The Pleasure of Their Company

Bonnie Munro Doane

Description

Making the Most of a Good Thing Sharing Your Home and Life with a pet bird from the parrot family can be a joy that must be experienced to be appreciated. Whether your parrot pal is a lordly macaw, a tiny budgie or any of the beautiful Amazons, African greys, cockatoos or other beloved species in between, life can be beautiful when communication works. And that is what The Pleasure of Their Company: An Owner's Guide to Parrot Training can do for the relationship.

The text discusses the reasons for training a parrot, how an owner's behavior influences training results, working with baby birds and weanlings, three basic obedience skills and training techniques for adult parrots. You will find chapters on potty training to help your parrot clean up its act; speech training that makes your parrot more fun to be with and some intriguing examples of parrots really knowing what they're saying; trick training that allows a parrot to use its nimble mind and dexterous body together and some valuable insights on fun and games with your parrot to enjoy your relationship fully. With delightful illustrations by parrot lover Richard Cole and a wealth of practical guidance, The Pleasure of Their Company is the gift you give yourself and your parrot to make life better for you both.
1. Why Train Your Parrot?

2. Normal Parrot Behavior.

3. Owner Behavior and Parrot Training.

4. The Weanling.

5. The Three Basic Obedience Skills.

6. Training the Adult Parrot.

7. Bringing Up Baby.

8. Potty Training.

9. Speech Training.

10. Trick Training.

11. Playing with Your Parrot.

12. In Conclusion.

Index.

Sujets

• Birds
• Pets

Informations

• Publié par: Turner Publishing Company
• Date de parution: 27 août 2007
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780470253243
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 3 Mo

Extrait

The Pleasure of Their Company
AN OWNER S GUIDE TO PARROT TRAINING
The Pleasure of Their Company
AN OWNER S GUIDE TO PARROT TRAINING
Bonnie Munro Doane
Illustrations by Richard Cole
Howell Book House
A Simon Schuster Macmillan Company
1633 Broadway
New York, NY 10019
Macmillan Publishing books may be purchased for business or sales promotional use. For information please write: Special Markets Department, Macmillan Publishing USA, 1633 Broadway, New York, NY 10019.
Copyright 1998 by Bonnie Munro Doane
All rights reserved. No part of this book shall be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without written permission from the publisher.
MACMILLAN is a registered trademark of Macmillan, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Doane, Bonnie Munro.
The pleasure of their company: an owner s guide to parrot training / Bonnie Munro
Doane; illustrations by Richard Cole.
p. cm.
ISBN 0-87605-594-3
1. Parrots-Training. I. Title
SF473.P3D63 1998
636.6 86535 dc21 97-46150
CIP
Manufactured in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Book Design: A D Howell Design
Cover Design: Kevin Hanek
In memory of our dearest Mac and for our wonderful J.B .
About the Author
Bonnie Munro Doane, MSN, has worked with parrots for fifteen years. As both pet owner and breeder, she has wide experience in the areas of parrot behavior and behavioral problems, parrot husbandry, nutrition, and breeding. She is one of approximately 350 persons in the U.S. holding a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services permit to breed certain endangered parrot species. Ms. Doane is available for consultation on parrot behavior problems and questions relating to their care and breeding. She can be contacted on her Web site at http://members.aol.com/Psitt/index.html .
Contents
1. Why Train Your Parrot?
2. Normal Parrot Behavior
3. Owner Behavior and Parrot Training
4. The Weanling
5. The Three Basic Obedience Skills
6. Training the Adult Parrot
7. Bringing Up Baby
8. Potty Training
9. Speech Training
10. Trick Training
11. Playing with Your Parrot
12. In Conclusion
Index

