new skills, little twists

hey all,

Today when I worked with Dempsey, he started the session looking at the sky and barking, rather than really working. I think this is how he shows the stress of the job I am asking him to do. He worked through it, and did some nice reps of all 12 poles, but I think I need to find a way to help him through the tough stuff. In any case, I taped it (I really thought we would have another great session like yesterday), and it's here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wAPTxj0RG0g

I thought a lot about what I wanted to do next with Peepers. Historically, he's been frightened of the perches I built for my original parrot agility project, so I thought a good start may be to work with him on dealing with those perches. The perches are PVC covered in vetwrap, one blue and one red. The blue one is getting a makeover (for some reason it gets disturbingly sticky in some weather), so I chose the red one. When I thought about how best to go about teaching Peepers that it's not scary, some of the more typical suggestions didn't seem to fit what my goals are (in the end, it's not just that I don't want him to be frightened, I want him to be enthusiastic about working with/around it.

So, since the perches kind of come apart, I put the perch portion of it on the kitchen island where we have been playing for a week. My original thought was to just have the perch there, and we would do other things around it, giving Peepers the idea that it's not dangerous just sitting there. I wasn't prepared for Peepers' reaction.

I set the perch down, and then went to get the clicker and treats. While I was doing that, Peepers flew to the island and immediately started circling the perch. That completely changed my plans for this session. We went straight to "do something with the perch". Kind of 101 things, although I have a behavior that I want in the end is for him to step onto it. Anyway, I taped the session, and it's here: . He did some really interesting stuff, so it's well worth watching. And I did a bunch of different stuff too :). http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tBIPGjVLMzg

Then sparky was acting kind of interested in training, so I played with her and targeting. I taped it, and please forgive the sorry state of her feathers - I went on vacation for a coupla weeks, and she snipped a good portion of her wing feathers. For those of you who noticed, it was at the same time that Peepers broke off his tail feathers. Anyway, Sparky learned a new skill, which was to go down the bars to touch the target. You can see when I first ask her to do it, she doesn't know what to do. It was a nice little piece of problem solving for her, as she doesn't usually think about how to do things much. the video is here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Op_1BR3kyPE

I had a really nice lunch today with Nikki, and am feeling kind of energized about working towards a business for training parrots here in Phoenix, kind of like dog classes. I really think that parrots and their people could benefit from this, and group classes are a format that I think I am pretty good at. We'll see what I can do over the next few months to achieve this.

As a note, I am going to publish this now, and add in the links to videos as they go live on youtube, so if there's no link, please check back. These take a while to download, and I want to get the information about these sessions out because they really got kind of interesting.

going backwards...

hey, today Dempsey's session was a bit of a disaster. I had to move the poles over a little bit because he was digging into the ground so much as he pushed through the last pole, he was digging a hole at the exit. We went out after I did that, and he pretty much said he couldn't do the poles at all. We worked through it, but after I got a couple of successes, I quit so he could end on a positive note, and before he got too tired.

Shortly after that I let all the dogs out and Dempsey went to his private potty area, so maybe he needed to go while we were training. Dunno, so maybe I'll head back out later and see how he does. I just don't want to push him too hard if he's having a rough time.

Did session #5 with Peepers, and 1o1 things (It's downloading now to youtube). This time he picked the block up with his beak, took it with his foot, then back to his beak. I thought that seemed different enough, so that became the behavior I clicked. I really am just about done with this, although I could come back to it, when both of us are more used to thinking of and offering novel behaviors in other settings. I am sure that there are some behaviors he could do that don't involve his beak or feet, but right now neither one of us is really thinking about those. And I think that there must be a dimension to his thought process that would benefit from going outside our current box. But I get bored with this game, so I need to do other things. I'm thinking of working on recall next, and maybe sends. I'll either use a chair back, or some perches I made for this a while back.

Sparky was excited about the idea of training, so I took a wooden spoon over by her, and she immediately targeted to it like a champ. It's time for her to venture off her cage for training, so maybe tomorrow I'll work on that with her.

I still have yet to play with the other dogs, but it's time for dinner, so they'll have to wait until I've eaten :). Bungee's definitely getting a turn, and Dempsey maybe another one.

Progress!

Today Dempsey started wiggling thru the poles until the last 4, then made a big leap thru the rest. He's really excited with the training - so I guess the weave-a-matics work really well for him. He's also clearly trying to work out his footwork, which I would guess will take a while to really get down.

Peepers and I played 101 things to do with a block today and I filmed it to put on youtube. As soon as I can get it to upload, I'll post it here. I was hoping that he would show what I think is a typical behavior for this game, which looks to me like a pause to think about the situation. I always get a little panicky, thinking that the animal is quitting, but they have always come back stronger from that break, so I think it's worthwhile getting that on film and showing that apause isn't a disaster.

Sparky got to work on targeting to a stick, as I thought she would need some time to remember the training game. In the past, she's attacked the clicker after long intervals between training sessions, so I expected to see that again. Boy was I wrong. Little miss was all over her targeting behavior, and clearly sh's ready to rock and roll with the training game.

Poor Bungee thinks he's being neglected. I didn't train him or the older dogs today, so tomorrow I really need to make sure they at least get a few minutes to work.

Most of my day has been spent trying to get my camcorder to work with my laptop. It looks like the problem is that the cam records in mts format, and the programs I have don't recognize that. So I finally dowloaded a player that recognizes mts files, which gave me the codec so the other programs can see and read them now. I still can't edit them, nor can I save them in a different format. Maybe tomorrow I'll be successful with that aspect of this project, which should help with the youtube part, as I think that also is unhappy with mts files.