ladders poles and my sister, oh my

[tattoo]

Tattoo is scared to death of ladders, long poles and sticks longer than a ruler. He has been that way since i got him (he was 12 wks old). I am not sure what to do about it except to keep those things out of view. if he is on my shoulder and i walk in a room and he sees something tall (over like 5 ft) he flys in another direction.

The other thing i cant get a handle on is how much he hates my sister. My sister and her husband take care of tattoo when i am out of town so this has been an issue. Lucky for us he loves my brother in law and he sits with him but it is killing my sister. She is an animal lover of all animal lovers (she has even had a hermit crab for 6 years) so I feel terrible that tattoo is so scared of her. As soon as he sees her he backs up. If he is on my brother in laws shoulder and she gets close he doesn't go after her, he just flys away. (just for background info.. my sister is in her 60's so she isn't a young kid)

The only think i can think of is one time (before this fear issue came up) he walked across the floor and was walking up her pant leg. Thinking he was going to fall she lifted her knee up to help him and he caught his wing in cabinet.

I am lost on this one. Any suggestions and also are there any known issues with tall objects?

[Michael]

Ok, first off stop forcing the parrot to see objects that scare it. The bird is clipped (from what I understand) so it doesn't feel in control. You need to realize and respect what it is fearful of and then slowly mitigate the effect. This might mean instead of walking right past a ladder holding the bird, you walk way way out of the ladders way, dont look at the ladder, dont think of the ladder and focus on the bird and walk by. If this still freaks it out you may have to find a way to make it stand out even less. Once you establish a point at which you can go by where the bird isn't painfully scared, you can start getting closer and closer as you go by.

If you want to speed the process up, check out my harness training article and substitute the concept of the harness with the ladder instead. Basically flood the parrot with the aversive stimulus till the fear threshold but not beyond. This is about the point where it starts freaking out or just before it tries to fly. You wait for it to calm down, then remove the aversive or move the parrot away from the aversive and offer positive reinforcement. I use the same method for introducing any new object that Kili is afraid of: flooding, negative reinforcement, positive reinforcement. It's a drastically accelerated and more effective method than the simple way I mentioned at the top which is more of a systematic desensitization through flooding.

As for the fear of your sister. You didn't go into enough detail but I have a feeling that I might know why the parrot is afraid of her. You specified that she is an animal lover rather than a bird lover specifically. She may think she is being nice to the parrot in a way that she is to other animals (like going right for them, trying to cuddle, being too hands on, etc) and this is freaking the parrot out. I've definitely noticed that overly confident people (particularly "animal lovers" and even parrot owners who are too used to their own bird and not others') scare birds far more than people who are more laid back with them.

Once again, the taming methods are good to use hear as well. If the parrot knows tricks, having the person cue the tricks is good. If the parrot at least knows targeting, then you should target the parrot onto the person's hand. Basically your sister should use as much hands off coaxing of the bird as possible rather than just trying to be nice and going at the bird.