Birds and touching (making harnessing impossible)

[FeatherKaeru]

I have a question. What is flooding ? It doesn't sound very nice to do to a parrot. I hope you try seeing things from your birds point of view. Obvious we are large alien like creatures to parrots. Who usually tend to invade their bubble space, don't understand what feather one is trying to say. Insist on touching my feathers I just cleaned and etc. I will tell you from expeirence. Patience is your best bet in getting trust, allowing you to harness him. 4 of my GCC I can touch and handle. One who I lost trust with. Happens to be one of the smartist and loveable birds. When I did have that bond/trust. So, earning it back one little step at a time is the building blocks to achieve it. And just today. He allowed me to rub his beak as he stuckout his tongue. without biting my fingers. Which was a nice feeling. I call that some progress. Would like to thank Wolf for some of his guidance

[Wolf]

I don't know if there has been an exact definition set to the term or not, I am still pretty new to this parrot thing myself, so there is a lot that I don't know. The term is usually used in training of your bird and it primarily refers to the act of forcing the bird to confront its fears head on. An example of this would be a bird the is afraid of your hands so you grab the bird and hold it until it quits struggling. It also refers to useless repetitive actions usually used as a punishment for minor infractions set by owner. An example would be laddering, which is repeatedly making the bird to step from one hand to the other hand because the bird is not responding to training cues.
Someone else will probably come along with a better definition of this term.

[Pajarita]

Well, no, the definition of flooding is when you allow the bird no choice in the matter but to accept what you want. It's imposing our will on them without allowing the bird any recourse.

For example, the old methods of taming a bird were to towel the bird and touch it all over until the bird no longer fought your hands and to take a bird to an unfamiliar, small, dark space using their fear as a training tool, to clip their wings so they would feel completely vulnerable, to deprive them of food so they have no choice but to come to us for it, etc. etc. etc. See what I am talking about? It's not about respecting the bird's wishes, winning its trust and bonding it to us by love, it's about control and to show them 'who's boss' and nothing else.

These methods all work in the short term because the survival instinct takes over but it most certainly does NOT build trust and, as Wolf stated, trust is the foundation of a long-lasting good relationship between any animal and its human. We no longer use these methods with dogs (well, except that idiot Cesar Milan), horses or any other animal except the poor show ones but, for some reason, they are still used by a few bird keepers although, to be fair, it's usually the newbies because the older ones have realized that flooding backfires in the long term.

[FeatherKaeru]

Flooding sounds so forceful. Maybe we should look at each parrot as a individual. That each bird will have different progress in bonding and training.And what will work for one will not work for another. Cause I've noticed 3 of my birds are out going & love cuddles more. While my 2 of my birds are shy only like scritches on their terms. But, one of the shy parrots love to dance and sing. While the other one likes to get kisses on the head and hang up side down like a bat. So, their shell is slowly opening up.


P.S. Good luck on your progress with your bird. Try to imply some of the advice Pajarita and wolf said. I have, my little Kaeru (mind you, he has hated my guts for about a year) is opening up. May be a little bit. It is better then nothing ^-^

[Wolf]

Parrots are intelligent and sentient creatures and each one of them is a unique individual like no other parrot in the entire world. They have their own thoughts and feeling about everything in their world. And in this respect they are no different than we are, except that we don't have feathers.
Speaking of our relationship with these delightful creatures, I would have to say that the majority of the problems that we experience are due to our lack of respect for them and the scope of their intellectual and emotional capabilities. Instead of asking them we try to force our will on them. By doing this and not listening to their attempts to communicate with us, we force them into a situation where their only recourse is to bite us in protest and in self defense. Then we further demean and insult their intelligence by attempting to lie to them. It is my opinion that none of these actions are endearing to them, nor conducive to the fostering of trust and any meaningful relationship with them or any other intelligent species for that matter.
When I want to get you to do certain actions, I come to you and explain what it is that I want and ask you to do these actions and when you are reluctant to comply for whatever reason that may be, again I come to you to find out how to get your agreement in accomplishing these actions and I do this exact same thing with each of my birds. What is the most amazing to most people is that by using this approach, my birds seldom refuse my requests of them. They will say no if I don't respect them and attempt to deceive them or force my will on them instead of being honest with them and asking them for what I want of them.

[Pajarita]

Yes, I agree 100% with Wolf. Lack of respect is at the root of all and any problem that we could have with our birds because even lack of knowledge of their physiological and emotional needs implies disregard for them. And, yes, FeatherKaeru, flooding IS forceful. But it's deceptively so and people don't usually think of the techniques as been forceful because, in their mind, it's not as if they are beating the bird or anything.