HAVENT FOUND ANY GOOD ADVICE ON THIS SITE ILL EXPLAIN!!!

[seagoatdeb]

The advice I gotten off this site was either an ass chewing or someone saying stuff about how I'm not a patient bird owner!!! Well u folks don't know me personally there's a way better group on Facebook called AVIAN JUNGLE!! this kid I befriended has only given me advice for 3 DAYS AND EVERUTHING he has said I've noticed an amazing change in my bird!!! So some folks might disagree with this post but just my experience!!!

I hear you and see where you are coming from, this group does tend to "flood" people with so much info at one time, and some people like to have some clear cut answers on what they were asking, and not be told they are impatient, or feel criticised. Learning is always easier for them when they are told what to do and how to improve instead of being told you were "wrong" somehow. Different people have different learning styles.

Every group has its good points and bad points, and one of the really good things about this forum is the amount of info that is here for you to look at at your leisure and many of the answers needed may already be there somemwhere. Some of the members even put in hours of research to give an answer. I appreciate that you commented, because so many keep valuable feedback to themselves, and then no one is sure why they never comment again.

[Lwalker]

Patience is a predominant theme on this forum and I appreciate being reminded. I believe if you ask a question, you should be open to considering the answer you receive, even if it is not what you expected or maybe wanted to hear. Consider it and then decide what to take on and what to let go. Questions asked in good faith are usually answered in good faith. In terms of patience, there are many things I would like my parrot to do but I recognize he is a sentient being with thoughts and experience of his own. We have been together three months. Three months out of thirty years is a blink of an eye. It is not a race and I have to respect his pace. In his first six months of life he has already gone from egg to parents to breeder to pet store to me. That is a lot of change requiring trust, coping skills and resilience. I hope to have him in my life for the next thirty years so I am in no rush. I appreciate the advice of those who have put in the time and are generous enough to share their knowledge and experience in good faith.

[Wolf]

Patience is a very predominate theme on this forum and for many reasons, although I must agree that sometimes we could do better in the ways that we present it.

Many people that are new to parrots have some experience with cats and dogs and think that a bird will be easier and that the same methods that work with a dog will work with a bird. This often results in a preconceived notion of what to expect with a parrot. Parrots are not predators and are not as capable at defending themselves as dogs and their bones are much easier to break so they are much more fearful than a dog or cat when placed in unfamiliar territory. That fear takes time for them to overcome, that requires patience.

Parrots are also self aware and they know who and what they are and they are extremely intelligent as well and since they do not live in a dominance based hierarchy they need time to make the mental connections in their mind before they are willing to be cooperative with any form of training and or interactions and that requires patience.

With parrots the real key to the bonding and anything else is trust and they do not develop this trust overnight and it does not transfer from one person to the other as fear does so it takes time for them to develop a trust in us and that as well requires patience.

These are just a few of the areas that we interact with our parrots in and as you can see it is due to the basic nature of the parrot that requires us to exercise much more patience than would be required with many other so called pet animals. There are many other instances that I could give and they all require that we be a bit more patient than we are normally accustomed to being, because we tend to want what we want and we want it now, and that is very often our nature.

[Pajarita]

Well, I think it's unfair to say that we 'flood' people with information. We might tend to be a bit wordy when it comes to giving advice to newbies but that's only because our first concern is not the human but the bird's wellbeing and, in truth, parrot keeping is SO complex and requires so much knowledge that, in my personal opinion, it behooves everybody to kind of roll up their sleeves and dive into a large pool of knowledge from day one because one single mistake can throw your relationship with the bird for a loop for a looooooong time.

In this particular case, we are talking about a 4 year old rehomed conure still in its honeymoon period. Now, flooding techniques will work, no doubt about it. Professional trainers still use them all the time, unfortunately for the poor animals. But, unless you are dealing with a baby which will not think of retaliating, if you do them to an adult, they will backfire. This is not Wolf's, Michael's or my opinion, this is something on which ALL behaviorists agree 100%. Personally, I would never dream of using a flooding technique because I do not like causing my animals any upset or stress. I don't really care if they learn in three days, three months, three years or even if they never learn, I just want them to be happy.

Brandon has experience in 2 baby tiels which are not yet full adults and 1 baby plummie. That's it. He got one adult lovebird and he couldn't get anywhere with him. Babies don't react like adults and tiels don't react like sun conures. Tiels are the most sweet-tempered of parrots (budgies bite more and harder than tiels!) while sun conures are known for been bitey when unhappy. Babies don't have a honeymoon period. They either feel comfortable or fear their new human prompting a desire to hide or get away from the person while adult birds that were rehomed will be on their best behavior until they feel more comfortable and then and only then show their true colors. That's why we recommended patience and to take it slow. Because you want to create a strong bond of trust and love during this honeymoon period so the 'true colors' are good behavior and not biting and screaming.

Now, I understand your impatience, children have short attention spans and this translates into a desire for immediate gratification but I caution you to go slow and to think what you do and what you don't do very carefully because you don't want your sun conure to end up showing the wrong true colors.

[seagoatdeb]

The OP has stated, he wasnt getting the advise he needed on this forum, at least he is telling us why, he has that opinion. He feels he got "chewed out" for asking questions. Cant we tak to him with respect. Lets not say he is a child and impatient or label him more. No one will ever speak up if this way of dealing with it continues. You cant "make" someone see it your way, its best not to alienate new members, but to work with them.

Why not just thank him for the feedback, see why he was not happy and try to get insight on how to improve the group to keep new members. We are not a perfect group, there is not a single "perfect group out there. His feedback is important to help us learn how to communicate better to new parrot owners. if the phrase that involve "flooding with information, was too harsh, i was searching for a nice way to mention the over zealous presentation that I have seen bother new members and have them leave the group. I did not mean to be unfair, just impartial, and address both the OP, and state the groups good points.

