Bad Boy, Bad Boy, Whatcha Gonna Do?

[Lathis]

That's really great! Keep up the good work! A good story for keepers struggling with crabby or shy chams

 

[jajeanpierre]

We have some success!

So Holly has been doing great, working with Vladislav. Today- for the first time- I was able to stand right beside her while he took waxworms from her fingers. I'm so proud of both of them! He also has entirely stopped "hunting" her from his free range tree- he will chill there, and she can chill on the couch. He still gets pretty upset if she gets too close to him while he is in his tree, but we are working on that, too, and have seen a bit of improvement already.

I am really impressed with how fast he "gets" it- I thought it would take him much longer than this to make the connection that Holly bring yummy delicious things. Nope. I was wrong. We were able to advance pretty quickly: not as quickly as I'm used to- I train mostly parrots and corvids, and almost nothing adapts behaviour as fast as they do- but pretty respectable progress in any case.

I don't have any pics yet, because he's not a fan of cameras and phones and I thought it would be a bit much to ask him to be such a good boy for Holly AND Horrible Phone, but hopefully soon! Holly is even talking about getting him to climb on her hand. She is really into this whole business. She is pretty awesome about it.

I'm really interested in your progress. I work with parrots, too, and can't believe how quickly they can generalize a behavior. I would be really interested in knowing how easily it is for you to target train him.

I know you wanted to get him relaxed with your roommate first, but if you can get the behavior on cue, he will be so focused on performing the behavior that he will do it in spite of her presence. Steve Martin told me that back in the 70s a standard "taming" technique for the adult wild-caught parrots was to use the reward of the trainer going away. In order for the parrot to make the scary monster trainer go away, they had to tolerate his close proximity. I don't think your boy needs to be tame or relaxed in her presence to learn a behavior such as targeting to her hand.

Good luck and keep us posted.