#fetch ask

[flock-talk]

Hey, I've been trying to teach my yellow naped amazon to 'fetch'. I've used an easy object, and I put it down for him but when he picks it up all wants to do it chew it and break it instead of dropping it, and I can't even swap the object for food because he rejects food I try to reward him with, even though he does like the food. I was just wondering if you have any suggestions? Thankyou

1) largely the easiest answer is to just be patient. They eventually get bored and drop the object, you may have better success by using a dish to get them to deliver the object to as opposed to your hand, they usually get interested in the sounds in makes which leads to dropping it in to the cup more frequently.

2) another option is to encourage any small progressions towards your hand, as opposed to diving straight in to completely dropping the object reward them for turning the object closer to your hand first and work up to letting go of it

3) find another object they find less interesting, experiment with things see if there’s toys they lose interest in faster that’d increase the likelihood of dropping it

4) find a toy they like better that you could offer afterwards to encourage them to trade out/ drop the current toy

there’s some options, experiment with a few and really being patient is the best advice I’m going to be able to give you.  Tricks hit snags, it’s just a matter of getting creative and being calm throughout the process, even if you’ve got to wait for that one accidental time they drop the toy to be able to reward sometimes that one time is all it takes to kickstart the process for them.

[classpect-hotline]

probably really stupid but a fetch modus for heir of time who loves art of all kinds (drawing, music, poetry, etc.) ?

For the Heir that has all the Time in the world, consider the Masterpiece Modus. It works similarly to Jade’s Pictionary Modus, but requires a much greater level of precision when you’re drawing. A wrong stroke, and you’ve got yourself a a dud.

The upside is that it can, in theory, captchalogue anything, anywhere, but using it requires patience and precision, especially when drawing something you can’t readily see.

- Ushabti

[flock-talk]

How do you teach aerial fetch ? Now that Luna knows fetch well, I like to give the next step a try but really don't know where to start off. Thank you!

You just lightly begin to raise your hand out of reach until she decides to jump up on to your hand to put the object in there, only rewarding when the object goes in your hand, if she has difficulty flying up you could also work on the edge of a table and just slowly move your hand farther from the edge so she goes from stretching to put it in, to hopping, then flying.  To get her to fly to the object you do the same thing in reverse, start her on your finger just a little bit above the table and put the object down so she has to step off to get it, then hop off, then flutter off, etc.

[flock-talk]

What sort of materials can you give a small parrot like a parrotlet to play fetch with without it feeling a bit heavy for them to lift?

I started off with plain cardboard disks, preferably from a sheet that doesn’t have glues. You could also easily sew a tiny beanbag-type thing stuffed with cotton or something, large beads (a doughnut bead would work really well!), bird-safe chainlink, small bird-safe wood cutouts, you could probably get away with just crumpling some paper in to a tiny compact ball if you wanted to.