Train Now, Not Next Holiday
Happy Holidays! It is Melanie Canatella with Fluff and Feathers here hoping you had a great holiday! I know that it is always a busy day for me. I have a lot of animal care to do in one day, and a lot of family that wishes to see me. I remember when I used to still live with my parents and it was the holidays having dogs and birds in the house with guests. We would have to move their cages into my bedroom so there was room for people to eat, as well as so they did not have to occasionally hear a Sun Conure scream. I would always bring Maui out through once everyone was inside and settled so she can socialize. Sometimes I brought Noel out but that was not as common because she was very picky on who she would tolerate that day other than me.
I know a lot of you guys’ host for the holidays to some capacity with parrots and other animals. It can be very stressful, especially if your bird is not very fond of new people. Another concern I hear a lot is dogs, and birds, getting out of the house by accident. Of course, we cannot forget parrot screaming on this list either. Us bird people tolerate it well, but non-bird people do not tolerate birds’ noise at all, except when they say something and the person is instantly intrigued and asks either “what can your bird say?” or “make your bird say it again.”
If you know the holidays are something you value hosting, but your friends and family do not value them the same way you do, then now is the time to start working with your pets on those behaviors. Why work on them now? Training can take some time to become effective, mastered, and to the intensity we need it to be reliable to. For example, we can teach a dog to stay easily. On the other hand, if we are asking our dog to stay put while we open the front door and guests they rarely see come in with smelly food, that intensity and complexity of the behavior is much more time consuming to teach. Also, if you are working with a long history of behaviors, like your cockatoo has always screamed and it is 25 years old, then it can take some time to undo all the years of behavior and create a new criterion. If your animal is older, it is not impossible to teach them new things, just may take more time than a baby who is just learning everything for the first time with no previous expectation.
Starting training during a gap of time between holidays is the best time to start this, not a month before the next holiday. I always say the same thing with syringe training, or restraint training with parrots. You want to avoid at all costs starting to train the behavior once your bird is already sick on medications, or needs an emergency trip to the vet. For most of my clients, all it takes is one situation where everyone is miserable to understand the value of a behavior. Again, I get this with syringe training clients a lot. They get emotional having to restrain their bird, see the stress they are under, worry if the chronic stress will lead to them not getting better on the expected timeline, and long-term negative affect on their relationship with their bird. Depending on the bird and situation, yes, all of that can happen. Once when they are in this situation, they ask me how they get syringe train their bird within a day, or 12 hours for their next medication administration. Sadly, training does not work that way, no matter how any social media video shows you.
Sometimes we need that swift kick in the butt to realize the importance of teaching these behaviors. I can talk about the value of these behaviors all I want, and I am sure some of you think I am just trying to market my business well and get new clients. Though, yes, this is my job, I promote things that I think are extremely important to teach and for your animals to learn. A marketing scheme would be like “teach your bird to play dead class” or “get your dog to roll over” class. Everyone loves to trick train, and both these behaviors are cute and funny, not very practical, but great mental stimulation and relationship building. I have lived a lot of life and experiences with parrots, my own and ones I have worked with, to know what behaviors really come in handy! My goal is to catch you guys before you need that swift kick in the butt because that is no fun for anyone.
After the holidays, I know you have a mental list of what you wish you could have done differently to make the event a success for animal and people alike. Here are some tips I have on common behaviors I know you might have experienced and wish to change in the future and where to start!
First, if your bird is not friendly around other people, or get stressed around them. Most people have to keep their parrots in their cage beyond safety reasons for the parrot, but safety reasons for the humans as well. Birds that lunge and bite at the bars when people are around, pace and make abnormal movements, or are louder than usual are likely stress and uncomfortable around other people. Parrots take a while to warm up to new people unless they have been heavily socialized at a young age and continue to be socialize. Everyone experiences it, even me with my own flock.
The best place to start with this is target training. It is an easy foundational behavior that can be done through the cage bars (off-contact) and at a distance. It is easy to learn and easy to implement, meaning its easy to convince guests and friends to do it with your bird. You will want to teach the target behavior yourself, and work on it for a while until your bird has mastered the behavior. Then, slowly start asking more and more people to help you do this training. Start with a friend or two coming over to hangout for a bit or when they pick you up before you go out. The more consistency you can have with those people coming around and training, the better, but not necessarily needed. If the guests are afraid of giving the bird a treat, they can target near the bird’s food bowl and throw the treat into it, or you give them the treat. This creates positive and gentle interactions with guests, as well as helps socialize your bird, as they start to see people and interactions as something valuable and positive!
