New Relationhip with an old "friend"

[damanta]

I've had parrots literally my whole life. My parents had an Amazon before I was born and got a second shortly after. Pepper (the first, a Blue Front) loved me, she imitated my cries and was very interested in me. As I got older, she let me hold her. Peewee, a yellow nape, was the total opposite. She hated me, or more specifically was jealous of the time my parents spent with me. As I got older, she bit me, lunged at me and generally terrorized me. After her beak went fully through my cheek at 7 years old, I was done with her. So for the last 15 or so years, I have tolerated her from a distance while playing with Pepper the second( a double yellow my parents got after a horrible accident 8 years ago took the first Pepper from us) and Princess, our Blue & Gold. I work at a pet store and am generally the one who hand tames the young birds we get and have gotten badly bitten more times than I can count. I intern at a small zoo, and handle a hawk that lunges at my face, a great horned owl that bites and bruises my wrist, and have been bitten by other creatures too...Gradually, it has seemed more and more ridiculous that I can not even go near this animal, who I love dearly, that I have been around my whole life. I have been obsessively reading any article, thread, what have you about fixing these types of relationships. I started out by putting a chair near her cage and just spending time reading or what have you around her, as well as doing training sessions with my macaw(who I clicker trained some tricks) in the room so that Peewee could watch. Then I tried giving her(and of course the others) treats, starting with long ones that she couldn't easily reach my fingers with. I have gotten it down to sunflower seeds. In the past week, I have been able to rub her beak(and she's only attempted to bite once) and I have held her twice for 10 minutes, at her own request(she came into our kitchen and climbed up my chair). We are both still leery of each other, but words can't express how good it feels to finally work on fixing this relationship that was based on fear and aggression for so long.
Sorry for the super long post.

 

[wenz2712]

What a lovely story That is brilliant that Peewee has started to bond with you after all these years It just goes to show, it can be done.

 

[henpecked]

Congrats on making progress.Sounds like your research has helped. My parents also had amazons and macaws since before us kids came along.(Avatar is me and YN Dec of 1959) I don't ever remember the zons being anything but nice ( just a few scars), The macaws on the other hand seemed to chase us around and would bite the fire out of us.( i don't think they liked active kids.) Welcome to the forum, hope to "see" you around.

 

[MonicaMc]

That's a great story! Just goes to show that nothing is set in stone! And I'm sure the feeling must be amazing to finally interact with this bird!