When You Don’t Set Rules

From a WebMD slideshow entitled “Risky Mistake Pet Owners Make.”

You Don’t Set Rules
Some people expect their pets to know right from wrong without being told. But human etiquette doesn’t come naturally to dogs and cats. You need to make it clear that jumping up on people, scratching the furniture, and peeing on the carpet are not OK. Be consistent about these rules, and reward your pets for good behavior. If you need advice, a trainer can help.

Now as the owner of two budgerigars let me assure everyone that this advice apples to pet parrot species as well. (Budgerigars are often called “parakeets” in the U.S. but there are at least two dozen officially named members of the parakeet family. Several are almost the size of American crows and look nothing like budgerigars.)

But the real point here is that dogs, cats, and even parrots are most trainable to human social standards before they reach full maturity. This can properly be called socialization. But once a bird (or person) becomes sexually mature, they cannot easily be trained or re-trained to better fit the human world.

My two birds (Dollar, a female and Walker, a male) are good examples of this. After training myself to not smoke I allowed myself to get my first pet since the 1980s. I knew as an apartment dweller that I could only get a relatively quiet species of parrot and because all parrots use loud calls it was a matter of choosing the least loud which meant automatically I would have to get a budgerigar ( budgie). Besides, the policy of the landlord is to allow only budgies specifically because they are the quietest parrot species (with a top level vocalization of about 65Db).

While there are advantages to getting a partially domesticated parrot of any species from a professional breeder, the typical cost of a “hand raised” budgie is at least three times that of the ones sold by pet stores. (This is taking into account the recent doubling of the price of budgies sold by pet stores — a somewhat patchwork situation with some retailers adopting the hike while some apparently still trying to hold back price increases.).

But the point is I got my first budgie (Dollar) from a pet store where I had to select the bird I wanted and then tell the clerk which one it was. She turned out to be part of the latest batch of hatchlings so her age was only about 6–8 weeks. I picked that bird because after watching all 20 or so birds, this was the most active bird of the lot. I couldn’t tell the gender at that age but hoped is was a male because the one I owned 34 years before had been a male and I believed that males are potentially the best choice if a person hopes to have their bird talk.

Well, I was wrong about Dollar’s gender, Dollar is a hen budgie. And she’s only clearly spoken one time. She said, “Pretty bird” just once. But that turned out to be a secondary consideration because Dollar quickly showed me how smart she was. She also showed every sign of being just like a puppy or kitten, she was very active and playful and readily interacted with me every day after the third day.

How smart is she? Two examples will give you a good idea. The first thing I noticed was when she began pulling the computer mouse cord around, not chewing but definitely pulling the mouse around and then looking at the computer screen as if expecting a change. This only makes sense if you know that I had originally gotten her out of her cage by telling her “Go see budgies” and offering my hand (her wings were clipped by the store as a matter of practicality). She learned that the offered hand would take her to the computer where I would use the mouse to get a YouTube video of chattering budgies on screen. She was positively excited to hear their chatter and see them all and when I carried her to the computer in the other room she leaned toward the screen as close as she could get and tried to go through to screen “to the other birds.” (She later began going around to the back of the screen to find where the other budgies were.)

It was after that she began pulling the mouse cord; she had thought it through, making the mouse move produced “other budgies” like magic! Although mistaken, that is really putting together observations and thinking things through.

The second incident only happened once. I had a tower computer on my desk and had put newspaper down on top to protect it from bird poop. But one day I was a little hurried and didn’t fold the paper to the exact dimensions of the computer top. So when Dollar walked to the edge (remember she couldn’t fly) she stepped on the overhanging paper and literally flipped over and fell to the desk top. (About 19 inches.)

The very next thing she did: she popped back on her feet, ran to my nearest hand and gave me a good bite. Then she climbed back on my hand expecting me to return her to the top of the computer! I was astonished and laughed out loud.

This all is from a little bird less than six months old.

But I want to get back to age related training. The above stories all go back to 2017 — four years ago. Since then Dollar has matured and her whole personality has changed to what I like to call that of a “matron head of the family. She has become less friendly and more formal, she has stopped wrestling with homemade toys and become less friendly when I interact with her. She has basically been following her own instincts but still comes to me when she wants something from me. But I have achieved a good measure of control and Dollar is much more attuned to my human standards of social behaviors. I have “tamed” and socialized her.

