I spent the week learning from some of the best trainers and behavioral modification experts in the field, broadening my mind and expectations, and making progress with hands-on application in training green (non-experienced) baby macaws. I also ate a ton of delicious food and everyday at promptly 5 PM we had a wrap-up wine and cheese discussion.
We were split into teams where we could work one-on-one with our team lead (a senior trainer at the facility), as well as the other trainers running the workshop (like non-TV's Steve Martin and my favorite person ever Susan Friedman). In our flight we had baby macaws named after Firefly and beer (two of my favorite things!). I ended up working with both Serenity, a blue and gold macaw, and Miller, a scarlet macaw. Our tasks involved training a wave, a spin, putting each on cue, chaining them together, training a backwards spin, chaining that one instead with a different cue - there was a lot to accomplish in a small amount of time. I had serious breakthroughs and serious breakDOWNS (there were tears at one point due to comparison between myself and others). In reality, it was an important lesson to learn - although the learner is not wrong, sometimes antecedent arrangement does not make for a good training session.
For instance.
Little Miss Serenity.
We were using specifically peanuts for training, and after a couple of reps of waving she would decide she was done and fly into the rafters to hang out with her friends. It was frustrating, especially when I was only halfway done training the wave and everyone else was ahead. Antecedent arrangement-wise, we learned that if we put all her friends away in the smaller enclosures within the flight, she was less tempted to join them. We then discovered she didn't care for peanuts, but LOVED walnuts! In fact, one of her trainers thanked me in discovering this since they had also been having issues with her attention span. With these arrangements in place, we were able to have slightly longer, more successful sessions. I didn't end up doing everything on our list of tasks, but when asked if I was confident that I could train these behaviors I said YES! Because I know I could, especially if I had the time and perfect antecedent arrangements. It was a good learning experience.
Toward the end of the week, we were able to choose showcase behaviors that we could train to present to the rest of the class. I wanted a mini obstacle course, but ended up narrowing it down to a ramp behavior with a spin on top and then a flight to the hand near the end. Someone else wanted to chain sending her parrot to a perch, to wave, and then fly to another perch, another wanted to train a retrieve behavior, and the last team member wanted to train a circuit flight (one I was very interested in since I've wanted to train a circuit flight with Kogi since forever). It was amazing to see the different training styles and how each goal could be accomplished in so many different ways.
This little blue and gold's name was Vera *snicker*
This was Tesla, a blue-throated macaw. They're incredibly endangered and NEI has a fantastic breeding program for them - in fact, a couple of very late chicks hatched while we were there!
A great green macaw named Selva (another endangered species)
Miller the scarlet macaw
This course literally changed my life. It will change how you think about animals, their learning processes, and the way you train. I HIGHLY recommend it as an animal trainer if you have the money, time, or interest (and you don't even have to be a bird trainer, in fact I was in the minority!)
Plus you get to play and see lots of cute birds.
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