Kisses, Waves, Step-Ups and Sunflower Seeds...

These are what we trained for today. It's not exactly the Olympics, but...it is important to us.

Rio has started his training regimen. I finally figured out a good teensy treat that I can use to reward him with that doesn't take 10 minutes for him to get down, and that I can buy in bulk. Sunflower seeds. Beautiful.

So, I started out with him on my arm, and asked him to do "Ladders". Ladders is me requesting him to step up from one arm to the next, over and over and over again. For each "Step-Up" on to my arm, he gets a sunflower seed. He did this perfectly, but to be fair, he's been doing this since week one of us meeting, but not always with treat. This was me trying to ease him into the routine of performing the trick, getting the reward and moving onto the next trick.

This is also helping to get him to step up for me whenever I ask, instead of just when he feels like doing it. Because, lemme tell you...if he doesn't feel like it, the gigantasaur pinch I recieve on my arm instead of birdy feet...HURTS LIKE HELL.

After about 30 repetitions of the Ladders, I started throwing in a kiss. I'd do a ladder, then say "Can I have a kiss?" and then I'd pucker up. In return, I'd get a beak on the lips, and he'd get a sunflower seed. Nice...it was working.

I threw in about 10 of those inbetween ladders, and then introduced his "Wave". His wave is actually me saying "Get Ri-Ri's Toes!" where then he'll put his foot up for me to play with. Instead of playing with it, I'd go "HI RI-RI!!!" In my super-duper high pitched girl voice, and then reward him. So, now, when I say "HI RI-RI!" He waves at me with his foot. Sweet, right? We did this about 20 times.

Then about half way through the training session, when he was rewarded with the sunflower seed, he goes "MMMMmmmmmm!" So, of course, I had to reward him twice, because when he uses words in context, he should get a reward for it! He quickly learned that by telling me "MMMMmmmmmm!!!" got him an extra treat. So, for the second half of the training session, he got two treats per trick. He's not a dumb animal. He may be even a little smarter than me, I think...

So, after we were finished, we had trained for about an hour and a half, and I had to go get ready for work. So, I put him in his cage, thinking... "Sweet. We just had a perfect training session and he's happy, I'm happy...that was really cool."

I put him on his cage, then went to the kitchen to grab some apples, grapes, snap peas and sprouts to toss into his fresh foods dish, and I changed his water and replaced it. I asked him to step up for me, and he freakin' DOVE at me! The little bastard tried to bite me, and bite me hard. There was no body language to suggest that I had done something to offend him. Sure...he wanted to be on me and I had other things to do...but I want a million dollars and I'm not exactly biting anyone because I'm pissed about it, now am I? What the hell?

So, I make him go to bed (I tell him "Go to bed!" in a stern voice when he's in trouble and this prompts him to go inside his cage.) and I go about filling his fresh foods dish with his dinner. The entire time I'm doing this, he's striking the cage, much like a bully tries to make the wimpy kid flinch. He was trying to get at me. He was being a BAD BOY. I told him to quit or that I'd cover his cage and he'd have to go to sleep....

From 7pm on, his little ass was covered tonight. And, from 7pm until the time I left, he was calling for me, only to get the response "Mommy doesn't play with birds who bite! GO TO SLEEP!" every time.

I'm hoping that it was just because he was wiped out from training for so long. I'll have to see if shorter training sessions will change the outcome of his behavior after the session. If not, maybe he can hang out on me for a while after the session ends, and THEN go back to his cage. I don' t know... We'll see who wins this battle...