Clicker training

[hiriki]

I'm starting my journey in clicker training my lovebird and thought I'd post a thread about it to see what kind of discussion it prompts!

I work at a shelter (cats and dogs) and as part of my training I took a lengthy course in (primarily dog) behavior and training, in which I was for the first time properly instructed on how to use a clicker and operant conditioning. I learned that training should be fun and confidence boosting, and that it can really improve the animal-person bond. So I'm going to train my lovebird to do some silly things just to help her associate me with fun and hopefully nudge her toward eventual hand taming. Luckily I have a foundation of being able to feed her high value treats from my fingers (which took me nearly a year to do) so I can jump straight to the training

Still, I'm new at it. Last night I spent a half hour or so trying to teach her simply to chirp for treats and I was shocked that she wasn't picking it up very quickly. I expect that it'll take her a while yet to understand that I'm rewarding her for certain behaviors but once it clicks we'll take off running!!

It was (definitely) optimistic but I bought some training toys (a little shopping cart and some recycling bins for her to put things in lol) so I wonder how long it'll take for me to teach her how to go shopping

Who else has gone down the clicker training journey and how did it go?

 

[hiriki]

For anyone who might be curious about Elby bird's progress, she's pretty well target trained now! My double flight cage is about 6ft wide, and she will follow the stick from one end of it to the other. She's drawn a proverbial line in the sand over flying to the stick, though, so if I ask her to fly to another cage or, perish the thought, across the room, she won't do that.

She's much less spooked when I move, though. And if she goes to peck the target in one hand and I reach my other hand to her with a treat, she doesn't feel threatened or cornered. I'm so incredibly proud of her, all I want to do is sing her praises to the world.

 

[Laurasea]

Congratulations!!! Definitely a great accomplishment! Love to hear about success and progress!

I feel the same desire to share any successes of my FIDS.

More pictures!

 

[wrench13]

Your going to find that the more training you do with him, the faster he will learn, even on complicated tricks. Salty and I train every day for the last 5 years or so, and he learns tricks usually in 1 or 2 tries.

He learned this trick below in 1 try after I showed him what I wanted him to do.

 

[hiriki]

Congratulations!!! Definitely a great accomplishment! Love to hear about success and progress!

I feel the same desire to share any successes of my FIDS.

More pictures!

I really should take more pics of Elby!!! She used to run off whenever I got close so pics were impossible but now she seems excited when I walk over so maybe I can finally get some good shots hehe. I'll give it a go tomorrow once she's back out and about.

Your going to find that the more training you do with him, the faster he will learn, even on complicated tricks. Salty and I train every day for the last 5 years or so, and he learns tricks usually in 1 or 2 tries.

He learned this trick below in 1 try after I showed him what I wanted him to do.

Wow! Can't wait to see how clever she'll be after some work. She's already started to experiment to get clicks, she'll peck random things and then look at me. I'm not really sure what trick to start with so I'm still proofing the stick training but once we've both gotten a bit better at this training thing, I bought a tiny basketball hoop for her to use

 

[hiriki]

Here is Elby bird! She's standing on top of my conure's cage.

 

[SailBoat]

So very happy with your progress and look forward to your ever increasing list of new things.

I have never been big on clicker training as unless you also use verbal commands /requests at some point you will find yourself without your clicker. Hence, I believe in doubling-up.

Cheers!!