Post by sunnycb02 on Feb 25, 2015 15:54:21 GMT -5
Hi all,
My beloved QP is almost 9. He's always been pretty terrified of new objects. Becaues of this I really never gave him new toys, after many attempts and quite a bit of wasted money. He's incredibly smart and knows/speaks an unbelievable amount of English, and seems to entertain himself primarily through talking and singing. I was also in school most of his life and so was home most of the day to interact with him. Now that I have a full time job, he's alone 10-11 hours a day and though his behavior hasn't really changed, I can only assume he must be terribly bored and lonely all day.
I would love to introduce some different toys and foraging objects etc. to enrich his life, but any attempt seems to have the opposite effect. He has had one toy in his cage for a few years, a rubbery thing with doodads and a bell on it, that he goes crazy playing with with me so I know he knows how to play (I don't know why or don't remember why he doesn't fear this one). As he plays with it, he exclaims, "ohhhh, what's that?!!" "can you ring the bell? ring the bell!"
If I were to bring home a new object and just put it in his cage, he will burst out of the cage squawking in fear. If shut in the cage with it he will avoid the object to the point of not sleeping in his happy hut. What we do instead is to let the object sit near his cage for days, and my husband and I will touch the toy and play with it and talk very excitedly to eachother how much we like it etc. It's kind of funny but I can see he is paying close attention when we do this, and it does seem to greatly lessen his fear... but the best I can get is complete lack of interest. We have one new toy in his cage now that he is successfully no longer afraid of- he seems to ignore it and pretend like it doesn't exist. We've tried all different kinds of toys as well, hard toys, shredding toys, food, noise etc.
Any advice to get him interested in new objects and toys? Should I give up and stop frightening him? Any other tips for improving the time I have to leave him alone? He's also afraid of various specific household objects, but this isn't as big an issue since he spends most of his time in his cage.
Thanks!
My beloved QP is almost 9. He's always been pretty terrified of new objects. Becaues of this I really never gave him new toys, after many attempts and quite a bit of wasted money. He's incredibly smart and knows/speaks an unbelievable amount of English, and seems to entertain himself primarily through talking and singing. I was also in school most of his life and so was home most of the day to interact with him. Now that I have a full time job, he's alone 10-11 hours a day and though his behavior hasn't really changed, I can only assume he must be terribly bored and lonely all day.
I would love to introduce some different toys and foraging objects etc. to enrich his life, but any attempt seems to have the opposite effect. He has had one toy in his cage for a few years, a rubbery thing with doodads and a bell on it, that he goes crazy playing with with me so I know he knows how to play (I don't know why or don't remember why he doesn't fear this one). As he plays with it, he exclaims, "ohhhh, what's that?!!" "can you ring the bell? ring the bell!"
If I were to bring home a new object and just put it in his cage, he will burst out of the cage squawking in fear. If shut in the cage with it he will avoid the object to the point of not sleeping in his happy hut. What we do instead is to let the object sit near his cage for days, and my husband and I will touch the toy and play with it and talk very excitedly to eachother how much we like it etc. It's kind of funny but I can see he is paying close attention when we do this, and it does seem to greatly lessen his fear... but the best I can get is complete lack of interest. We have one new toy in his cage now that he is successfully no longer afraid of- he seems to ignore it and pretend like it doesn't exist. We've tried all different kinds of toys as well, hard toys, shredding toys, food, noise etc.
Any advice to get him interested in new objects and toys? Should I give up and stop frightening him? Any other tips for improving the time I have to leave him alone? He's also afraid of various specific household objects, but this isn't as big an issue since he spends most of his time in his cage.
Thanks!
