Quick question

[GoofproofHippo]

For those of you who haven't read my other thread, I recently acquired a juvenile double yellow-headed amazon. He wasn't hand-fed nor is he hand-tame (or however you would say that). He is also my first bird. The African Grey mentioned in my info belongs to my fiance, and isn't currently with us at our apartment. I've only ever interacted with her bird a handful of times. This is all very new to me. Oh, and on top of Lucky (my Amazon) not being tame he is also displaying all the signs of bluffing behavior which just makes things that much more difficult.
I've been following Michael's taming and training guide for the last week or so and have had excellent results so far. It's a slow process, but each training session is another step forward for us. Anyhow, my question now comes from a conversation I had earlier this morning with a co-worker. He told me that he had a couple of parakeets when he was younger that weren't anything close to being tame. His method was to put on a leather glove and hold the parakeet no matter how much it freaked out. He said that he would try to stroke its head and beak as much as it would let him and that he would hold it until it would calm down. Eventually he says that the birds became tame enough to handle without a glove and would allow themselves to be handled by him.
My question is simple: Would that be worth trying with Lucky (or any bird), or would I risk losing all the progress that I've made so far?

[captwest]

Very Bad Advice, Please,please don't try this,there is no magic pill here. It will take alot of time and effort to get results the right way but it's worth it, Amazons can live to be very old and you have a young bird that can be relatively easily trained to be your best friend , the rest of your life. Research some of the taming sections here and if you have more questions ,ask. Slow and steady wins the race. This trust thing between you and your bird, is sort of like a bank account, the little things you do to build trust add up, and when you make the bird do things or do things to the bird , you are withdrawing from that account. Your goal is to have the bird do things with you because it wants to. Your DYH is looking for his place in the flock and now is your big chance while he's young, trust me he wants a friend.He's just scared and defending his area(self) so he'll have a safe spot. Once you break thru you'll be surprised at the progress you can make. Good Luck ,Richard

[lotus15]

I have to agree with Captwest-- terrible advice!! Trust takes time-- and is very different from submission. Take the time to bond with your parrot and to get him to trust you, and you won't regret it!

[Mona]

I also agree with Captain West.

The method being described to you is flooding. You are overwhelming the bird until they become helpless and give in. At that point, if the bird responds to you in a positive way, it will be due to learned helplessness. If you do this, you can have two problems with a big bird like an amazon and they are:

1) You can't overcome the bird. The bird struggles and bites....just a bad, nasty situation.
2) You completely lose the birds "trust" as Captain West described, and the bird will spend a lot of time trying to get back at you for it....most probably out of fear.

I had to towel my Senegal Jack to medicate him when he was new to my home and it was over a year before I could get his trust back. It was really awful. He bit me a lot. Just don't do this.

If you want to read about it, it's on my website www.flyingparrotsinside.com

Thanks and good luck. I would go with small approximations and give your amazon a lot of time and space. If he is displaying that he is going to bite, believe him. Wait until he wants the attention (and that time will come) before you try to handle him.

I'm a big believer in "AVOID BITES AT ALL COSTS"

[GoofproofHippo]

The responses from you guys are really about what I expected to hear on this. I thought alot about the entire deal before I posted this thread earlier, and I really didn't expect to hear anything other than what I did. I'm just completely inexperienced with birds and almost as clueless about animal training in general. I assumed that if there was any merit to be had in the method described above, you folks would know. Glad to see that my first instinct about this was right. As much as Lucky is a pain in my fingers (..ouch), I really do like the little guy and I'd sure hate to cause him any more stress or discomfort than absolutely necessary.
Anyhow, quick update on his progress so far: I introduced the clicker to him sometime last weekend. Then, on Monday, Lucky met the targeting stick. He was a little reticent at first, but he learns quick! Wednesday night I was able to target him out of his cage (just out on top of the cage door.. baby steps, right?). I got a little excited and tried to target him onto my hand once he was out there. He almost made that step.. I really thought he was for a minute. I put another perch in his cage last night and I'm hoping that I can use it to get him to step on from the door of his cage. He tolerates my touching his feet.. somewhat. Which is light years ahead of him biting the heck out of me every chance he got a couple of weeks ago.
I'm working on getting my webcam up and running.. Hopefully I'll be able to post a video or two tomorrow sometime. That way you guys can tell me exactly where I'm making mistakes in my technique.
For everyone that has replied to my few posts, Thank You. Thank you guys so much! I wouldn't have the first clue where to start without this forum and Michael's trainedparrot.com. I would have done so much unintentional damage to Lucky without ya'll.