By Barbara Heidenreich
It is a jungle out there, and quite frankly it can be in our homes too. Well, maybe not exactly a jungle, but it can be an overwhelming mix of new, exciting, stimulating, intimidating and perhaps frightening experiences when a bird first enters our home. Like any enthusiastic consumer, we are often compelled to unwrap our purchases and start putting tab A into slot B so that we can get our new apparatus up and running and ready to fulfil our needs, whatever they may be. However when bringing a living breathing creature into your home, such as a potential companion parrot, it is not quite so easy as perhaps setting up your new television or putting together a bed frame. A simple tightening of a few screws or plugging in the right cables doesn’t suffice.
Where does one begin? If you are a positive reinforcement trainer, you go back to what you may have already learned. knowing that every experience your new bird is going to have with you will likely either build trust or create a loss of trust, causes one to think carefully. This means prior to your bird even entering your home, you will have done some preparations. For example, how will it be transported to your home? Will it be trained prior to travel to sit comfortably in a pet carrier or smaller cage for the journey? If your circumstance will allow this behaviour to be trained, it will be extremely helpful to reduce stress a bird could experience if it is not used to travel. Hopefully you, and the person from whom the bird is coming, have an open communication and can work together to facilitate training prior to departure.