KEEP YOUR PARROT STIMULATED AND ACTIVE, AND HE WILL KEEP YOU ENTERTAINED!

By nature, parrots are inquisitive, intelligent, and social animals. You can capitalize on these characteristics and obedience train your bird, teaching him behaviors that will make your life and his more enjoyable--behaviors such as stepping on your hand or wrist on command, and going to a designated perch. Then you can progress to teach him all kinds of tricks. He'll love the attention, communication, and socialization. From the essential basics of obedience training to awesome tricks that will amuse and amaze your friends, Parrot Tricks covers:
* Techniques to use during the "get acquainted" period
* Setting up a training area and using food as a training tool
* Training basics such as targeting, luring, and using cues
* Necessary obedience skills such as step up, come, perch, and stay
* The basic retrieve command, the foundation of many tricks
* Simple tricks such as shake hands, high five, kiss, and take a bow
* Tricks based on the retrieve command, including basketball, ring on the peg, and stacking cups
* Advanced tricks such as pulling a wagon, pushing a grocery cart, raising a flag, and riding a skateboard
* Innovative tricks that showcase your bird's natural abilities
* Chaining tricks, such as recycling and going to the mailbox
* Verbalizations and talking using the Rival/Model Method or the Positive Reward Method
* Directions for making simple props


With this book, patience, and practice, you'll build your understanding of and relationship with your bird as you build a repertoire of tricks. You can get your parrot to jump through hoops for you--literally!

I was thrilled to receive this book as I just rescued an umbrella cockatoo and know absolutely NOTHING about birds. It is already helping me teach him new tricks. It is an excellent book. I am ecstatic with my purchase from this seller and will use them again in future.

Easy to follow book. I was able to get my caique to do some of the tricks.

Tani Robar has trained parrots for a long time.
She has several parrot training videos available.

But, her methods are somewhat "old school" and the book attempts to justify them by claiming that what many trainers would call positive reinforcement is a bunch of "hooey".

The book says that clicker training is slower than her methods and that using a bridging marker is useless. Her methods include physical manipulation of the bird through movements that the bird will not like (at first?). Here is one quote:

"Your bird may not like being touched in certain areas, but do so gently anyway." (page 21)

That is not how chioce-based positive reinforcement works. Here are a few quotes from the section on clicker training:

"It is an extra step that really slows down your training."

"I have tested it and I know it slows you down."

"No bridge is needed because no time gap exists between the correct action and the reward."

"Clicker training enthusiasts like to say that the conventional way of using a praise word, in my case "good" or some form of it, makes that method the same as the clicker method, just substituting the click. It is not the same at all! My "good" or similar words of praise do not stop the action but merely tell the bird he is doing what I want."

"True clicker trainers say that they prefer to add the cues after the trick is learned. Again, that is just adding an extra step."

"A bridge signal to mark a correct response and to "fill in the gap" between a behavior and a reward is unimportant, which was illustrated when I attended a week long clicker training class given by Bob and Marion Bailey (prior to her death) at their chicken training camp in Arkansas. I found that it didn't make a bit of difference whether we clicked or not. Whether you clicked or not made absolutely no difference."

That is what the book says. Tani Robar claims that scientific trainers such as Marion Breland Bailey and Karen Pryor don't know beans. Don't waste your money on this book - Read the books from my essential list, this isn't one of them. Read Melinda Johnson, Barbara Heidenreich, Karen Pryor, and Robin Deutsch.

This book is easy to understand and gives great step by step instructions for training. I would highly recommend this book to anyone wanting to train their parrot and deepen their relationship with their featherd friend.

Isn't for begginners. To try tricks that are in this book, your pet have to be well socialized already. Altought, the text is well organised and paragraphs are relatively shorts and clears. Examples are very interestings.