So I've had Sadie, my Senegal, for over a month now. I am in love with her and she is in love with me. It is wonderful, I absolutely adore her and am so happy I have her here with me. But we are running into issues now. At first, Sadie was receptive to everyone who tried to interact with her. Now that she has chosen me as her favorite person, she is aggressive towards all other people - including my boyfriend. I have read the article by Kathleen on the subject, but I'm afraid it's not addressing my specific issue. I live with my boyfriend (and have for more than 2 years). My boyfriend was totally into the idea of getting a bird at first. He actually read the entire book on parrots that I bought before we got her. She was supposed to be "our" bird, but she is turning out to only be "my" bird. He does not feed her, change her water, clean her cage. I do it all. He works more than I do, I work 25-30 hour weeks (along with full time college out of summer - much of which I do online) and he works 45+ hour weeks so I can understand on that level why he doesn't help out much. But this week I really noticed how bad it has gotten. He is just not into Sadie. I think he may even hate her. When we leave the room, she chirp-screams, and he just rolls his eyes or mutters "shut up". Last night, he had a dog we're sitting performing the command "speak" over and over and over and I told him to stop because the bird was sleeping. I was pretty shocked with his response of, "Always with the bird, who cares?" I've noticed many ladies on here have husbands/boyfriends/fiances that are just not into their parrots and I guess I'm just looking for ways that you deal with that. It's heartbreaking to me. He tries to interact with her sometimes, but his efforts fall when Sadie bites him every time. I told him to try just talking to her for a few minutes before you try to have her step up, but it's like he doesn't even want to try, because he said "that sounds stupid". Every time I walk by Sadie or interact with her, I talk or sing to her and I find nothing awkward or "stupid" about it. I think I'm just going to have to accept that 2 of my loves will not get along. He will not put the effort into it for a bird that bites him and she will not stop biting him if he doesn't put the effort into it. ALSO, I can't believe I neglected to mention this earlier, but it seems as if the breeder was a single female, and the lady who hand fed Sadie was a single female as well. Sadie let my sister pet her, but not my dad or my boyfriend. I think she has a bias towards males and what is happening now is not helping the matter.
And before anyone suggests it: I am not leaving my boyfriend! lol. I know he sounds like a total d-bag here, but this is the only severe disagreement we've ever had and he really is great to me in every (other?) aspect of our relationship.
I wasn't sure whether to put this in "parrot tales" or "taming & training". Feel free to move it.
by Brittanyv326 » Fri Jul 02, 2010 9:55 pm 
She's much better now that Jer and I live together. There's no escaping him now. She's stopped the squawking for the most part. She just nips him any chance he gets. 
