Initial Training Session

START THE CONVERSATION

First, you will fill out the ticket below to start the conversation with head trainer Melanie Canatella. Communication will primarily be through email regarding your sessions, as it allows for clearer communication and a communication history to be able to reference easily.

PHONE CONSULTATION

When communicating through email, we will set up a complementary 20-minute phone consultation to get to know you and your animal better! This is very important to learn what are the behaviors you are seeing, your goals, and if we are the right trainers to meet your goals. If we are not, then we will refer you to some of our partners, so you are never left resourceless!

Another important part of this phone conversation is to be sure you understand our session process, as well as pricing for our services. We do offer payment plans if needed, which we can go over for case-by-case situations!

It allows for you to meet head trainer Melanie, ask questions, get reassurance, and to be sure that we are a good fit to work together.

If you are an international client, this phone conversation ill actually be over video call. This is because we have found that not every phone plan allows for international calls. Most people do not allow international calls through their phone provider, which has not allowed us to make contact. Conducting a video call will allow us to bypass this possible issue and be able to speak easily! If English is not your first language, we do have services available to make it easier to speak to each other!

If you are not an international client, but would rather your phone consultation be over video call as well, we can arrange that at no additional cost! We accommodate to your preferences the best we can!

PAYMENT AND GATHERING INFORMATION

Once you are ready to start the training process, we will send over a questionnaire form and the invoice for the cost of the initial training session. The questionnaire form is very detailed using functional assessment in order to get to know you, your bird, the environment, and other contributing factors to behavior in order to understand your situation and the behavior the best! It is a very detailed document, which is important for me to best understand your situation. This is because this information, as well as the information you gave over the phone consultation, will be used to create the written training plan, which I will go into more detail about below.

The invoice for the initial session, and any follow up sessions if you would like to pay in advanced, will be sent to the email you provide. Invoices are through PayPal Invoice. This means you can pay with your PayPal account, or with all major credit/debit cards. You do not need a PayPal account to fill out the invoice. If you are on a payment plan process, it will be included in your invoice. Payment needs to be completed in full 24 hours before your scheduled meeting. If not, we will need to reschedule. In the meantime, you can still fill out the questionnaire form, and I can create your custom training plan.

CREATING THE WRITTEN TRAINING PLAN

From the information you send, a custom written training plan is created. This is a very detailed document that includes every small approximation that you will follow to modify your amimal’s behavior. It also includes troubleshooting so if you are training and behavior doesn’t go as anticipated, you have a plan to recover the training session, or get it to a good ending point to then follow up with your trainer to find out what went wrong and how to make sure it doesn’t happen again. The training plan is for teaching your animal new behaviors in order to decrease the undesirable ones. Training sessions are generally short, around 3-5 minutes of length at least once a day, ideally twice a day, but could be more times per day depending on your animals motivation!

There may also be a management plan that you will be given depending on the behavior. A management plan is a plan of suggestions for you to make in everyday life in order to support your training and behavior modification. This may include topics like diet change, environmental changes, how you interact with your animal, etc. These are different from the training plans because a management plan is unstructured training through modifying everyday life, as a training plan is direction to do for structured training sessions that works on creating new behaviors.

INFORMATIONAL VIDEO CALL

The last step in the initial training session is the video call. The video call is through Zoom, and you will get the link to our session about 30 minutes before the session starts. If you are unfamiliar with Zoom and think you need more time to figure it out, e can send the link sooner, as well as provide video tutorials for ease.

The video call is about 1-2 hours in length, and it is a lot of information! We go over any management plans and the training plan, as well as any other supporting education you will need in order to be successful. This session is to educate you to be able to educate your animal! The video call includes demonstrations to help you visualize the movements of the training that you will be incorporating. Depending on your animal, we can provide live demonstrations with our resident animals. We try to accommodate to your learning style for the most success.

After the call has ended, you will be sent the written training plan, as well as the management plan if needed, as well as any other education you need in order to be successful. We also offer for the video call to be recorded for reference purposes at no additional cost. Just let your trainer know that you would like that!

If you are a client whose first language is not English and you need extra services, this may look different, and that process will be discussed individually.

FOLLOW UP SESSIONS

Once your initial training session has been completed, there are follow up sessions that you can participate in! These are incredibly useful sessions for clients, as we can accomplish a lot to support the training process. Follow up sessions are scheduled at your digression. Generally, clients like to meet weekly for a month, once the following month, and then monthly from there on out. Others like to focus on one behavior at a time and have a follow up to be refreshed on the next behavior to work on. Others will schedule when they feel stuck or are seeing behaviors that were not anticipated.

Follow up sessions are to support you and your training, as well as to ask questions. Your trainer is always available through email for when you have questions, but some questions are best discussed in person or with demonstrations that cannot be replicated through email easily. If you feel like you are set after the initial session since you are given everything you need to be successful, then a follow up session doesn’t have to be scheduled ever. Fluff and Feathers does recommend at least one follow up session to be sure you are on the right track.

Here are a few things we can do and accomplish during these sessions:

~ We can do live training on the video call. This allow for your trainer to give you critiques on your training technique and timing in order to have the best success when training, as well as speed up the training process. Sometimes, live training can kind of be a lot to juggle. Between your animal, yourself, possible training aids, The device with your trainer, so on and so forth, it can be a lot! We offer the ability for you to send us video recordings of your training sessions in order to review during the call. This will still allow for the critiques to be made, but it allows for you to focus better! Your trainer can pause the video and say “that right there” for the clearest communication.

~ Follow up sessions can hold you accountable to staying motivated to continue the training. Fluff and Feathers believes in educating the animal’s caretaker to change the behaviors rather than the trainer doing all the work. This is for better long-term success, as you will become more educated in the behaviors and how to manage them with training. This means that you need to do all the training sessions. This can be hard for some people to stick with. But, meeting face-to-face with their trainer can help motivate them to continue the training consistently for better reports back! Your trainer can also help motivate you if you are struggling by finding methods that work best for you, as well as breaking down the behaviors and progress into more manageable amounts. We are here to support you in the ways we can!

~ We can amend the training plan. Our trainers are incredibly knowledgeable and experienced working with a wide range of species. Most of the time, the plan that is recommended and formulated works perfectly to meet behavior goals! But, we are also not fortune tellers that can see into the future unfortunately, which means that a training plan may not be the best fit. This can be for many reasons. Either the animal is not responding as anticipated, and smaller approximations need to be used, or a different method entirely. It could be that it doesn’t work for the caretaker for any reason; if it doesn’t work for the caretaker, being the primary trainer, then it won’t work for the animal either! Or, it doesn’t work for the environment. We can meet back up and make the changes that works for everyone effectively.

~It is a good time to catch up. Sometimes, chatting about struggles and progress can be reassuring and helps with motivation. Having that support can be very inspiring to keep up with the training, and knowing that you are on the right track!