# Clicker Training



## Avalon_Princess (Feb 13, 2008)

So I've started Echo on clicker training, not for any particular reason except I was bored. Echo isn't bonded to me at all, and though he allows me to fill his food bowls and to hold him when my Mother's out that's about it. But I figured I'd try anyway.

On Tuesday we do three very short sessions, the first two were just to charge the clicker. Because Echo won't take food from my hand I'm using a small shot glass full of seed as the reward, each time I clicked he was offered the shot glass so he could take a few bites of seed. In the first sessions he only showed interest for about three minutes before being distracted by absolutely everything and not interested at all in the seed.

The final session on Tuesday I introduced the target and it only took a few goes for him to work out that he had to gently grab the target, but he once again lost interest in the seed reward though he would still bite the target when asked to .

I didn't do anything with him on Wednesday but just did another session this morning. We started just with click treats and then I introduced the target again and this time he was actually participating and enjoying the new 'game' and started moving to reach the target. It stills needs to be fairly close to him (only a few steps away) but he has definitely cottoned on to it.

The weird thing is though he only targets when it's offered on his right side, that may be partly my fault as it's more comfortable for me to target to his right when he's facing me, but should I just keep offering the target on the left side only now? or is there something else I should be doing to make sure he targets regardless of where it's placed?

But he seems to quite enjoy this brand new game now, and quite obviously adores the praise LOL. I'm amazed at how quickly it works though, as much as we call him an idiotbird (he's a clutz and manages to get himself into many ridiculous scrapes) he actually can learn and respond amazingly quickly.


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## Belinda (Oct 9, 2010)

Do you try positioning the target above his head or lower down so that he has to reach for it? Try it on the left side, or even behind him or from the other side of the table. You could try some millet heads instead of the seed or some bits of cheerios - is there something else he goes mad for other than seed that you can give to him? 
My tiel gets frustrated when I give her a reward and then take it away from her again.

My tiel has got the target nailed (she will even hit the target and then turn to me for her reward in anticipation) I tried to get her to beak a foot toy and pick it up from my hand with the intention to teach her to fetch her and place stuff in my hand or a bucket but she doesn't understand what I'm trying to get her to do and just wants the reward - and gets angry when I won't give it to her, lol. So I need to work on that a bit more, I'm not sure if I'm doing it correctly...


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## Belinda (Oct 9, 2010)

Do you try positioning the target above his head or lower down so that he has to reach for it? Try it on the left side, or even behind him or from the other side of the table. You could try some millet heads instead of the seed or some bits of cheerios - is there something else he goes mad for other than seed that you can give to him? 
My tiel gets frustrated when I give her a reward and then take it away from her again.

My tiel has got the target nailed (she will even hit the target and then turn to me for her reward in anticipation) I tried to get her to beak a foot toy and pick it up from my hand with the intention to teach her to fetch her and place stuff in my hand or a bucket but she doesn't understand what I'm trying to get her to do and just wants the reward - and gets angry when I won't give it to her, lol. So I need to work on that a bit more, I'm not sure if I'm doing it correctly...


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## Belinda (Oct 9, 2010)

*eeek*

Jeepers! triple post sorry


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## Avalon_Princess (Feb 13, 2008)

Wow triple post LOl. I did already try other treats, he won't touch millet unless he can have the whole spray and I think we tried every cereal under the sun as well as many types of crackers. He likes having a bowl of cereal to play with because of the crunch factor but he's not overly enthused at all at having it as a treat. He was quite focused on the glass of seed but he seems to understand he gets it back every time he does whats asked. If he would take it from my hand I could offer only a few at a time, but he won't at all...


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## Avalon_Princess (Feb 13, 2008)

Just did another session with him, he's targeting to the left now, and was able to turn around to grab the target and bend down. I'm using a T stand at the moment and he can now target from one end to the other of it, am about to try him on the table and see if I get a reaction from that...


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## Avalon_Princess (Feb 13, 2008)

Cancel that, the minute I picked him up i could tell he was way to over-excited for anything more.


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## Belinda (Oct 9, 2010)

haha, yeah they tend to lose their concentration fairly quickly when they're learning. Arnie ends up getting too focussed on the reward and gets her knickers in a knot when I try anything harder. It's good to end on a positive note too, where they've done really well.


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## Avalon_Princess (Feb 13, 2008)

Just did another session, he's definitely got targeting down and while on the T-Stand will target perfectly, however he ends up too excited and distracted if I put him on any other surface... So I guess for now I'll just stick with the T stand. But he'll target up, down, behind and on either side now, so I'll stick to targeting today and I might start attempting to introduce some sort of new training tomorrow, maybe getting him to turn in a circle?


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## Avalon_Princess (Feb 13, 2008)

So yesterday was a nightmare as he just kept flying away, he was to overexcited all day. However we did three sessions today. I've started working with him on his cage which he seems to prefer though it is hilarious as his cage is a dometop so he was sliding everywhere. But I was able to get his total concentration even when my mother was in the room, so it is definitely an improvement. He has also quite definitely learnt the cue "touch", as I tried introducing a new cue (come) and he was having none of it. 

We're still going very slow though as he gets frustrated so easily. I'm trying to start getting him to follow the target rather then just grabbing it while it's stationary, but he gets pissed off if I move it more then ten cm, so we'll keep working on that. 

So I think as overall plans are this is what I want to do.

Teach the cue "come" for distances and start just asking him to come from the other side of the cage and then move to stepping up off the edge of the cage, then to hopping and gradually increase the distance till he's doing a flighted recall. And I'll just do it in tiny steps the whole way.

I also want to teach him to turn, as he tends to bite me a lot and I thought this might be a way to deter the bite if he starts getting ready to bite. So I'm starting with just teaching him to follow the target and I'll slowly build up till he's doing a full turn then add the cue "turn".

But we are slowly but surely getting somewhere. I've found one way though to start a session off is to just do a couple of click treats then a few simple touches and then start increasing distances/complexity. Every time he fails or doesn't respond we go back to simple touches (such as right in front of him) and build back up to the complex so we are constantly going over the ground work. It seems to get his concentration much better and I can tell from the second click treat whether we'll have a successful session or not and can end right then if he's over excited or being aggressive...


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## popems (Nov 22, 2010)

When I am doing target or some other clicker training I like to give more of a reward when the "trick" is more difficult. I start out with simple touches, and Oscar or Molly gets one bite of millet, and the more they work for the touch the bigger the reward is. Does anyone know if the birds can tell the difference or is one reward as good as the other?


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## Avalon_Princess (Feb 13, 2008)

We tried "turn around" today he's really good at doing it if I circle the target over his head but not quite ready to do it just with the cue. However I am impressed he's learnt something new. I always thought Echo wasn't trainable....


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## tielfan (Aug 31, 2008)

> Does anyone know if the birds can tell the difference or is one reward as good as the other?


Yes, they definitely understand that more is better than less. A bigger reward is called a jackpot by the clicker training community.


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