I've said it quite a few times around the forum, but Cairo is touch-phobic. His go-to reaction to someone reaching out to touch him is to lean away, flash his wings, and threaten with an open beak or to skip all that and just fly off. If cornered/toweled, he'd bite.
We've spent a lot of our time working on that with him. And it takes months, not something that you can easily show on YouTube.
For us, we also wanted to have good vet exams (as well as being able to take him out on a harness). And trust me, harness training is different from touch training.
For basic touch, it progressed something like:
- say cue word, slowly move a hand as if going to touch him, then treat at the same time or immediately after (depending on your bird's acceptance level - Cairo had to receive a treat at the same time at first)
- repeat and get closer each time, following your bird's body language to make sure he's always comfortable
- say cue word, touch briefly and treat at the same time
- repeat and increase touch time and increase time to treat gradually, again following your bird's body language.
This alone took us a couple of weeks. And mind you, touch for us was eventually just defined as touch his back/wing/keel for less than 2 seconds. We didn't need anything more than that for harness training.
However, vet exams require more than just a brief touch.
For checking his feet, I had already trained Cairo to "shake". It was then just a matter of adjusting the trick to allow me to pry open his toes at the same time. This, of course, took a lot of time and positive reinforcement. It's one thing to be off-balance, standing on one foot while the other foot moves up and down. It's another thing to be asked to open the grip of one foot, especially when you're requesting it from a bird who doesn't trust so easily. Many treats at the same time before we managed to get to the point where we could separate the time of 'trick' from the time of treat,
Certain things only come with trust, positive reinforcement, and time. Local parrot folks who see me and Cairo are always amazed at how bonded he seems to be to me. But it took me me almost a year to get Cairo to trust me to flip him onto his back, and that's just flipping him, not getting him to stay there for extended periods of time. Through at a lot of positive reinforcement (treats) and listening to his body language (not pushing him when he clearly wasn't comfortable), we've been able to get him to accept being on his back for a little while as I touch random objects to his chest. He still insists on using at least one foot to hold onto one of my fingers (and that's ok, I gently encourage him but don't force him to let go), and if I want him to stay for more than 2 seconds, I have to feed him treats every couple of seconds. But that's ok - we're working at his pace and he's tolerating.
As for the wings and tail, we don't check his tail yet. But we do occasionally check his wings. Luckily he flies all the time, so I'm typically happy with that visual check. But we have another cue word for when I'm training to spread out one of his wings. We're still just working on him associating me moving his wing slightly with a treat. If we just went straight for opening his wing, he'd pull away and, if that wasn't successful, would bite with increasing pressure. So I don't even try for the full thing just yet.
Honestly, I'm not sure if any YouTube video covers that entire span of training for months. But you should be able to manage yourself if you just watch your bird's body language, don't force anything, and focus on tiny baby steps with positive reinforcement at the core.
