by Pajarita » Sat Dec 22, 2018 10:47 am
Yes, I think that working from home or having a part time is the best for a pet parrot. I don't really know of any way to get experience aside from rolling up your sleeves and simply doing it but volunteering at the right rescue helps. Only problem is that rescues are not homes and the parrots are actually living in an environment that is not really good for them... we are talking bad light schedule, crowded conditions, no human of their own but different ones all the time, etc. So, in my personal opinion, the best situation for good learning is to get an 'easy' species to start with and wait a few years before you get a more difficult one and this is not only because reading, studying, doing research, etc does not even begin to cover the tip of the iceberg when it comes to all you need to know but also because we always think of ourselves as able to do something for the long term but then we are not. Keeping a parrot healthy and happy implies changing your entire lifestyle and establishing routines that are not 'ńormal' for people because birds and humans are completely different. Cats and dogs are easy, parrots are VERY difficult... you need to get up with dawn and always be home for dusk, you need to prepare food every single day, you need to resign yourself to living with poop and chewed up furniture, you can't have annual vacations or very long ones, you can't stay in bed when you don't feel good or get up late when you were out the night before, your partner -spouse, girl or bnoyfriend, kids, roomate, etc- need to accept that the bird might hate him-her, moving is a problem, etc. etc. I am very lucky that my family was already used to me being an animal lover by the time I started with parrots and that they accept my weird lifestyle. My entire family thinks I am crazy but they say itś a 'good' kind of crazy. My children are so used to they way 'things are' that they don't even get mad when something happens. I've been caring for a grandson that got expelled from after care (he has ADHD and is not an easy child) and, although ALL of them KNOW they are not to interact with the parrots, he tends to be a bit disobedient and was trying to get Javi Caique to step up to a stick which ended up making him mad so he bit him twice (in two different fingers of the same hand). When his mother came to pick him up, I told her what had happened and instead of getting mad at me, she scolded him for 'bothering Nana'ś bird' ' see what I mean? Not what you would call the kind of reaction any other mother would have, right?
As to me being a good owner... well, let me tell you something, there are no real good parrot owners, there are terrible owners, bad owners and owners that try. I try. And, yes, you can be an owner who tries, too. Most people want to take good care of their birds, the problem is that normal people, with normal lives simply cannot do it.