Clicker Training - can't get to step one.

[flappybird]

What do you do when your parrot can't seem to correlate treats and clickers in the first place? Has anyone had any experience with this first step taking a really long time?

It doesn't help that my bird is 10 years old and I'm not sure how long it's going to take to undo the fact that she's gotten treats whenever her whole life for no reason. Any super super beginner tips would be appreciated. I'd previously tried using a target stick a couple times and she just doesn't really respond to it at all.

and Yes, I've watched Michael's videos and read his book, hehe. I'm just looking for reaffirmation that 10 years old is not too old to change their ways and that I will eventually get to do more with my bird. I want to prepare way ahead of time for harness training and the eventuality of flight and I have mild, initial fears that it won't work out.

[Wolf]

Parrots learn new things all of their lives, thankfully. Mimi learns new words and phrases nearly every day. She was abused and comes with a lot of baggage but is gradually healing and starting to do new things. She plays with toys, takes nuts from my Ladies hand and even wrestles with her. When she came to live here she was 14 years old and had never been allowed to touch a human for any reason, she had not been allowed to accept any treats from a hand and she was not allowed to come out of her cage. Her first three months here were spent screaming for as long as she was awake. She doesn't speak in parrot but she has a huge vocabulary and told us all about 7 of her birds friends all dying in front of her.
Most of my birds are 10 years or older and were abused in different ways and they all learn new things all of the time.
You could begin all over from stepping up to help with getting her used to treat in trade for doing something. Do 5 minutes before breakfast and then 10 minutes before dinner time to take advantage of when the bird is hungrier.
When she is responding to this you can introduce the stick which should be near her cage where she can see it but is not afraid of it. You may have to begin by touching her beak with it, then click and treat a few times until she starts touching the stick herself.

[Pajarita]

I don't use a clicker or a target stick, never have and don't plan on ever using them, either, so I don't have any experience or tips on how to achieve what you want. But all my birds are very well behaved, understand and obey a number of commands, and they all came to me from somewhere else and at an age that people consider 'older' (and the greatest majority of them had behavioral issues which have all been resolved), the only young one been a jenday that I adopted when he was 9 months old so, yes, they do learn even if they are no longer young.

If I may ask, exactly what is it that you are trying to teach the bird? Because I might be able to tell you how I would teach it without a target or a clicker...

[flappybird]

Well I'm not trying to teach her anything specifically right now except that clicker means treat (but the noise mostly startles her) and I had tried previously to use the target stick (literally just for touching and getting a treat) but we didn't get anywhere with that. The only reason I want to teach her these things is so that later on I have a way to teach her things that matter. Namely, harness training. I haven't gotten one yet but I feel like I'm not going to get anywhere with things like a harness or flight recall (later on when she can fly) if I can't direct her to do anything.

In addition, this may not be the right forum section to discuss this, but I'm worried about whether I'm spending enough quality time with Luna. By the end of the first week she was really excited when we got home but I feel like we went backwards a bit, she still wants to come out eventually, but mostly she doesn't come out right away like she used to, and instead starts eating frantically from her bowl when I come home (which has some pellets, her daytime food). I'm not sure why she's doing this. I try to be around her as much as possible when I'm home from work and in the morning, and I can tell she wants me around but without something like training for enrichment and entertainment, I'm not sure what else I can do with her.

[flappybird]

@Pajarita -

If you don't target train or anything similar, how do you get to the point whether they understand commands and such and stay well behaved?

[Wolf]

Although I know how Pajarita does it, I have never tried to put it in words. There are no training schedule as every interaction is a time for learning for both the bird as well as the human. It is much like teaching your children how to do things. When I have something to do that I can't have a bird hanging on me, I usually want them to hang out on their play top so at first I would put them there with a treat and tell them to stay and start my work. When the bird came looking for me I would pet it and talk to it while returning it to where I wanted it to be give it a treat and ask it to stay and go back to working. After doing this several times my birds began to associate the word stay with the act of remaining in the area that I placed them and started staying and amusing themselves for a while. When I wanted to teach them to come to me, I took advantage of the fact that they already wanted to be with me and would call them by name to come to me every time that they would start to fly to me until they started to come whenever I called to them. So for me it is just the natural process of communication, Pajarita has me beat with experience in this area and is probably used to describing it to others much more than I am.

