Guest Post: How to Train You Human
This is a guest post from our Parrot:
A couple years ago we moved into this great house with single pane windows - Now I can chatter all day with my friends outside.
I am constantly asked how I train my humans so well. So as I sat in the long-nailed human's office watching her blog, I told her I wanted a guest spot - so she agreed (one you train them you can get them to do anything!)
A couple years ago we moved into this great house with single pane windows - Now I can chatter all day with my friends outside.
I am constantly asked how I train my humans so well. So as I sat in the long-nailed human's office watching her blog, I told her I wanted a guest spot - so she agreed (one you train them you can get them to do anything!)
How to Train Your Human
1. Get the human's attention: Humans are not very observant, just being cute or doing a trick will not work until you get them to look at you. I find that a loud call often will get their attention. If they still do not look your way often pretending to be freaked out will really draw their attention.
2. Remind and Repeat: Sadly despite the size of a human's head they have small brains and even smaller memories. One of our jobs is to remind these humans of the very basic things. You will have to constantly repeat these things to the humans because they just cannot remember from one minute to the next. What would they do without us reminding them!
3. Show them how to make food ready: My humans are really ignorant of the way the magic box gets their food ready. I have to keep showing them over AND over that all you have to do is make the sound the magic box makes and then their food will be ready. Sadly humans stand around with blank looks and do not understand that the magic box works WHEN you make the noise!
4. Reward them: When they finally do something right (often with much prompting and reminding and showing) you need to reward them. A good reward is a fun sound that they seem to like. My humans like when I say "wooo hooo" - so I reward them with it when they are doing something right.
5. Make them put in effort: My humans love to "scritchy" (scratch the back of my neck and under my beak) me. I make sure I at least make them put out some effort. I make them come to me so they can get the enjoyment of scritchying me. If the actually come over and put in the effort to get the reward I even reward them with a special "woohoo" to try and remind them this is how they should remember to do it so they get the reward. Sadly I will have to remind them over and over - human's just don't have very big brains.
6. Basic moves: Training is hard work. It takes lots of patience. It is hard to get the human to understand that when you toss a piece of food out of the cage they are SUPPOSED to pick it up and give it back to you. They also have a short attention span. My humans seem to get bored of me teaching them to pick up and bring it back to me after 5 or 6 times. But you have to keep working at it. Remember your human will not mind you if you don't keep up the training.
If you love your human and can manage the patience it takes to train them, I find human's nice pets. They do take a lot of effort and space but in the long run, they can be very rewarding to have.
2. Remind and Repeat: Sadly despite the size of a human's head they have small brains and even smaller memories. One of our jobs is to remind these humans of the very basic things. You will have to constantly repeat these things to the humans because they just cannot remember from one minute to the next. What would they do without us reminding them!
3. Show them how to make food ready: My humans are really ignorant of the way the magic box gets their food ready. I have to keep showing them over AND over that all you have to do is make the sound the magic box makes and then their food will be ready. Sadly humans stand around with blank looks and do not understand that the magic box works WHEN you make the noise!
4. Reward them: When they finally do something right (often with much prompting and reminding and showing) you need to reward them. A good reward is a fun sound that they seem to like. My humans like when I say "wooo hooo" - so I reward them with it when they are doing something right.
5. Make them put in effort: My humans love to "scritchy" (scratch the back of my neck and under my beak) me. I make sure I at least make them put out some effort. I make them come to me so they can get the enjoyment of scritchying me. If the actually come over and put in the effort to get the reward I even reward them with a special "woohoo" to try and remind them this is how they should remember to do it so they get the reward. Sadly I will have to remind them over and over - human's just don't have very big brains.
6. Basic moves: Training is hard work. It takes lots of patience. It is hard to get the human to understand that when you toss a piece of food out of the cage they are SUPPOSED to pick it up and give it back to you. They also have a short attention span. My humans seem to get bored of me teaching them to pick up and bring it back to me after 5 or 6 times. But you have to keep working at it. Remember your human will not mind you if you don't keep up the training.
If you love your human and can manage the patience it takes to train them, I find human's nice pets. They do take a lot of effort and space but in the long run, they can be very rewarding to have.
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