Brittanyv326 wrote:Jeez, sorrry. Thanks for the tip... Guess I'm not so pro. You could be a little less harsh though. I'll take down the video if it offends you that I messed up your whole training technique. It's working anyway, so I wonder how important the clicker really is? I didn't use it for my dog and she knows 9 tricks.
Not trying to be harsh. But if you read the details, I explain exactly when to click and you can see it in the videos. You don't have to remove video, in fact it's a good demonstration for others of a typical beginner mistake that demises clicker training. I understand it's your first bird and that you are content with your progress. But knowing the intelligence of these parrots, I can tell you that it wasn't even a slightest challenge for it. Let me give you a few tips so you can make target training do the most for you (and perhaps you do this but I'm just going by what I saw in the video).
First off, click when the bird touches the stick. That's the only way for it to be effective. If you click postfactum, you are telling the parrot to repeat the behavior that happened when you clicked rather than touching the stick. You don't see why it matters because the parrot doesn't understand the clicker enough yet. It's only had 3 days of clicker practice so it can just as quickly forget it as it learned it. However, for a clicker trained parrot like Kili (or perhaps your parrot some day) it has a completely different meaning. If I target Kili but click 5 seconds later, she knows I am clicking for whatever she was doing 5 seconds after. There is actually a use for this technique. For instance if I wanted to teach Kili to walk on a picture of a road or little train track, I would target her along the track from start to end. I wouldn't let her touch the stick and keep it just ahead of her so she would follow it to the end. At the end of the track she can touch it, click and reward. As she learns this, I would start reducing the stick motion and only target her 3/4 of the way, 1/2 way, etc but only click when she reaches the end of the track. Here is an example where the targeting is disjoined from the clicking for a reason. Because the click isn't for targeting but for walking the designated path. Eventually the stick would be phased out entirely.
The reason I want you to focus on doing clicker/target training properly now is so that your parrot would learn the value of clicks and really pay attention to the moment of the click. This will make teaching tricks like wave, wings, and shake much easier. However, if you are not clicking the right time, the parrot will be confused, the clicks will serve little value, and training will be compromised. Be careful of making mistakes on your part because they will amplify when the parrot makes its own mistakes on top of those. For something so simple as target training, clicker isn't really necessary. The real reason you are using a clicker for target training is for practice and so the parrot would learn the importance of it on a more frequent basis for future training where it is required.
Lastly, I think you should challenge the parrot more. I know you think you've made a lot of progress in 2 days but I know from experience that a parrot has much more potential. You should progressively increase the distance that you target the parrot but reduce the distance if it doesn't know what to do that far. By increasing the challenge up front, you teach the parrot that it has to come to the stick (the real purpose of targeting) rather than wait for you to practically stick it in its mouth. That could be useful if you are training it to accept medicine from an eye dropper you put in its mouth, but if you want to teach it to come to you (or wherever you point with stick) you have to start challenging it by increasing distance as soon as possible or the bird will get too hung up on the waiting for you to approach the stick for it.
Hope this helps. Let me know if you have any questions. And I look forward to seeing another video where you apply the technique better and get the parrot to come on your hand or cross some distance.
i just love Sennies!