[flappybird]

That makes sense... association and capturing / shaping. I just wish Luna gave me more to work with, but I guess that'll come with time. She's too content with just sitting in her cage doing nothing. Or sitting on the windowsill in the corner and not moving. It's strange..

[Wolf]

Well you haven't had her for very long, if I have read your posts correctly, so she is still a bit unsure of how to respond. Then again she could be a bit of a perch potato.

[Pajarita]

Well, Wolf is right but there are tricks. Like, for example, you need to stop free-feeding pellets because you need to establish what, exactly, is her highest-value food item. High value item is the one thing they cannot resist which is ALWAYS a high protein food so, when you free-feed high protein, you are not only not feeding right, you are also losing that very necessary training tool. So, start her on gloop, chop, mash or whatever you decide to feed her for breakfast and determine what is it that she loves best (I always recommend using nuts as in an almond sliver, for example). Once you do this, you can start training her.

For example, to train to recall. You sit to a table and put her as far as your arm would allow it and, holding the almond sliver in your hand (so she can see it) at the edge of the table, call her name and give the command (like: "Luna, come!"). She will walk the width or the length of the table to take it from your fingers and, as she is reaching for it, you praise, praise, praise ("Good girl, Luna! Good girl!) and give it to her. Do this three times in a row and no more. Then, later on, you do it again another three times and, when you see that she comes every single time without hesitating, you can start making the distance longer. I forget whether she can fly or not but, if she can, then you go into real flight recall by putting her on a perch and putting your hand with the almond just far enough she needs to jump to get to it. Once she is doing this consistently for a number of days, you start moving a bit away so she has to take a short flight. Then farther and farther... See what I mean? It's more a matter of consistency, persistence and finding the right reward than using a stick or a clicker.

She eats when you get home because birds eat when in flock and, most likely, she spends most of her day just perching there, doing nothing, waiting for company so she can feel safe enough to eat without worrying.

[flappybird]

She eats when you get home because birds eat when in flock and, most likely, she spends most of her day just perching there, doing nothing, waiting for company so she can feel safe enough to eat without worrying.

I came to that conclusion today, actually. It makes sense, I feel like she eats a little but mostly waits until we get home to eat a lot.

I didn't want to freefeed anything! But previously you all told me that she needed to have food in the cage all the time except for maybe at night. I want to feed her gloop/chop/fresh foods in the morning and night so that those are the meals she's excited about and then use small seeds or pellets for treats. I also plan on eventually making her some foraging toys and maybe getting ahold of some birdie skewers and dried fruit so she can have a food toy. The problem right now is that there isn't much room in her cage at all so I was kind of waiting to get her a new cage to start doing things like that. So far I've hung some birdie cornbread that I made her on a string under a paper coffee filter and she mostly just has fun tearing it to pieces. I don't think she even eats any of it, haha. Even when I've put some in her bowl she mostly just turns it into powder or small chunks.

My goal is to not freefeed or just treat her with pieces of dried fruit or veggies or foraging toys in small quantities, but that way when I get home she's eager to get whatever I'm giving her.

In other news, I took her in the shower this evening for maybe the third or fourth time since she's been here, and she actually seemed to enjoy it this time. I let her sit on my shoulder, which allows her to be closer to the water but not in it, and she didn't lean or pull away or try to get away she just kind of chirped a whole bunch and stared at it. I let her get a little closer and she got some spray and even tried to drink some, which was super encouraging. The only thing I probably should've done was to do that during the day with more sunlight outside so that we could go out after to dry off quicker. It's not cold in my house but I'm sure she doesn't appreciate being damp close to bedtime.