Bayu and Cah'ya update
Ok, so that last post was the most negative thing I've written in a long time. Now that I've vented my frustration I feel like I should balance it out with happier things. And since it's been a while since I've updated about the birds...
Things are going well, considering that I've been too poor to buy the bigger cages, better full spectrum lighting, humidifiers, air purifiers, and backpack carriers that I've been wanting to get. Still...they have a very enriched environment with plenty of toys and a better diet than my own, so I'm doing the best I can. We're in a recession and I'm building a new business; money isn't exactly growing on trees around here. One thing that we can do no matter how much money we (don't) have is work on training. And THAT has been going very well.
Bayu steps up like an old pro, will now spread his wings when I cue him (the next step is to change the cue from a tactile one to a visual one), and is slowly getting more used to the harness. He still isn't big on the scale, but since he doesn't at all mind the vet's scale, we suspect it's the material that my scale is made of that he fears. Again, don't have the money to buy a new scale, so I'm just slowly letting him become comfortable around mine. He is very good at staying on the "stay" playgyms and coming and going as he pleases on the "free" playgym, and is gradually learning to chew on my clothes less and instead chew on the more acceptable towels that I have lying around. He will now wave on cue, although we're having some difficulty learning to bend and flex his toes, so that's still a work in progress. And when we play with his colored chips he has grasped the concept that when I point to a chip, he gets a treat if he picks it up, but he isn't yet able to pick out specific colors when I ask him. We've only played with the chips a few times, though, so I think it will just take more time for him to learn the names of the colors.
I know he would probably master each of these behaviors more quickly if I focused on one at a time, but I've noticed that he is more eager in his training sessions and maintains focus longer if we work on a different behavior each session. He's probably like me: gets bored easily, and needs variety in his schedule to keep things interesting.
In addition to Cah'ya's funky feathers, missing toes, overgrown beak, and autism, she's also recently developed a protein sensitivity. My poor genetic dud. :( One night a few weeks ago she suddenly started violently wing flipping and toe tapping. I pulled everything but her fresh produce from the cage and immediately called the vet. We ran almost every test you can imagine, all of which came back negative or normal, so it was a matter of slowly reintroducing foods until we found the culprit. Turns out, it's protein. Since her training treats are almonds and pine nuts, that creates some complications. BUT, through experimentation I have determined how many nuts she can have, so I just break them into smaller pieces and when we're done with that amount of nuts, we're done with training for that day. This has proven to be an acceptable solution, with the added benefit that because she gets less of them now, she wants them a WHOLE LOT MORE. Once we got past the growling-and-lunging at me stage, we have made a lot of progress.
For those of you who have been reading along, you might have noticed that there have been times in the past when she wouldn't growl and lunge at me, but those times would be few and far between, and somewhat unpredictable. Even when we got to a point where she usually wouldn't do it to me, she would still do it if I stood near her or maintained eye contact for longer than was absolutely necessary (read: one second, or less). Even sometimes when I would give her a treat as a reward for good behavior, she would growl and lunge at my hand as soon as she had taken the treat from me. We seemed to reach a certain stasis at this stage, and no matter what I did I saw little change in this for several weeks.
That all changed when I housesat for the wildlife rehab center for two weeks in January. The birds stayed with my friend Jamie while I was there, and Cah'ya hated it. I mean, *hated* it. Jamie had to hold up a towel to block Cah'ya's view of her when she walked by Cah'ya's cage--it was that bad. Ever since she came home, Cah'ya has been a new creature. For days, she didn't growl or lunge at me. In fact, she didn't growl and lunge at me at all until day before yesterday. Not only that, but she proactively made eye contact with me, and in fact would seek it out. She has started making baby begging calls and begging body language when I come into the room, and only calms down when I make eye contact with her and talk to her. Seeking out my attention?? Unheard of!!
