macaw

[daveg]

hi everyone were new here , myself and my wife live in south wales , we have a blue and gold macaw named Fred, and a staffordshire bull terrier named Beau,
Ourproblem is that everytime fred moves , talks, or screams our beau starts panicking , so far she has chewed through the water pipes a few doors to , i can imagine few people laughing i probably would to, but itys got to the stage where we might have to get rid of one of them . hopefully not, we have had fred from a hatchling almost 9 yrs and beau for 3 yrs ,is there anybody who knows how we can teach them to live together , we know it probably hurts beau,s ears when fred screams,

 

[mellykyitus]

hiya, i live in south wales too!! and my macaw used to be known as beau before she was dna tested and renamed angelLOL!!!

my dog cowers when angel screams and scuttles off to hide.

has beau been acting this way for the whole 3 years? he sounds a bit nervous of fred, have they ever tried to attack each other?

 

[patterson]

Hey Dave one of our dogs was sort of scared of our birds. He sort came round after few months tho u could try moving ur macaw to another room. We have one of our spare rooms pimped out for the birds java tree loads toys swings etc the dogs don't get in there but it's where we spend lot time

 

[daveg]

hello

Thank you for reading my post and replying , yes beau has been terrifed of fred from day one but only the last year has she started to eat our doors and pipes when left on her own we do put beau up stairs in our bedroom and shut all down stairs doors to try make her feel safe , but we feel we can not leave her in the house on her own, it is good to speak to people that know about Parrots and dogs as most people never seen a parrot and can not understand , where in south wales are you? we live in the valleys , sadly we do not have a spare room to kit out for fred we have him in the living room as its the most used room , and yes beau has ran over to fred and barked back and went for him when i told fred off for bitting wich he only do when he has a issue usually i know if anything is wrong before he feels the need to nip me to let me know, its so hard as both of them are amazing and in every other aspect are very well behaved , any suggestions to protect beaus ears from freds screams ? as when fred is chilled out so is beau

 

[MikeyTN]

My macaw nips at me too when he feels threatened. Best way for me to solve issues is to let them see each other face to face. Should have two people for this process. One needs to hold on to the dog while the other controls the bird. My macaw feeds the dogs so the dogs like him a lot...lol

 

[mellykyitus]

i live just outside of llanelli. i remember when our dog had an ear infection, noise really bothered him, could it be something like that?
when angel eats she dsrops food everywhere and the dogs love it cos they get the scraps. they sit under her waiting. would a treat reward work when he's around fred.
have you tried those anti chewing sprays to stop beau chomping your house to bits? x

 

[Mike]

Ok, at the risk of coming across as a naive newbie, let me say what I think a professional trainer like Barbara Heidenreich or Chet Womach would recommend. I took a quick look through Barbara's site but couldn't find the article and therefore couldn't paste the link here.

There's basically two things you need to do. Neither is quick, but both are relatively easy. You need to extinguish (that's the term she uses) the current behavior (Beau panics and chews cabinet when Fred screams), then redirect Beau to exhibit a new behavior whenever Fred screams. Sounds easy, but there are people out there who make their living training stuff like this (I'm not one of them).

First thing to do is identify a behavior Beau currently does which would be an acceptable replacement for the cabinet chewing behavior. Maybe, for example, Beau is a tail chaser, or maybe he can stand on his back legs. Capture that behavior and put it on a cue. There are a number of sites out there (goodbirdinc.com and birdtricks.com) which will show you how to do this through clicker training. Based on my experience with my dogs and my daughter's Conure, this first step will take about a week--maybe two. When you're done with this first step you might, for instance, be able to clap your hands twice and Beau will chase is tail.

The second step is to transfer the cue from clapping your hands to Fred's scream. You start out by clapping your hands whenever Fred screams, then rewarding Beau when he chases his tail. Do that for a week, then attempt to eliminate the hand clapping and watch to see if Beau still chases his tail. If he does, or if he even attempts it, reward him. The screaming is now his cue to chase his tail. This substitution of behavior is called redirection because it give Beau something to do which is less likely to result in an increased feeling of panic, to say nothing about also limiting damage to your cabinetry.

Now I've probably got something wrong in my description, and hopefully some of the more experienced trainers out there can show you a better way, but I thought this might be a method worth trying before you resort to casting off a valued companion.

By the way, the more I think about it you might not want to use clapping your hands since that will likely reward Fred for screaming, and you might not want to use chasing his tail since that will probably make Beau dizzy if Fred starts up an extended screaming session. You get the idea though.

Good luck!