African Grey trick problems...any suggestions?

[LQEnder]

I little bit of background- We have an 8 year old re-homed African Grey. "Rosie" has been living with us for about 4 months. With time and patience, she bonded with me and doesn't bite anymore. She loves to be pet on the neck, and her training treat of choice is millet spray.

I decided to start with three tricks, so she would "learn how to learn" (according to some literature, once they understand they get praised and rewarded for tricks, they learn faster). "Turn around" she learned quickly and can do that on command. But now I'm stuck. I've been working on "Wave" (lifting her left leg high) and "shake hands" (lighting her right leg, placing it on the third knuckle on my index finger, lightly putting my top thumb over her leg and lightly shaking). She does both when I move my hand in fain to "step up." But after six weeks, 15 minutes a day, she will neither wave, nor initiate contact with the shake.

I know time and patience is the answer, and I will continue to try and be patience. Other than that, does anyone have any suggestions or reasons to help Rosie learn faster?

-Chris

[Michael]

You've been too patient and probably impeded learning as a result. The goal in training is to get the bird doing the behavior on its own as soon as possible. If you don't challenge the bird and do the work for it, it will just learn that this is all it has to do. What you should have been doing 2-5 days after initiating wave training is showing your finger (as though to step up) from afar and then work it over to a cue. By continuing to use your finger for the cue so many weeks since starting, you solidified that rather than transitioning it to the permanent trick cue. It will be harder but not impossible to change this now. Do a training session when the parrot is particularly eager to do the tricks and let it "beg" by lifting its foot. Reward when on cue, don't when not. If no begging, show your finger further and further with each subsequent trial. And forget about "shake hands" trick because it is probably just interfering with wave.

Patience is important with parrot training but it can be taken too far where the parrot gets stuck on a simple behavior because you don't stop rewarding the poorer performance. Hope that helps. Good luck.

[dohcsvt]

I had a bit of a time with shake hands on my green cheek. SO I just stopped shake and moved onto wave. My plan is to wait....probably weeks or even a month or two....until wave is so engrained in his head that shake will appear to be something entirely different. With the intelligence level your bird is at I think that you can work through this. Best of luck to you.