We started target training a couple of days after we came home. In addition to her other autistic-like behaviors, one of Cah'ya's most intriguing characteristics is her savant-like ability to solve puzzles. I can put any toy in her cage and she will figure it out, dismantle it, or destroy it in astonishing time. As it turns out, this trait lends itself well to training. She figured out the concept of targeting by the second repetition, and has been eagerly targeting ever since. She will target from one end of her cage to another, from one level of her playgym to another, from the playgym to the hanging net...she loves it. She eats it up. So I started trying to use targeting to get her used to stepping up onto my hand. She quickly progressed up to the point where she will stand right next to my hand to target the pointer, but then we hit an impasse: she simply would not put even one toe on my hand.
Day before yesterday, I may have accidentally found a way to temporarily circumnavigate her fear of hands and teach her to step up anyway. I came home and let the birds out of their cages. I picked Bayu up and we started cuddling and kissing and I started to pull out his colored chips. Cah'ya begged and cried, so I looked up and spoke sweetly to her. Usually, that will appease her, but this time the begging only increased. It looked like she really wanted to be a part of whatever we were doing. So I walked over to her cage and talked sweetly to both birds, standing with my back almost entirely to Cah'ya's cage so as not to be too confrontational for her comfort. My shoulder was actually leaning against her cage. To my total shock, when I turned to give Bayu a kiss, Cah'ya stepped right up onto my shoulder! I expected her to get nervous and growl and lunge at my face, but she stood there pretty calmly, leaning over to look into my face. I grabbed the treats from the top of my dresser and started giving her a jackpot reward. Then, ever so slowly, I put my arm up on the open door of her cage and rested it there. She ignored the motion and continued eating the treats from my hand. With my treat hand, I targeted her all the way down to my wrist, and she stood there completely calm, just eating her treats. After a while, she noticed that my hand was awfully close to where she was standing. I'm not sure that she realized that the hand and the arm were connected, because she growled and lunged (for the first time since their trip to Jamie's) at my hand. I waited to see what she would do. She had the option to step away from my hand, walk back up my arm, but she chose instead to lunge at my hand a second time. At that point, I called her name and showed her a treat. To my surprise, she was more motivated by the treat than by growling and lunging--again, a first! In the past, once she got into that zone, she would stay there for a very long time. With the treat hand, I targeted her back up to my shoulder, and then asked her to step down. I'm not sure whether she understood the command because of seeing me use it with Bayu, or if it was just a coincidence, but she stepped back down onto her cage, preened my hair a little bit, and then walked away from me.
We have done one of these step-onto-the-arm sessions each day since then. Today I even ventured to lift my arm off the cage door while she was standing on my wrist, and she only took two steps toward my shoulder when I did it, and as soon as I lowered my arm back onto the door, she went right back to the wrist. She has still lunged at my hand both days, but they have been half-hearted lunges that were not accompanied by a growl, and both times I easily distracted her away from my hand with a treat, so it appears that this behavior will eventually become extinct. The only old behavior she has exhibited was today, when I was targeting her back up onto my shoulder towards the end of the session, she suddenly fluffed up into her Super Aggressive Mighty Dragon (otherwise known as her "Bitch Fluff") stance and actually did growl loudly and lunge towards my face. I simply turned my face away from her, took my treat hand away, and stopped talking to her. She growled and lunged at the back of my head two more times, each time with less vigor and volume, before returning to calm, friendly Cah'ya. I don't know what set her off, but hopefully it was just an extinction burst and will not happen again. Again, she could have stepped away at any time, so it's not like she was backed into a corner. She chose to aggress instead of backing off; who knows why. After that one little incident, though, the rest of the session went beautifully. She again targeted up to my shoulder and then stepped back onto her cage. If we keep this up, I can eventually shape this behavior to the point where I can present my arm instead of my shoulder and she will step directly onto the wrist, and then I can carry her around. As long as she stops feeling the need to lunge at my hand, I have no problem with her never actually stepping up onto my hand. Because she is missing so many toes, she has terrible balance, so I can imagine that balancing on a hand is frightening and uncomfortable for her. A wrist is much wider and more solid.
