro, and might not always succeed in stopping said behavior immediately, I at least have enough knowledge from previous experience to not do something that will break the trust between us and Penny. He will only do positive things, like giving treats during training and giving scritches. I'll do that too (of course) but he's not allowed to intervene if she does anything she shouldn't. If he finds something troublesome he'll tell me, and I'll take care of it. Does this sound like a reasonable solution? It was the best I could come up with for the time being, at least.

Regarding prevention, I am doing my best to keep her occupied and stimulated, and I have done so since the moment I got her. I therefore don't think this was the main problem. I tried covering our TV with a blanket though, and she lost interest in it. Now I've even taken away the blanket, but she shows no interest for the TV at all! Seems like it worked out okay The same goes for our bookshelf, where she used to display nesting behavior. The nesting behavior in itself wasn't very troublesome, the only issue was her chewing my books (I'm studying and some of them aren't even mine, they're the library's!). I put towels in all shelves to cover the books, and it seems to work out pretty well. When she goes to try chewing on most things I've figured she's only really interested in discovering what it is, once she's figured something out it's not that interesting anymore. Therefore I took out the metal inside my old headphone cord, then gave her the cord. She chewed on it for ten seconds, then dropped it. Now she won't even touch my new headphones, I guess she had them "figured out" and has her mind set on finding new, more interesting things to chew.

I think it was Wolf who wrote about the issues with having a small home, that's exactly our case! Right now it isn't very problematic, but I've found out it sometimes makes training a little bit difficult, as there's many interesting, distracting things around. Our kitchen is the least stimulating room we have, so I've been trying to train her using a kitchen chair as a perch. She must like it, 'cause now she flies to the kitchen, perches on the chair, then starts clicking! It's really cute, and I'm glad she enjoys the clicker She also sometimes does this right after she's eaten, so I really think it must be because it's fun and not only because she's hungry and gets treats for it I try to not let her go hungry, I don't like the starving methods some people use And oh, I'm not thinking of Michael's weight/food management, I've read about that and it seems okay, I'm thinking of actually starving your bird, I've heard some people do this.

As for the screaming, it was really only something she did when she first got here and my boyfriend came home. I think I already wrote this, but in her previous home they had a dog, and both the dog and Penny would go bananas when someone rang the doorbell or entered the house, and the owners promoted this behavior as they found it amusing. What we've done since we got her is that we simply ignored her screaming (we absolutely didn't start cheering, like they did, lol) and today she's begun only chirping when someone comes home. So that's not an issue anymore, I just mentioned it as I think that was what made my boyfriend frustrated in the first place.

Actually everything seems to have gotten better since my boyfriend calmed down and realised the problem lied with him and not with neither her nor me. My guess is that Penny could feel his frustration (no shit, he was pretty obvious about it) and therefore acted worse when he was home than when I was alone with her. Now that he's calmer and working on himself and his own feelings instead, I think both him and Penny seem more happy and at peace. He's doing his best to treat her well, and luckily she seems to be a very forgiving parrot, she has given him a second chance. I don't think I can describe with words how thankful I am for this!

And indeed Pajarita, I told him the very same thing the instant he said it! It was actually kind of funny because he's really only used to dogs, and veeeeeery treat-happy dogs at that. Like, my family's dog, for instance. Give her a treat, she'll love you till the end of time. Very simple. His mom's dog is exactly the same. Luckily I think he's now also found the charm in parrots. It can be hard to earn their trust and you don't always get along, but it's all well worth the struggle in the end. I actually think this is what makes a human-animal relationship interesting and rewarding, knowing that you really had to work for it to develop. How much fun would it be if you got everything you asked for immediately? I think one would stop appreciating the satisfaction in working hard and then getting rewarded for it

[Wolf]

Hi !
I am so happy to hear from you again and that things are moving in the right direction for all of you. It might have cut down on some of the boyfriend needing help if it had come out earlier that he actually was doing that, anxiety issues can be very problematic to deal with and actually this goes a very long ways in answering the why he was doing the things that he did. I know that I was not out to offend, but we also love our birds and are very protective of them and because of this it extends to your bird as well, whenever we speak of her. If I was rude or otherwise out of line, I am sorry.
If I can help in the future please let me know.

[Elaihr]

Hi Wolf,

It's totally alright, he wasn't acting in a tolerable way, with or without issues! Problems can always be an explanation as to why people behave in a bad way, but they are not an excuse. So, no offense taken, I agree with you that one must protect ones pets, I mean, just imagine having children. No matter how bad you feel, it must never be taken out on them, and the same goes for animals. At least in my opinion I also realised I might have made you very worried by describing how he was acting, and I felt like I had to explain why he was acting like this, so that you won't have to worry that an animal is being abused. I too would be worried if I heard of someone else doing such things that he did, heck, I was worried myself. I also decided that IF he could not sort this out so that Penny would not end up being a part of his problems, I would have to let her move to another family where people are completely mentally stable. I also told my boyfriend this and he knows how much she means to me, so right now he's really doing his best to make it work Rather than seeing her as another anxiety trigger, I think he's slowly learning to see her as a way to get rid of anxiety, he's become so much happier since he started working with Penny in a calm and nice manner, I think bonding with animals is one of the best cures there are!

[Wolf]

Hi again !
I agree that while problems such as your boyfriend has may help to explain the why of such behavior, it must never be accepted as an excuse for the poor behavior continuing. I think that it is a good thing if he is learning how much Penny can help him in dealing with his anxiety issues. Actually, pets are tremendously valuable in the treatment of this type of problem and are, while not prescribed as such, becoming more and more a recommendation in the treatment of mental health issues. I am glad that this is working for you and wish you nothing but the best.
As regards the, thankfully rejected, notion of finding a new home for Penny where the people were completely stable. I would have had to say good luck with that as I really think that that is a rarity.

[Pajarita]

Fabulous news!!! Parrots are actually very patient and forgiving of our mistakes and, once you start 'talking their language', their behavior changes radically. You are now on your way to a happy household with a well-adjusted and content parrot -Kudos to you and your boyfriend for been willing to adjust your way of thinking and seeing things from the bird's point of view!