As indicated in the
heading of this blog, I intend to
join theory and practice of training techniques
to help improve the relationship with our pets. So,
today I turn aside theory and show you a
couple of videos with examples
of what can be achieved by applying the techniques I intend to explain in this blog.
Personally, I think talking is the silliest thing our animals can do, but it is undeniably a striking and distinctive quality, and probably the one that has brought more people closer to parrots, so in this first video,
I discuss briefly some tips to make our parrots
learn to talk in context. You may
have to excuse me but it is recorded in Spanish (I promise to make future
recordings in English too).
Briefly, what I am explaining in the video is that I tend
to repeat the question and answer several times during a week or so, trying to
make it funny (watch your voice pitch), and repeating it only 5 o 6 times in a
row (more is not necessary and is boring
for both). Then, during a normal training session (lets say we are training the
retrieve, for example), we throw only the question and see if the animal
responds with the answer (in that case, click, treat and lots of praise) or he doesn’t
(in this scenario, juts keep on training the retrieve and, afterwards, keep
repeating answer&question some more days and try again). Soon
I will stop to explain the different techniques we can use to encourage this type of contextual vocalizations.