So...both of my birds: fancy and awesome! Doing things I had only hoped they would be able to do! Making progress at an exciting rate! I want to do this for a living. Oh, wait. I totally will.
Things are going well, considering that I've been too poor to buy the bigger cages, better full spectrum lighting, humidifiers, air purifiers, and backpack carriers that I've been wanting to get. Still...they have a very enriched environment with plenty of toys and a better diet than my own, so I'm doing the best I can. We're in a recession and I'm building a new business; money isn't exactly growing on trees around here. One thing that we can do no matter how much money we (don't) have is work on training. And THAT has been going very well.
Bayu steps up like an old pro, will now spread his wings when I cue him (the next step is to change the cue from a tactile one to a visual one), and is slowly getting more used to the harness. He still isn't big on the scale, but since he doesn't at all mind the vet's scale, we suspect it's the material that my scale is made of that he fears. Again, don't have the money to buy a new scale, so I'm just slowly letting him become comfortable around mine. He is very good at staying on the "stay" playgyms and coming and going as he pleases on the "free" playgym, and is gradually learning to chew on my clothes less and instead chew on the more acceptable towels that I have lying around. He will now wave on cue, although we're having some difficulty learning to bend and flex his toes, so that's still a work in progress. And when we play with his colored chips he has grasped the concept that when I point to a chip, he gets a treat if he picks it up, but he isn't yet able to pick out specific colors when I ask him. We've only played with the chips a few times, though, so I think it will just take more time for him to learn the names of the colors.
I know he would probably master each of these behaviors more quickly if I focused on one at a time, but I've noticed that he is more eager in his training sessions and maintains focus longer if we work on a different behavior each session. He's probably like me: gets bored easily, and needs variety in his schedule to keep things interesting.
In addition to Cah'ya's funky feathers, missing toes, overgrown beak, and autism, she's also recently developed a protein sensitivity. My poor genetic dud. :( One night a few weeks ago she suddenly started violently wing flipping and toe tapping. I pulled everything but her fresh produce from the cage and immediately called the vet. We ran almost every test you can imagine, all of which came back negative or normal, so it was a matter of slowly reintroducing foods until we found the culprit. Turns out, it's protein. Since her training treats are almonds and pine nuts, that creates some complications. BUT, through experimentation I have determined how many nuts she can have, so I just break them into smaller pieces and when we're done with that amount of nuts, we're done with training for that day. This has proven to be an acceptable solution, with the added benefit that because she gets less of them now, she wants them a WHOLE LOT MORE. Once we got past the growling-and-lunging at me stage, we have made a lot of progress.
For those of you who have been reading along, you might have noticed that there have been times in the past when she wouldn't growl and lunge at me, but those times would be few and far between, and somewhat unpredictable. Even when we got to a point where she usually wouldn't do it to me, she would still do it if I stood near her or maintained eye contact for longer than was absolutely necessary (read: one second, or less). Even sometimes when I would give her a treat as a reward for good behavior, she would growl and lunge at my hand as soon as she had taken the treat from me. We seemed to reach a certain stasis at this stage, and no matter what I did I saw little change in this for several weeks.
That all changed when I housesat for the wildlife rehab center for two weeks in January. The birds stayed with my friend Jamie while I was there, and Cah'ya hated it. I mean, *hated* it. Jamie had to hold up a towel to block Cah'ya's view of her when she walked by Cah'ya's cage--it was that bad. Ever since she came home, Cah'ya has been a new creature. For days, she didn't growl or lunge at me. In fact, she didn't growl and lunge at me at all until day before yesterday. Not only that, but she proactively made eye contact with me, and in fact would seek it out. She has started making baby begging calls and begging body language when I come into the room, and only calms down when I make eye contact with her and talk to her. Seeking out my attention?? Unheard of!!
