Ring Toss Training for GCC

[anaximander]

For several weeks now I’ve been working on getting my GCC, Sencha, to pick up a ring and put it on a post. We practice almost every morning as part of his usual training session.

If I put out my hand, he will bring the ring to me. This behavior is pretty well established. From there, I started trying to get him to put the ring on the post. This was slow going, but a few days ago he finally seemed to get it. He was successfully putting the ring on the post about 50% of the time. The rest of the time, he’d usually drop the ring near the post.

Then, suddenly, he seems not only to have forgotten how to do the trick, but has very limited interest in the whole ring/post situation. Sometimes he’ll pick up the ring and just wander off with it. Other times he seems to be pointedly ignoring the ring.

I don’t think there are any health issues involved here. His weight, appetite, and behavior are normal, and other aspects of training are going quite well. He just seems to have given up on this particular trick.

I’m not sure what I should do. Just keep plugging along? Give him a break from this trick for a week or so? Move on to something else for which he might have more enthusiasm?

 

[foxgloveparrot]

Does he know other tricks? If yes, is this the same with them?
Try holding a small treat in your hand while you ask for the ring. Praise him for small steps, like simply going near the ring.
This happens sometimes, and I have no idea why; but it normally means the trick just has to be retrained. Or you have to at least go back a step.

 

[anaximander]

Does he know other tricks? If yes, is this the same with them?
Try holding a small treat in your hand while you ask for the ring. Praise him for small steps, like simply going near the ring.
This happens sometimes, and I have no idea why; but it normally means the trick just has to be retrained. Or you have to at least go back a step.

He does know other tricks. Nothing fancy, but he reliably steps ups, turns around, and waves. He is performing all of these as normal.

I'll take your advice and back up a bit. Maybe I pushed the trick too quickly.

 

[Deleted member 42416]

I think he’s smarter than we think and is over this trick! (That is just my opinion having a very smart GCC myself, but I’m not an animal behaviorist either)

 

[Gemster]

You mentioned that you have been doing this trick for several weeks, it’s normal for any animal to get bored of training when we don’t mix things up. You should definitely take a break from this trick as you could easily be decreasing the value of training as a whole. Not sure how long you train but it’s also important to keep training sessions under 5 minutes as this makes training sessions more interesting. 1-2 minutes of training a day can be plenty if planned well.
“he’ll pick up the ring and just wander off with it” - this simply means he finds the ring more reinforcing than the reinforcement you are offering.

Another reason (however, this seems unlikely from what you have written) he could be unmotivated is because you are raising the bar too high and increasing criteria too much. Whenever you raise criteria, next repetition, decrease it and reward at a higher rate. Then again raise it. This just increases the likelihood of success in the trick and decreases frustration in the bird which might be causing the lack of interest in the behaviour.

 

[wrench13]

Yep, he is bored of this one! I am a BIG believer in trick training as both a method of binding with your parrot and as a mental stimulation, and trust me they need a lot of that! My Salty at this point knows well over 40 different tricks, most with some sort of prop including variations of the one you are using. We do maybe 7 or 8 in the course of our normal sessions, and I always change them up. We do however start and end each session with the same ones, start is roll overs and ending with the slide. I think that doing that preps Salty to know that the session is starting, using one of his favorite tricks and ending with one that we know is a positive and successful trick. He comes to sessions eager to do them and also eager to learn now ones. He constantly amazes me as he picks up a new trick in only one or two tries, some pretty sophisticated ones, like picking the Kings out of a deck of cards. He seems to like the ones that require him to think a bit rather then to just get a physical skill down pat. Also he invents new ways to do or use a given trick - and remember this - parrots are very adept at cheating! Give you an example. We have one trick of 8 small nesting cups. I line them up and he has to re-stack them in order. We started to reward after each cup but them started stretching that out to every other and them to every third, etc. He realized that he only got a reward, finally, when all the cups were stacked up. So he started on his own to pre stack 3 or 4 cups and then carry them over to add to the pile! Less work and faster reward! He also tried taking the smallest one right away and putting that into the largest, figuring that this was the trigger for the treat! Cheating!!

 

[anaximander]

Yep, he is bored of this one! I am a BIG believer in trick training as both a method of binding with your parrot and as a mental stimulation, and trust me they need a lot of that! My Salty at this point knows well over 40 different tricks, most with some sort of prop including variations of the one you are using. We do maybe 7 or 8 in the course of our normal sessions, and I always change them up. We do however start and end each session with the same ones, start is roll overs and ending with the slide. I think that doing that preps Salty to know that the session is starting, using one of his favorite tricks and ending with one that we know is a positive and successful trick. He comes to sessions eager to do them and also eager to learn now ones. He constantly amazes me as he picks up a new trick in only one or two tries, some pretty sophisticated ones, like picking the Kings out of a deck of cards. He seems to like the ones that require him to think a bit rather then to just get a physical skill down pat. Also he invents new ways to do or use a given trick - and remember this - parrots are very adept at cheating! Give you an example. We have one trick of 8 small nesting cups. I line them up and he has to re-stack them in order. We started to reward after each cup but them started stretching that out to every other and them to every third, etc. He realized that he only got a reward, finally, when all the cups were stacked up. So he started on his own to pre stack 3 or 4 cups and then carry them over to add to the pile! Less work and faster reward! He also tried taking the smallest one right away and putting that into the largest, figuring that this was the trigger for the treat! Cheating!!

I like this idea of starting and stopping with the same tricks every day. Nice way to frame the session! Salty sounds really smart!

 

[anaximander]

I think he’s smarter than we think and is over this trick! (That is just my opinion having a very smart GCC myself, but I’m not an animal behaviorist either)

You could be right. He's probably thinking "Really? The ring again? That's SO last week!"