by Pajarita » Tue Jun 16, 2020 10:23 am
Well, I've been involved in animal rescue (dog, cat, bird) for many years now (even did it full time for six years) and can tell you that, based on my personal experience, most animals that end up in a shelter are not the ones that got the bad treatment that 'damaged' them which, in turn, made them end up in the shelter. Most people who do not treat their animals right do not even bother to put them in a shelter, they either sell the animal on CL, give it away to somebody they know, put the animal in a basement or outside, abandon it on the street or call Animal Control. Basically, they take the easy way out, same as they did with the care the animal should have gotten and never did. People who take the time to take it to a shelter (you have to fill out paperwork, bring the animal to the actual shelter, etc) are not the bad owners - they care for the animal and, for one reason or another, they can no longer do it. Are there 'damaged' dogs in private shelters? Yes, there are but mostly because they take in dogs that are going to be put down by Animal Control -where the abandoned, stray, seized animals end up. Not that they are irredeemable, mind you! I have and have had dogs from Animal Control, puppy mill ex-breeders, etc that had serious issues but, given the right environment, guidance and time, they all ended up being great because you can rehabilitate them. But this is mostly for dogs and cats which are domesticated species, when it comes to birds, it's the almost the same but with one BIG difference: most people give the bird up because they realize they cannot 'do it' and not so much because they were irresponsible or that they did not want to commit. The problem is that nobody really knows the HUGE amount of work, studying, time, money and the loooong, looooong years it means to keep a pet parrot healthy and happy. Every single new owner thinks he/she knows and has the best intentions at heart. They have done 'their homework', read stuff in the internet, considered which species to get and found out about it, got the cage and the toys and the perches and the food, etc but 99% of the stuff on the net does not tell you the truth - and, needless to say, neither do anybody who belongs to the industry (breeders, pet store owners and employees, even avian vets!) because it is in their own best interest for people to keep parrots so they are not going to be discouraging you from becoming a client of theirs. Most everybody and most everything you find out there says that if you do what they tell you to do, you will have a wonderful, healthy, happy pet. And people believe it because this is the rule of thumb when it comes to pets! If you are a good owner, you will have a happy, healthy dog, cat, rabbit, fish, etc.... it just doesn't work with parrots or any other undomesticated species that has a complex, impossible to fulfill emotional or physical needs in captivity. Nobody tells you that no matter how much you do, how much time or money you spend, you will NOT make your parrot happy or be able to keep it for life (people simply do not live that long). Nobody tells you that you need to get up at 4:30 am in the summer or that you need to be home by 3 pm during the winter. Nobody tells you that there is no good commercial food for parrots and that you will have to make it yourself -with the consequence of you having to learn about parrot nutrition, which is NOT an easy subject. Nobody tells you that you will need to watch over your bird for 6, 8, 10 hours a day because that is the time they need to be out and flying around every day and that it means you are stuck at home EVERY SINGLE DAY FOR YEARS! Nobody tells you that you will need to make changes to the infrastructure of your home because you have to find the way to prevent the bird from flying out a door or a window. Nobody tells you that you will need to learn to live with poop and chewed up EVERYTHING. Nobody tells you that you will need to learn about bird physiology, pathology, etc so you can catch that very subtle symptom early enough to give you a good chance at treating whatever it is that the parrot is ailing from. Nobody tells you that the bird will bond so deeply with you that it will be jealous and possibly attack all other members of your family. Nope... they all tell you that it will all work out, that the bird will be happy with you and that you will be able to live a normal life with it (They live in cages, don't they? Ergo, they MUST be low maintenance).
Are the birds put in rescues or privately rehomed damaged? Yes, all of them are. But then so are the babies you buy from a breeder. A wild animal stolen from their parents while still in the nest and raised by humans in a human environment, deprived of its natural social group, the opportunity to learn necessary survival skills from its parents, given the wrong diet and kept in a cage will be damaged. Period. There is not two ways about it. Can they be rehabilitated? Yes - all of them without exception BUT the success of the rehabilitation is directly related to the prior conditions and present conditions AND the expectations you have for it. I have a parent-raised GCC that plucks because she was kept under very crowded conditions by the breeder and she is doing great - she still plucks although not as much but she eats well, gets along with the other birds -especially Epuish who is her BFF, bathes on her own and has learned to go back into her cage when told to. As far as I am concerned, she is 'rehabilitated' but then I don't expect her to bond with me while most other people might. I have a pair of amazons that cannot be handled. She is a older wild-caught that was neglected so she reverted to wild ways and the male was severely abused by his previous owner and lost all trust in people. But, as far as I am concerned, they are great birds - they are fabulous eaters, bathe on their own, entertain themselves, healthy, content and with perfect plumage - and they have learned to go into their cage when my husband needs to repair the birdroom and wait there until he finishes. They are, pretty much, the easiest birds I have. But they are not pets, not really - they just live in my house. And I do not know how many owners would be OK with this because I put these birds up for adoption and they stayed up (in rescueme.com) for almost an entire year and despite me stating VERY clearly on the ad that they needed a dedicated birdroom because they cannot live locked in a cage for the rest of their lives, that they cannot be handled, that they are not people-friendly, that experience in handling aggressive large species was essential, etc. Everybody who applied thought that they could make pets out of them ("I will love them and teach them to talk", "They will be with me all day long" etc), were going to keep them in a human area ("I have a beautiful macaw cage for them in my living room" "They can go in my den, where I spend a lot of time") and the greatest majority of them did not have any experience with large parrots or a bonded pair and not a single one had experience with a large, aggressive parrot. Not a single one! They had no birds, little ones or a single bird of a large species that grew up alone and was raised from a baby. It is experience but it is not the kind of experience that will help you when they are in breeding season and Zeus flies out to bite your face... I couldn't, in good conscience, rehome them to somebody who might get seriously hurt by him. I explained this to them when I rejected them and most of them took offense! People think they can do more than what they can really do when it comes to parrots... And that, in a nutshell, is the problem. They think that because they read stuff on the internet and they have good intentions, they will be able to care properly for a parrot - but it doesn't quite work out that way because normal people, living in a normal household cannot keep a pet parrot healthy and happy all its life (I don't consider myself 'normal' in that sense). And when they finally admit they can't and, by then, the parrot has been neglected or misunderstood and mishandled for a long time, they put it up for adoption and they all give the same reason: I can no longer give it the attention it deserves. Only, in reality, it's not 'no longer', it's that they never could. I can't. You can't. Nobody can. And anybody who tells you they are doing it is in denial or hasn't yet learned enough about parrots.