lac575 wrote:So my question is, how do we get him used to being touched so that we can work on the pre-harness training stuff? we ordered an aviator harness which came with a DVD. Have you seen it? do you agree with the methods used? It is stuff like placing our fingers over his eyes and handling his wings that we need to accomplish before we can harness train itself. We do not even know where to start with that stuff because we do not want to screw things up by pushing him.
The DVD include with the harness isn’t particularly methodical. It’s more about just which way to orient the harness and how it goes on properly. My
Harness Training DVD is about how to use positive reinforcement training to teach a bird to wear a harness voluntarily. The manual that comes with a car may tell you how the car operates but doesn’t teach you how to drive.
Now this harness training DVD presumes that you know how to train your parrot, your parrot knows how to train, and the parrot has been desensitized to being touched and handled. How to get to that point (and lots of other things) are covered in my book,
The Parrot Wizar’s Guide to Well-Behaved Parrots.
Now as for “bonding”, this happens in its own in an unexplainable way. And it either happens or it doesn’t. You can’t necessarily know why or to whom or if it will at all. However, training ensures that the bird can at least learn to tolerate and behave appropriately with you and others. Also, and more importantly, when you follow the proper training methodology that I teach, it also prevents you from making dumb mistakes (like punishment for example) and ensuring that the bird is uncomfortable with you and doesn’t bond! This is why it’s never too early to start at least some light training and the bird does not have to be bonded beforehand.
By the end of September I am starting my next weekly webinar course on harness training (which starts from zero training knowledge) and goes to a fully voluntarily harness wearing parrot in about 3 months. It runs weekly Wednesday at 2:30PM EST for most of the fall and helps maintain the proper training pace. Let me know if you’d like an invite to this. DVD is on your own pace and the webinar series is a structured and guided pace of training exercises. Depends how you prefer to learn.