Update on Ebbe

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Harness training can take a long time, because you never want to push the parrot too hard. It took about a year for Salty to accept the harness. I include putting his head thru the head loop in our nightly training sessions. Actually putting the harness on is a whole 'nother action. Salty and I play and rough house all the time, So he accepts more handling then some parrots do. Check out our video on Youtube, How NOT to put a harness on ( but we take a breather and get it on correctly).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iw16lN2T0ik

Sorry for the late reply!
Both you and Salty are so good! I will study the video carefully!
About our training: I got Ebbe to be kind of okay with the harness. I could put it on all the way without tightening it sometimes (for treats) but it's been harder after the incident where I was too focused on succeeding than I was listening to him. He refuses to train with the harness on the chair where this happened but is starting to warm up to it again if we do it on the table.
Fortunately, he was mostly angry on the harness and not so much at me!

It's tricky because he's so focused on his treats and gets a bit panicky when he realises what's going on and he hates taking it off when it's behind his wings.
I'll suppose we'll just continue training, slowly and get him used to me touching him.

It's hard to find information about training older birds. All the tutorials and videos, especially about harnesses, are for young and very tame birds. I've mostly been following my instincts when I'm training him since some of the more common techniques just wouldn't work for him.
I'm not sure Ebbe will ever be that easy to handle and that's okay because it's who he is, but this harness-thing frustrates me because it would make life more fun for both of us.

I've got a new friend with an illigers macaw that's very handleable (she can do practically anything to him) and when I was talking about my process with Ebbe, she realised how easy her guy is compared to mine and felt rather grateful.
I was a bit jealous of their relationship but then I met this bird and hooo boy is he a handful! He is incredible sweet, funny and lovable but HE IS EVERYWHERE ALL THE TIME. This made me grateful for my calm, precious Ebbe :p
 

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