I have a Target Training Online Class that describes how to teach the behavior step-by-step!
I also sell target stick, treat pouches, and a target stick and treat pouch bundle to help make this an easy experience. I like my target sticks because they can be used with all sized birds, they have a 14” long handle leaving a lot of room for everyone to feel comfortable, if necessary, it is very durable, easy to clean, and easy to work with. Out of all the target sticks I have tried; these are the best!
Second behavior is parrot screaming. The easiest and quickest way around this is through foraging! Give your birds a lot of foraging time and experience before the holidays so you can give them lots to do, and they will know exactly what to do! If you are worried about having the time to give them these experiences, plan ahead! You can fill up foraging toys and activities before the holiday and store them in an air tight container so you can grab, throw, and go! If you need ideas, check out my online classes on enrichment and foraging! If you need easy foraging toys, I sell those, handmade by me who is chronically busy and lacking time to do foraging for my birds!
The third I want to talk about is if your animal, any species, is afraid of loud noises, start now to change that. Yes, this can be changed! Ramona, my basset, since she was nine weeks old had a fear of loud noises (except for Alfie who is louder than all noises). She would shake, hide, and be erratic. She would react to large dogs barking, car horns, bomb testing at the military base near my house, fireworks, pots bagging, etc. None of my other dogs would react but she would. I knew this would be an issue for her long-term. We cannot control loud noises and people’s desires to set off fireworks. Knowing that I cannot control that, what I can control is how my dog feels towards them.
Using counterconditioning, she now is comfortable with fireworks, gun shots, bomb blasts, car horns, and everything else! She does sometimes still get startled when outside and she hears fireworks only. She will trot over to the front door and stand there till I let her in. If I know it is my neighbors shooting off guns, and her bestie Tootsie is outside, I can reassure her and call her out and she hangs out with Tootsie and I willingly. If she does not come when I say “it’s okay” she is telling me it is clearly not, and I put her back inside. When inside the house, no atter the noise, she is cool as a cucumber now.
This works for all species. Parrots, cats, horses, and your neighborhood giraffe can have the same success. There is also a slew of management strategies that can also be employed to decrease reactions to loud noises, which usually is just fireworks for people. I will briefly name a few here, but there are tons more out there that may work better for you!
· Get a prescription from your vet a month before the holiday you are expecting fireworks to decrease stress for your animal. This may be medications that help with anxiety, it may be a tranquilizer like trazadone to make your animal sleepy, or other options. This is a band aid to the situation, but for some animals, it may be needed or a good thing to have on hand even after training.
· Move your animal into a central location in your house. Having as many walls in between your animal and the loud noises helps decrease the noise. Also, there will not be any windows around for them to see flashing lights that may also be scary. If you cannot escape windows, you can hang blackout curtains, even using painters’ tape to secure the sides to the wall so there is no light coming through. If you are moving your animal, move them at least a week prior. This may be adding extra dog beds to the room and going there to hangout for a bit every day, it may be a carrier in there that your bird goes in with you around for an hour or two, or move the entire cage. You want your animal to be comfortable in the new environment before the fireworks so they are not stressed in a new setting with loud noises.
· Use calming pheromones for your dog. Put some lavender on a toy, blanket, or bed about a month before fireworks. Bring the scent out when your dog is calm and relaxed. When fireworks start, have the lavender out. Not only is lavender alone known to be calming, but it will also bring associations to be calmer because of how it has been exposed to previously.
· Dampen the sound of the fireworks by adding other sounds. Running air purifiers on max, a noise machine, playing soothing music, watching a movie, and anything else that you can use in your house to dampen the sound is helpful. I know Ramona and I sit on the bed together cuddling and we watch a movie. I already have black out curtains in my bedroom, so it works well!
Start now with keeping holidays fun for everyone by helping give your animal skills to be successful! Now is the best time for this because there are no major holidays for a bit of time, allowing for training to become effective. Feel free to reach out to me if you need help with your animal’s behaviors!