#wave ask

[cgmayra]

A couple of questions for you, Wave (if you allow me to ask): before you joined Jet and Storm in your thieving missions, how did you become an expert mechanic and how did you use your skills about this? Also, I heard you can handle a Big Wrench in battle like Amy handles her Piko Piko Hammer; is it canonly true?

“Heh. Before? Haven’t talked about my past lately… Sure. Just to show you- slowpokes- what it means growing up as a Babylon Rogue!”

“The only way to get things done is doing it yourself. This is something instilled in a Babylon Rogue! Our people were the finest craftsmen! Hmph! Technological mythology was practically written from stories about us! I grew up learning the grind and hard labor of working with machines. Nothing can beat my ancestorial knowledge of technology! It’s practically who I am! We were dirt poor, stinkin’ street-crows, and I worked hard to get where I am today!”

“So the next time you see us flying around and controlling the wind through our Gear? Yeah. Know that it was Wave the Swallow that fine-tuned those rides! Those saps wouldn’t know how to twist a screw if I wasn’t around! Besides, I squawk a big talk, wield a huge wrench, AND strap bombs to your hide and don’t you forget it! Don’t come messin’ with my crew, you hear me!?”

“Alright, alright. Wave… Give it a rest, will ya? All this talk is giving me a headache…”

“Hey you-! I’ll have you know that without me-” *Wave begins to rapidly ramble, sounding like a fast-forwarding VHS*

“Annnnnddd now it’s permeant.”

“Hmph. I was only answering a fan’s question.” - Wave 

“Fan? Well ain’t that something. You gotta fan.” - Jet “Hmph!” -Wave.

[flock-talk]

When teaching a bird the wave trick. Should the trick be taught on the same foot as the bird prefers to use for step up? Can the shake and wave trick be taught on both the same foot? How to you get a bird to step up on the opposite foot, when they prefer to use the step up foot the most?

It’s usually easiest to use the foot they prefer to step up with since they’re already easily lifting that foot but you can do either.  Zeeby waves with both feet and shakes with both, Mia waves with her left and shakes with her right, all those concepts are different behaviours with different cues so it really doesn’t matter if you do the same foot or a different foot although you may find that when teaching shake they’ll try to wave which can make training tricky, if you want them to know both on one foot it is generally easier to start with shake so you can build on that to make wave.

If you wanted to train using the foot they don’t step up with you could do a few things, one would be to do a bunch of step up reps until they accidentially step up with the other foot, when that happens give them a lot of treats until they step up with that foot more often.  The other option is to offer them just the tip of your finger to step up on on the non-dominant side at the edge of a perch so they’re more likely to use the non-dominant foot.  

Another option is to target the foot, grab a target stick (if they already know target training grab something with a different colour so we don’t confuse them) and target the foot you want them to wave with.  Sit the target stick on the perch and call them or lure them over, as soon as the foot comes near or touches the target stick give them a huge reward.  Do that over and over again until you don’t need to lure them and start working as different distances so they’re chasing around the target stick solely to touch it with that one foot.  From there you could target the foot up in to the wave position, when you target to the wave spot be sure to give a separate cue to wave before targeting so they start to catch on that your hand waving means their foot is going to go up, eventually they won’t need the target stick anymore.

[flock-talk]

Hey courtney! I have a question! Blue knows how to spin when i ask him to, and he also learned how to shake. But now i want to teach him how to wave, but he ALWAYS touches me with his beak before he steps up, and then he use his beak to lean on. So when i try to learn him how to hold his beak up, he first puts his beak on my finger, do you have a tip for us?

Same as you train anything else, reward what’s correct and extinguish or phase out anything else. Bridge as soon as his foot starts to lift and just repeat over and over again, gradually they will either figure out that they’re not getting rewarded for putting the foot on you and just start to lift it, or you may run in to that fluke incident when they don’t use their beak, give that a big jackpot (larger/better reward) and they’ll be more likely to repeat the behaviour of not using their beaks.  If the behaviour is exceedingly stiff you can start rewarding for having the foot lifting and using the beak then increase the qualifications to earn a reward (using less of the beak, no beak) and start giving poorer rewards for the usage of the beak as time goes on, giving larger rewards when the beak is used less or not at all.

Another option would be to just start with step up training and work and making them more comfortable stepping up without a beak, some birds do it for balance while others do it out of discomfort, mistrust with the hand so sometimes just taking a bit of time to reward them for stepping up may reduce how frequently they use the beak.