Toilet training in 9 days ?

[sidech]

Hello,

I've had my 3 months old baby Brown head for 9 days today. He was adjusted to his new home in a matter of minutes. Really easy to handle by me and my two kids. Happy go lucky kind of little bird, he is not even scared of the dogs (he's never left unsupervised around them, of course).

So, I wanted to toilet train him, as poop is an annoying issue with a bird, especially went you want to give it freedom in the house, to a certain extent. I decided I was going to teach him to poop on a piece of recycled paper, and so I did that. Well, about 2-3 days ago, he started to go almost on command. I put him on his paper, say " go poop ", until he does (sometimes takes almost 10 minutes, and he moves around a bit, and I reposition him when I see he's ready), and when he does, his treat is that he gets to come on my shoulder (he loves that).

Well, for two-three days nows, he's been doing it really quick when I tell him, and the poops are small, as if he was only doing it to please me. 2-3 times in a row.

Do you think it's only a coincidence, or is he really getting it ? It's the first time I train my parrot, before I didn't really know you could. Also, he seems to understand when I say " NO ".

What do you think ?

Thanks

[Michael]

A) They don't understand NO... it's more of a distraction from what they are doing so they might stop for a moment and it seems like they understand

B) It's possible that he's potty trained but then again young parrots poop very frequently so it could just be coincidence. Coincidence or not, it sounds good

[sidech]

Thanks Michael.

I don't really think he is trained yet, but I think he is getting the concept. I have housetrained tons of dogs, and I'm used to the whole thing taking from 2 months to a year (small dogs are really stubborn), so I'm not ready to quit.

Is it that they don't understantd " NO ", or just don't care about listening ? Since parrots are able to learn language, at least in some ways, I figure they would get that it means " don't do what you are doing ", although they are not going to oblige you by stopping ?

I'm just trying to make parallels with other animals, like dogs and cats, which I know a whole lot better than parrots.

[Michael]

The issue is that for parrots, vocalizations and attention are positively reinforcing. The parrot may do a little of the bad thing repeatedly just to get to hear you say no. Saying "no" to a parrot is in absolutely no way bothersome (unless coupled with punishment). So at best you are momentarily distracting the parrot from whatever it is doing and at worst actually positively reinforcing it for it.

Think about a baby throwing a toy on the floor just to pick it up (heck, or even a parrot). Every time you pick it up, just throws it back down cause watching you have to pick it up is fun. That's what can happen with saying no for something.

[sidech]

Ok, good analogy.

So how do I stop my parrot from doing something I don't want him too ? Is there any other choice besides removing the object ? (in my case, I'm thinking about the spiral cord of the telephone, which Zoulou likes to chew on).

Simplest thing is to just put the phone on the floor when he's with me at the desk. I can do that no problem. Unless there is something else more effective that I should do.

[Michael]

There are only two ways of getting a parrot to stop doing something (ok the third is hurting or killing it but we're not going there):

1) Prevention - i.e. hiding things, keeping your parrot out of reach of them, etc
2) Extinction - Basically let them play so much with it that they just get bored of it. Buy an extra phone cord and let the parrot plays with it till it is sick of seeing phone cords (with a phone cord only do it supervised though cause it could get strangled in it).

If we're talking about a behavior rather than an object, say biting, the same applies. If a parrot bites when you try to remove it from shoulder, avoid putting it on shoulder to prevent those bites. Extinction would be that you do put that parrot on the shoulder and just take the bite when you take it off and show that you don't care and are going to take it off the shoulder when you want to regardless of whether it bites or not. Eventually it will give up the biting cause it is futile. This is more of an example of flooding actually but you get the idea.

In other words prevention is least harmful but doesn't actually solve the problem but rather avoids it. Extinction eliminates it all together but results and timespans are not guaranteed.

[sidech]

Ok, prevention and extinction. I had one of those right, the other one makes sense.

Thanks !

By the way, I'm new to this forum, and I find it very informative, well organized and most of all, you get great answers to your questions !