[Wolf]

I really don't know but that if the OP was trying the methods that were given to him on this forum that his bird was just ready to start responding positively to our advice. No one knows and the fact that the birds started responding after he went to Brandon's site doesn't really matter in the long run. What does matter is that the bird did begin to respond, that the birds owner got the help that he needed.

The OP said that he had problems with this site and whether you or I or anyone else wants to agree with him doesn't really matter either. I know that I tried to give the right suggestions to him, I also know that different people have different ways of assimilating information and that the manner in which I speak is not going to reach the person in the way that I intended.

I am sure that the OP's reason for making this post was to let us know that he had issues in how the information was given and we should at the very least listen to him and try to understand. Our agreement with him is not required, neither is our disagreement. But regardless we should listen and take the information and try to improve our delivery.

Again, if he is happy with Brandon and his group, that is fine and I am glad that he got the help that he was looking for.

[seagoatdeb]

Facegroup groups can be great for helping people have good realtionships with their parrot, because they encourage the kind of talk and pictures that keeps peoples interest up in their parrot and they can sometimes, take the info better. I am in that group and like the emphasis Brandon is placing on respect. I am positive no flooding techniques were ever used, just a friendly ear to listen and advise. Brandon learned a lot of his info here, so it is nice to see, it being spread to more owners who need help. i have noticed in this group that even though there may only be 4 people posting there can be 100's who just look at whats posted. So this group helps a lot fo peole out there.

[ParrotsForLife]

Use Brandon's advice if you think that it is helping you, I hope that it is. If you search the forum you will find that when he has a problem that this is where he comes for the answer. It is possible that the difference is in the delivery or it could be that he is using flooding techniques, which do work to a degree, but they usually backfire on the owner and then you end up with a bird that not only doesn't trust you but will constantly bite you and we do not recommend any of those techniques. The way that we use is to work with the bird and focus on earning its trust and it has been proven time and again that this is a better way. I know that it can get frustrating to work at the birds pace, but in the long term it is always better.

Give it time and you will learn, we all have had to and we have many ,many mistakes under our belts as well. If you feel that going with what Brandon advises you to do is the better way for you, then by all means go with it. Personally, I don't care who's advice you use, the only thing that I care about is your birds well being.

I don't wanna be involved in this and I don't like that your assuming I would use flooding techniques since when would I ever do something like that, I use positive reinforcement and no I don't come here for answers I train a lot of parrots and you know that I have learned a lot over the years and yes I learned a lot here too but I don't come here for any answers for my group I handle it myself because I know what I'm doing.I wasn't gonna say anything but I'm shocked that bad things are being said about me.

[ParrotsForLife]

Well, I think it's unfair to say that we 'flood' people with information. We might tend to be a bit wordy when it comes to giving advice to newbies but that's only because our first concern is not the human but the bird's wellbeing and, in truth, parrot keeping is SO complex and requires so much knowledge that, in my personal opinion, it behooves everybody to kind of roll up their sleeves and dive into a large pool of knowledge from day one because one single mistake can throw your relationship with the bird for a loop for a looooooong time.

In this particular case, we are talking about a 4 year old rehomed conure still in its honeymoon period. Now, flooding techniques will work, no doubt about it. Professional trainers still use them all the time, unfortunately for the poor animals. But, unless you are dealing with a baby which will not think of retaliating, if you do them to an adult, they will backfire. This is not Wolf's, Michael's or my opinion, this is something on which ALL behaviorists agree 100%. Personally, I would never dream of using a flooding technique because I do not like causing my animals any upset or stress. I don't really care if they learn in three days, three months, three years or even if they never learn, I just want them to be happy.

Brandon has experience in 2 baby tiels which are not yet full adults and 1 baby plummie. That's it. He got one adult lovebird and he couldn't get anywhere with him. Babies don't react like adults and tiels don't react like sun conures. Tiels are the most sweet-tempered of parrots (budgies bite more and harder than tiels!) while sun conures are known for been bitey when unhappy. Babies don't have a honeymoon period. They either feel comfortable or fear their new human prompting a desire to hide or get away from the person while adult birds that were rehomed will be on their best behavior until they feel more comfortable and then and only then show their true colors. That's why we recommended patience and to take it slow. Because you want to create a strong bond of trust and love during this honeymoon period so the 'true colors' are good behavior and not biting and screaming.

Now, I understand your impatience, children have short attention spans and this translates into a desire for immediate gratification but I caution you to go slow and to think what you do and what you don't do very carefully because you don't want your sun conure to end up showing the wrong true colors.

Why the lies? Baby tiels and plummy? Seriously my tiels are adults almost 2 years old and Mango is around 2-3 years old.I also have a African grey who is 8 years old and have made lots of progress with her.

[Chantilly]

Brandon, Tiko's not yours, she is your mothers, and you have several times said that she does not like you. I personally think that you took thing too fast with your birds. You clipped her just after getting her, and in your posts when you just got Mango, and she was terrified you posted pictures of her in her flight suit! You just got her and somehow you managed to shove that uncomfy thing on her when she was if I may quote you 'terrified of hands.' !?????
Tilly has a great relationship with me, and my family and I have had her for almost 2yrs, and I can not get her into her harness. I am slowly getting there with baby steps. But I can imagine it will be a long time till she lets me put it on her.
There is no such thing as quickly building a good, fair, strong relation with a bird. It takes time, they are not like a cat or dog and they need to warm up to you in their own time- a long time.