Sorry I have been remiss in keeping up this Salty thread, for anyone who has been reading it ( LOL, prolly just me).
Something in last nights training session made me realize how Salty has been actually training me and not the other way around. I introduced a new trick about 2 weeks ago, the trick is to stack up nesting cups, one into the other. These are small plastic infant to 1 yr old toys from Babies-r-Us, and there are 8 of them all together. We started with the 3 smallest and Salty caught on after 3 times what was expected of him. He stacks them up right and he gets his treat. But after I started to introduce more and more of the cups from the set, he became more and more reluctant to do this trick. He would just wander off on the training table, for all the world looking like some cartoon character looking into to sky, rolling his eyes and whistling tunelessly. Doodty-doodty doo , no thanks Dad, not interested. Odd behavior for him in a training session, when he usually is peeking over the side of the table at the tricks all laid out on the floor, and literally runs to the next trick when I bring it onto the table.
And then I figured it out! He wants a treat for putting EACH cup into the previous one !
So I start the trick all over, biggest one on the table, and put the next smallest one next to it, and let Salty see the treat. He picked up the cup and slams it into the bigger one. I take the next one and also show him the treat and again, he picked up the cup and SLAM right into the previous one. An so it goes for the whole set of cups. he picked up the cups, one by one, perfectly and placed them perfectly into the previous one, getting his little treat after each. The whole set of 8. And I started laughing because he had in no uncertain terms told me that he was not going to work for unfair wages doing this trick, getting one treat for the whole thing, no, he wanted a raise, and felt that he should be getting a treat for each cup.
I hope he doesn't start to apply that thinking to other tricks, like his speed ring trick, where I take all the yellow rings and quickly one by one give them to him to place on the yellow post and he gets a treat at the end of each color. Or some other tricks where he has to do multiple actions to get his treat.
Has he been watching some 'Workers of the World , Unite!' propaganda?
"Parrots of the World, Unite!"?
Now if he was one of those parrots who like to untie huge knots as fun, I could see their slogan as... "Parrots of the World, Untie ! "
Anyway, he is training me on how to train him. Don;t tell me parrots aren't smart.
BUT she picks up things on her own.
