im a little confused

[skeetersunconure]

im a little confused, with training. about all the differant teqniques and when to use and not use clickers. i guess i'll just figure it out in timea nd develope my own teqniques? i dont want to confuse my bird and i dont want to do it wrong but its awful confusing sometimes.

[Michael]

Basically always use the clicker when you want to mark a specific behavior. Sometimes it is inconvenient or impossible to use the clicker so then it needs to be sacrificed. I wanted to use the clicker to teach wave but it ended up confusing the bird and getting in the way so I decided not to use it for wave training.

[javelin]

Don't worry about it too much is all I can say. I reckon the birds aren't thinking that it's a hard and fast rule either anyways.

I suppose the only thing to remember is that the clicker comes after the desired behavior and just before the treat. It cues the presentation of the reward. It's like if you did good in school, you get a good grade and eventually a medal for it. The clicker is like telling your parrot "Hey, that's an "A", let me get you your reward."

It may be useful to practice the clicker during mealtime (assuming your pet is in best behavior). Just click then reward, click-reward, click-reward... for about 5 to 10 times. Then during training, spot the good behavior then do your click-reward routine.

Like I said, don't fuss about it too much. I bet everyone in this forum has got things mixed up too at some point.

[entrancedbymyGCC]

The basic idea is that you want to reward your bird promptly when it does the right thing. You don't necessarily have to use a clicker at all -- what a clicker does is substitute for the actual reward when it would be difficult to give a treat or other reward promptly. If you are always within reach of your bird when training, you probably don't need to even consider one. If you are going to use one, you might want to use it consistently all the time, however. And if you do use a clicker, you should always pair it with a reward.

A clicker is just one of many things that can serve as a "bridge" or stand-in reward that lets the animal know a "real" reward is coming. Clickers are used a lot because they make a distinct carrying sound, are small and easy to carry and are readily available. Depending on the animal, anything that the animal can perceive immediately can be used as a bridge, it doesn't even have to be a sound. For sound you can use a clicker, a whistle or even your voice. With birds, voice is tempting, because they are oriented to it. But it is hard to use it as consistently as you might like!

Bridge training is the standard method when you are training something like a dolphin where you are generally quite far away when the animal is actually performing. It is also useful with large animals like horses where you can't let them run you over for a treat. With horses, the first thing you do when you are teaching what the bridge means, is to use it reward turning their head away from you and the treats! So it might be useful for a bird that was getting too pushy about being rewarded. But I've read professional bird trainers who don't use a bridge at all, but just give a reward directly. So I think as long as you are consistent in what you do with your bird, you can use a clicker or not, or always use it for certain things but not others, and it should all be fine.