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Post by neurotoxin109 on Sept 29, 2020 14:46:51 GMT -5
Hello Everyone!! I was hoping to solicit some advice regarding hand fears. My QP Loki has been in our home since July and we've made good progress taming him! He was really stubborn and reluctant to want to do anything with us that first month or so we brought him home. Now I feel I've bonded decently well with him, he definitely enjoys my company and likes giving me nose kisses through the bars. That being said I've hit a wall in regards to moving beyond hand fears. He'll take treats directly handed to him and I can get within a couple inches if I have treats no problem. Without treats in my hand he starts hissing and lunging at me within a few inches. I target trained him and can get him to move to any spot in his cage and I've tried coaxing him onto my hand as like a perch extension with the target. So he can sideways shuffle onto my hand rather than step forward. It's been a hard refusal. He'll occasionally hiss and lunge at my hand while doing that to get it to move out of his way to reach the target. I don't move, I should clarify that he doesn't gain anything from hissing and lunging at me. He also hasn't actually tried to bite me either. He'll connect but it's a poke and run. Is there any advice or exercises I could implement in our day to day to try out? Thank you 
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Post by neurotoxin109 on Sept 29, 2020 18:49:18 GMT -5
And to update... He's now bitten me for the first time haha. He got a little bolder than his poke and run during one of today's short training sessions and started chewing on my pinky. I'm kind of confused how to approach this because he does have genuine interest in spending time with me and as I previously mentioned really loves getting up close to my face and licking my nose. He gets very fluffy and does little happy purrs so I'm sure I'm not mistaking his interest in my face as something other than enjoyed attention/affection.
How I've been responding to his pokes and now bite is not pulling away and ignoring the behavior. Basically doing my best to have no reaction to it and pretend it didn't happen. With this bite however he grabbed on and started testing how hard he could bite and once it started to get painful I turned my hand towards him so he released and backed up and quietly closed up his cage and walked away. Am I subtly encouraging the behavior by not reacting to it? I know there are mixed opinions in how to respond to a bird bite so I figured quakers owners probably know best!
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Post by cnyguy on Sept 29, 2020 20:46:03 GMT -5
It sounds like you're making good progress. The occasional setback isn't unusual and you really just need to continue with what you've been doing. Something that often works when a parrot bites is the "earthquake," which is simply giving a good shake to the hand (or wherever) the parrot is perched-- not hard enough to dislodge the parrot but sufficient to get the parrot to let go of one's finger. It's always recommended to avoid reacting to a bite (as by yelling "ouch" or an even stronger word), which can be pretty hard to do sometimes. Parrots love drama so it's better not to overdramatize a bite.
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