A bundle of feathered joy.
1
Why Train Your Parrot?
A bird has its weight, though a mere feather.
-African proverb
Congratulations! You ve just brought home your new parrot.
The chances are it s newly weaned, but perhaps you re still hand-feeding it. You know your little bundle of feathered joy is going to need some pretty consistent tender loving care. Being a good parrot parent, you re reading everything you can find to help you do your best. You deserve a big pat on the shoulder; indeed, your parrot youngster is a very lucky bird to have you!
This book was written in large part with you and your new friend in mind. You will find much here to help get you off to a good start. It s important for you to know that when you bring your little guy home, it knows how to do only two things: how to trust you, and how not to fear you. Period. Everything else-good, bad, and indifferent-will be learned from you and the other members of your family. You have the sole responsibility for teaching your parrot what it must know to get along happily with its human companions. Without your constant gentle yet firm teaching and guidance, it will revert to the wild ways of its ancestors, and you will both be very unhappy with each other. Your job is that of a parent in many ways. This book is designed to help you parent your parrot in the very most effective way possible.
So read on. Determine to do it correctly from the very beginning, and you ll never regret going the extra mile.
Or . . .
You already have a parrot-and you re in trouble. So is your parrot. You are very disappointed. You need good, practical help, and you need it now. Or who knows how things might end up?
You probably paid a great deal of money for your feathered problem, although at the time you didn t expect any difficulties. Your spending didn t stop there, however. An attractive cage in which your new pet could reside comfortably, as well as its toys and treats, meant dropping yet another bundle to become a parrot owner.
You may have bought your parrot from a pet store. Unless you were very fortunate, the people at the pet store really didn t tell you very much about how to care for your expensive purchase. There is the good chance that whatever you were told was heavy on misinformation that was at best silly and at worst downright dangerous to the bird.
On the other hand, you may have bought your parrot from a breeder. In this case, the breeder probably gave you a good deal of sound advice about how to care for the bird. You were probably given recommendations for one or two good avian veterinarians and encouraged to get your new parrot a physical examination and routine lab work to ensure that it was healthy at the point of sale and would remain so.
However, you may not have taken all that good information very seriously. Perhaps you only half-listened. After all, how hard can it be to take care of a parrot, right? And you may not have sought a
new bird checkup, either. Veterinarians are costly, and you had already spent a young fortune on the bird. Besides, it looked and acted just fine when you got it. Right?

Feather pickers often resemble well-used dusters.
Now your bird picks its feathers. The gorgeous, exotic creature you brought home and so proudly showed off to family and friends now looks a like moth-eaten feather duster that has seen far better days. How much pleasure can you take in something so ugly? It s a downright shame, and you re feeling very angry with the bird. It picked a pretty poor way to repay you for all the care and money you lavished on it.

Or your parrot screams . . .
Or perhaps your bird bites. Hard. Every time you go near it. Now this is really upsetting, because your friend down the street has a Blue-fronted Amazon that simply adores her. It grieves when she s out of its sight, would rather sit on her shoulder than anywhere else in the world and would happily give up its favorite treats for life rather than even think of biting her. And into the bargain, her Blue-front talks up a storm. There s simply no end to the clever things that parrot says, and often talks so appropriately it makes your hair stand on end. Why, that bird was one of the reasons you decided you had-simply had -to have a parrot. And look at the miserable, nasty creature now! It s plain mean, and you just might have to have it put down. The only reason you haven t is that you really hate to see all that money go down the drain. Perhaps selling it to someone else might be a good alternative?
Or maybe your parrot screams. Night and day. Loud enough to wake the dead. The more you tell it to shut up, the louder it screams. Your significant other has begun to issue ultimatums-me or the bird, one of us has to go. Your landlord is making ugly noises about either your getting rid of the bird or his getting rid of you. Living in a tent in your parents back yard has very little appeal. If only the bird would just shut up! You re getting to the point where you hate the sight of it. Your life is well on the way to becoming a shambles because of the cursed bird. Brother, did you make a mistake on this one! If you d had any idea a parrot could be like this, you would have cut off your arm rather than buy one. Now you re stuck with it, unless you can unload it on some unsuspecting soul. Or maybe you could move it to the basement. No one goes down there much unless they must, and at least the bird s shrieks will be muffled and more bearable that way.

Rude parrots often cause serious family disagreements.
One or all of the above is reason enough to train your parrot, or, more properly, teach it the skills that allow it to live happily with its human family and allow you to enjoy the parrot-rather than resenting, ignoring, or abusing it, either knowingly or unknowingly. First, the bird is a significant financial investment. It makes no sense to allow that expenditure to become a waste because you are unable to enjoy the parrot. Second, the presence of an unmanageable pet in your home detracts considerably from the quality of your life and the life of your family. Such a pet is frequently the cause for serious disagreements, arguments,
and smoldering resentment on the part of other family members. Obviously, this is not a desirable state of affairs.
Third, and to the author s mind the most important reason for training your parrot, is the bird s quality of life. A parrot is not a dog or cat. It is not a domestic animal, even though it was born in captivity. Thirty-five million years of wild genes do not go away because the egg was hatched in a nestbox or incubator instead of a nesthole in a tree seventy feet above the rainforest floor. However, the parrot is intelligent and adaptable. It is fully capable of learning the few simple behaviors that will enable it to enjoy a happy, healthy life as a cherished member of the family.

There is no doubting the intelligence of this lovely Blue-fronted Amazon, owned by Mr. and Mrs. Richard Cole.
A parrot s intelligence has been likened to that of a dolphin or whale. This being so, it deserves the blessings and benefits of training and the commitment of the owner that will make this possible. We socialize our children as much for their sakes as for ours. We wish them to become happy, useful members of society, able to function in all the ways adults are expected to function in our world. Most of us would not think of allowing our children to grow up as wild beings, devoid of a notion of what constitutes reasonable behavior. It is no different for a parrot. It is a grave disservice to neglect to teach it good manners and the skills it must have to become the companion its great potential will allow if properly guided.
T