Hiya folks!
Yeah so, the first thing you think is that I probably was too aggressive in my approach, but she actually caught on fairly well until one day... she no longer felt like it.
Sorry this is lengthy. I'm trying to be as detailed as I can be
I have a fully flighted, female pacific parrotlet, about 9 months old now. She's been target trained, and all that stuff essentially within the first... 2 weeks that I got her. She's quite the cuddlebug and enjoys sitting in my hand, being held (though much less so as of late) and has even crawled under my hand at one point to be kept warm and cuddle. She still cuddles up against my hand, but otherwise she really enjoys sitting under my chin and loves scratches.
She enjoys training and gets very excited every time I open the drawer with the clicker and target stick, but as of late, she's too hesitant to get under my hand for training anymore and just... loses interest eventually. As if the sesame seed or millet isn't worth being grabbed.
I basically trained her like this:
I put my hand on the desk, pinky facing my girl, and held the target stick on the other side. I would wait for her to stick her head between my index and thumb, wait, click, and reward her. I would do that until I could do the same thing, but with my hand touching her. Eventually getting to the point where I could gently grab her around her neck. All well and good.
I eventually slowly moved on to grabbing her, flipping her over, and rewarding. Again, it was fine. I wasn't fully there yet, but she was ok with. Though not enthousiastic.
There were times where, even outside of training, maybe 3 tops, where she would let me grab her to move her and she did not resist or act phobic towards my hand at all.
And then one day it changed and now she's even hesitant to put her head between my fingers.
I'm trying to figure out what changed, to be honest. I stopped training it entirely for a few days and occasionally just fed her treats. I was afraid that maybe she, mysteriously, developed a negative association with my hand. But she still loves being scratched and doesn't seem too flighty when my hand is near. When I tried retraining it, innitially she responded ok and stuck her head through my fingers again, but suddenly she became too. And I'm afraid that I'm subconsciounsly becoming a little too assertive in my training.
I must note, I may have become too confident in her trust in me and may have too haphazardly approached her when I wanted her to step-up a few times. I'm working on that and I'm trying to dial back my body language, BUT, it doesn't really seem to affect the other areas of our relationship. She's super affectionate and has no problems stepping up or anything.
Another thing that may be an issue is the fact that she has started to get distracted by her knowledge of where I keep her rewards. So I am thinking that MAYBE, it's not that she's necessarily afraid of my hand. But that she knows where I keep her treats (she gets sesame seeds in a plastic container that she's learned to open) and she figures that it's easier for her to just ignore my hand and go straight for the container. That I constantly have to hide in a different spot so she won't get it. What I've tried doing tonight is just to not reward her with these seeds anymore, but with millet instead. Since I'm far more able to control the millet than the sesame seed and she's not distracted by the quest for millet instead.
I'd like her to get used to being grabbed to make her that little bit more handable and to make daily check-ups of her feet and wings less stressful. As well as get to the point where I can clip her nail myself . I also really want to harness train her. So at this point I'm feeling somewhat frustrated, which is something I'd like to avoid because Idon't want that to bleed into the training. So before that happens, I'd be curious to any feedback you might have. Thank you!