We started target training a couple of days after we came home. In addition to her other autistic-like behaviors, one of Cah'ya's most intriguing characteristics is her savant-like ability to solve puzzles. I can put any toy in her cage and she will figure it out, dismantle it, or destroy it in astonishing time. As it turns out, this trait lends itself well to training. She figured out the concept of targeting by the second repetition, and has been eagerly targeting ever since. She will target from one end of her cage to another, from one level of her playgym to another, from the playgym to the hanging net...she loves it. She eats it up. So I started trying to use targeting to get her used to stepping up onto my hand. She quickly progressed up to the point where she will stand right next to my hand to target the pointer, but then we hit an impasse: she simply would not put even one toe on my hand.
Day before yesterday, I may have accidentally found a way to temporarily circumnavigate her fear of hands and teach her to step up anyway. I came home and let the birds out of their cages. I picked Bayu up and we started cuddling and kissing and I started to pull out his colored chips. Cah'ya begged and cried, so I looked up and spoke sweetly to her. Usually, that will appease her, but this time the begging only increased. It looked like she really wanted to be a part of whatever we were doing. So I walked over to her cage and talked sweetly to both birds, standing with my back almost entirely to Cah'ya's cage so as not to be too confrontational for her comfort. My shoulder was actually leaning against her cage. To my total shock, when I turned to give Bayu a kiss, Cah'ya stepped right up onto my shoulder! I expected her to get nervous and growl and lunge at my face, but she stood there pretty calmly, leaning over to look into my face. I grabbed the treats from the top of my dresser and started giving her a jackpot reward. Then, ever so slowly, I put my arm up on the open door of her cage and rested it there. She ignored the motion and continued eating the treats from my hand. With my treat hand, I targeted her all the way down to my wrist, and she stood there completely calm, just eating her treats. After a while, she noticed that my hand was awfully close to where she was standing. I'm not sure that she realized that the hand and the arm were connected, because she growled and lunged (for the first time since their trip to Jamie's) at my hand. I waited to see what she would do. She had the option to step away from my hand, walk back up my arm, but she chose instead to lunge at my hand a second time. At that point, I called her name and showed her a treat. To my surprise, she was more motivated by the treat than by growling and lunging--again, a first! In the past, once she got into that zone, she would stay there for a very long time. With the treat hand, I targeted her back up to my shoulder, and then asked her to step down. I'm not sure whether she understood the command because of seeing me use it with Bayu, or if it was just a coincidence, but she stepped back down onto her cage, preened my hair a little bit, and then walked away from me.
We have done one of these step-onto-the-arm sessions each day since then. Today I even ventured to lift my arm off the cage door while she was standing on my wrist, and she only took two steps toward my shoulder when I did it, and as soon as I lowered my arm back onto the door, she went right back to the wrist. She has still lunged at my hand both days, but they have been half-hearted lunges that were not accompanied by a growl, and both times I easily distracted her away from my hand with a treat, so it appears that this behavior will eventually become extinct. The only old behavior she has exhibited was today, when I was targeting her back up onto my shoulder towards the end of the session, she suddenly fluffed up into her Super Aggressive Mighty Dragon (otherwise known as her "Bitch Fluff") stance and actually did growl loudly and lunge towards my face. I simply turned my face away from her, took my treat hand away, and stopped talking to her. She growled and lunged at the back of my head two more times, each time with less vigor and volume, before returning to calm, friendly Cah'ya. I don't know what set her off, but hopefully it was just an extinction burst and will not happen again. Again, she could have stepped away at any time, so it's not like she was backed into a corner. She chose to aggress instead of backing off; who knows why. After that one little incident, though, the rest of the session went beautifully. She again targeted up to my shoulder and then stepped back onto her cage. If we keep this up, I can eventually shape this behavior to the point where I can present my arm instead of my shoulder and she will step directly onto the wrist, and then I can carry her around. As long as she stops feeling the need to lunge at my hand, I have no problem with her never actually stepping up onto my hand. Because she is missing so many toes, she has terrible balance, so I can imagine that balancing on a hand is frightening and uncomfortable for her. A wrist is much wider and more solid.
So...both of my birds: fancy and awesome! Doing things I had only hoped they would be able to do! Making progress at an exciting rate! I want to do this for a living. Oh, wait. I totally will.