Can Bobbin be trained?

[kathis]

Hi all,

Wow, the differences between our Senegal (OG) and our new GCC (Bobbin) are unbelievable! OG was all sweetness all the time. Bobbin has definite moods. I have a couple of questions about some of her behaviors. We have two cages for her, one upstairs in our home office, and the other downstairs in the middle of all activity. This way she is with us when we are home almost all the time. We both work at home, so she has a lot of time with us. She also gets a lot of shoulder time as well us cuddle time with us. She loves me to cuddle her when I rock in the rocker.

The thing is, when she spends any time in either cage and we are not in the room with her, when we do go to get her she pops out of the cage immediately and paces back and forth on her perch with her feathers fluffed up and tail feathers fanned. If I try to pick her up she does bite. I have decided to just ignore her when she does this and wait until she calms down to pick her up, which works okay. Will she always have to show this disapproval when she thinks she has been left out? In a few months we will be traveling for 2 weeks, will she go nuts while we are away?

She does like other people. So far she has been a perfect angel around anyone that has come over. She absolutely loved both of my daughters when they came home for Thanksgiving.

She also gets a little nippy sometimes when we are holding her, especially at fingernails,ears and lips. I believe she is just "grooming" us but being a bit too aggressive. I have tried to ignore it, but it is really hard to ignore a bird that is clamping down on my lip. When I say "easy" she will usually back off, but we always feel on edge when she is loving us too closely.

I have tried to start training her to do tricks (turn around and wave, etc). She does not have any attention span at all. In the time it took me to train OG to turn around, wave, high five, shake hands and stretch, Bobbin has learned nothing, except that she likes the seed treats, LOL. I have tried to work with her at different times of the day, and when I know she is hungry, but so far no progress. I work with her on a T stand in the basement on our laundry table, where there are no distractions, but Bobbin manages to get distracted. She will hold a seed shell and munch on it for half an hour.

I know I shouldn't compare her to OG, as she is an entirely different personality. We love her to death, and find her antics adorable. Is there any hope for her being trained and nippy?

Thanks,

Kathi

[entrancedbymyGCC]

Well, the short answer is yes. The long answer is, well, long...

I haven't done much trick training with Scooter. He did not seem to find it particularly fun, and the treats weren't all that motivating it seems. He didn't turn them down, but his whole attitude seemed to be, "Can't we do something more fun?". It's not an inability to learn, he's smart enough, and I expect withholding food so that he was hungry might make him a little more willing to participate, but for me, the trick training isn't worth it unless it is mutual fun, so I have been holding off until I think I can start over with an emphasis on making it fun for him. They do seem a little... blonde.

The nippiness that is an expression of over-enthusiastic preening -- we were able to get rid of that pretty much completely within the first couple of weeks with Scooter. He was already almost a year old when we got him, but with minimal socialization. All we did was detach him when necessary, put him in the cage or on the playstand if he got really wound up, say "be gentle" and maybe do a minor earthquake or other very mild deterrent if he started to get a little rough, and most importantly I think, make a big fuss and give him lots of attention back when he was gentle with us using the word as in, "Good gentle bird!" or something silly. He spontaneously during this time also potty-trained... just because I'd put him down somewhere to clean up and he'd rather have been with me! Once I caught on, I started trying to offer him pooping opportunities with enough frequencies and he very rarely actually gets me anymore.

General nippiness is considered to be a species trait. What I see with Scooter is that he does tend to go to the beak first and think later if he's in any way overstimulated. It rarely seems aggressive (except the mad thing, below) but if he's eating, playing hard or overtired, I know to watch my fingers. There's usually no real intent in it, just a sort of casual snap.

The being mad thing.... I don't know about that one. I do try to let him make the decision to come out, if he acts like he doesn't want to, I go away and try again later. Mostly he wants to come out so there is no real issue. And if I thought he needed more motivation to want to come out, I'd go to positive reinforcement, but basically it's what he wants to start with. However, twice now, he's been mad at me for DAYS after I was away on travel. And when in that mad phase, he'd fluff, fan, get hard-eyed and bite with real intent and persistence. Very different from his typical nipping/snapping. We don't know if this behavior has to do with our sitter, or if he really has the emotional range and persistence to hold that kind of a grudge, but it seems possible it is the latter. It still boils down to waiting until he's ready to forgive and forget. I hope he eventually gets better about it -- he was great the first couple of trips and then WHAM! -- because travel is a feature.

Don't know if that helps... I only have experience with the one GCC and I am not sure how typical my experiences are.