Giving Your Parrot Obedience Lessons

If you want to have a lifelong, happy and friendly relationship with your parrot, you must teach him to master several obedience skills. It doesn't matter if your parrot is older, newly weaned, or has behavioral problems, he needs to be socialized, and learn obedience skills in order go be a happy and healthy companion. Some people may disagree with the idea of formally training their parrot, but when you look at their situation, you usually find a temperamental bird that can't be handled, and getting it out of the cage is like pulling teeth! Many times, shrieking and loud over-vocalization have taken over the house! For such an intelligent animal, it does need obedience training. It understands these lessons, and understands praise. Even parakeet owners can teach their little birds the "up" command and how to imitate their speech.

Before we start the first obedience lesson, we need to decide what kind of reward to use. Usually the best reward is to verbally praise and pet your bird. If you want to use a tasty treat that's ok, but only use it once in a while, not all of the time. You will not always have one on hand, especially when you start training away from the usual training area. Petting and praise are usually the best reward. One more thing, your bird should have its wings clipped by the pet store where you bought the bird, or by your veterinarian, so your bird can't fly and hurt himself. He will also pay more attention to you during training periods.

For the first obedience lesson the command is "step up". The bird will learn to step onto your hand, arm or finger (depending on his size) at this command, each and every time it is asked, with no hesitation at all. The equipment needed is a sturdy T-stand, which you can purchase at your pet store or bird supply house. Magazines such as Bird Talk sell these types of stands through the mail. Just make sure the perch on the T-stand is at your waist height.