Now look at my second bird, Walker. I went to the same pet store and thought the same selection process as I did with Dollar but ended up with a much different budgie. THat’s because during my selection process I didn’t see the telltale signs of greater age until I got him home and put him in quarantine in a separate cage (for Dollar’s safety). I could examine Walker very closely and kept careful watch after I let him out of quarantine and it was only then I realized he had most of his flight feathers and his “nose” (cere is the correct term) was already dark blue indicating his gender is male. This made it clear: Walker had either been in the display cage way past the normal time or he had been returned to the story by a dissatisfied customer. Based on his immediate partial recognition of common commands like “Step up” and his endless skittishness and shyness, my guess is that someone who didn’t know how to socialize budgies became disappointed and returned him to the store.

I got Walker in April of 2018, about 14 months after getting Dollar. But even after another 14 months, Walker remained very skittish while Dollar remained completely used to living every day free to fly wherever she chose in my apartment. I got them a play stand in the hope that would give them both “an anchorage” in my living room. This has worked out perfectly, both birds stay together on that play stand every day — with occasional forays to their food and water bowls. This, you would think is ideal but Walker’s behavior is still that of an untamed, unsocialized wild budgie.

To give you a better picture: Twice a year I have to transfer both birds to a “travel cage” to take them to my veterinarian for either nail trimming or for their annual check up. Often I combine the annual check up with nail trimming to keep my birds from snagging their claws on the carpet. The point is that Dollar doesn’t have much resistance to being handled while, the last time, Walker actually made a strange sound and passed out! I thought for a few seconds I might have caused him to have a stroke or heart attack. (This is fairly common with budgies which is why you want them to get used to being handled.).

I have trained both birds to react to key words and phrases. But they don’t react to the same cues alike. When I hide two balls of millet in each hand and say, “time for treats” only Dollar comes flying to my left hand, Walker begins to fly but always reverses in midair to return to the play stand. It always takes more coaxing before Walker will finally land on my right hand (yes, both recognize they each have a hand from which they can get their treat). Dollar (aka, “Miss Piggy”) is halfway through consuming her treat before Walker even lands on my other hand. Walker also thinks the hand where Dollar sits chomping is somehow safer so he goes to join Dollar but she drives him away. It’s obvious that Walker still doesn’t trust me completely after three full years and he probably never will.

With little birds like mine it’s not very dangerous to have them be like Walker (aka, Speaker of the House) but having a dog which still doesn’t trust people (especially strangers) it’s a real danger, particularly if the dog is a large dog and male. But that also goes for the larger parrots. Photos of wounded parrot owners abound on the internet. Some wounds are positively grotesque and some parrots become so possessive of their owners they attack the owner’s friends and even spouses on sight.

I love dogs as well as parrots. So it is that I want dog owners to read this next story. It was before retirement one day when I was outside at the employee break area just watching people come and go. I couldn’t not notice that a small woman was “walking her dog” which must have weighed more than half of what she did. Yes, and she wasn’t thinking about the dog’s constant lunging at passers by, either. She just kept hauling back on the dog’s leash which seldom works to stop any dog in that frame of mind. She almost lost grip on the dog’s leash after one lunge and I began to be afraid the dog would over power her and attack the unaware person going to their car. That thankfully didn’t happen but I told myself to call the local police to see what the official policy was.

I did call the information officer the next day and asked the woman officer what I should do if I am present during a dog attack. (Remember too that such attacks number in the thousands every year.) I also told her that I am licensed to carry a concealed sidearm so she would know how far I could go in such circumstances. She calmly answered: “You may do whatever is necessary to stop the attack.”

I would never be happy about having to shoot any dog even to stop and life threatening attack. But at least this policy gives us proof of the level of seriousness of this topic. In my state there are almost 800,000 concealed carry licensees, many states have even more. Like pet owning, pet training is the best way for us having to face such consequences.

But I want to pay tribute to those of my fellow pet owners for having the courage and patience to take on the task of sound training and the responsibility that goes with taking any “domesticated animal” into their lives.

Learn your pet thoroughly, your pet is already learning all about you. Train your pet before it matures because, like people, our animals learn the most important things very early.