Mr n Mrs Pet

Teaching the parrot to step up on your finger is a very important command. Though it might look basic in its appeal, the step up command has a keen significance for the bird. It implies the bird that you are its guardian and thus has a superior authority. In fact, many times pet parents who do not to train their birds to sit on their fingers, find it very difficult to familiarize the birds with them. Understandably it affects the relations between a bird and its pet parents. Hence teaching a parrot sit on your finger is the first and foremost thing as soon as you bring it to the home.

Here are a few tips on the ideal training sessions for teaching your parrot to sit on your finger:

Training Sessions

Parrots find it difficult to pay attention to an activity for a long period of time. So, a long training session will only annoy it. Hence for the best results you need to repeat the small, quick sessions frequently.

Training Area

The parrots are very much affected by its surroundings. So, you need to find an area that shouldn't have any colorful objects, other birds or any noises in the background. Such areas will distract them and make it even more difficult for them to concentrate on the training session,

Bird's Personality

Birds have a personality so you need to train them accordingly.

Training Rewards

Even before you start the training session, you need to have some treats ready for the bird to offer it as rewards.

How to Behave Like a Trainer

As a trainer you have 3 major objectives: familiarizing the bird with your hand, making it receptive to the training and gradually offering it to progress further.

After 2-3 sessions when the bird seems quite confident stepping up on your finger you can start talking to them in 2-3 words. "Step up, cuckoo"!" "Come here birdy!" Such short 2-3 words phrases would gradually be used as an instruction. It will help you to instruct the bird vocally whenever you want it to step up on your fingers.

Conclusion

Photo shooting a pet is not a small thing. You need to be an expert for that. In fact, you need to learn the photography. It is because unlike the human beings the parts are not camera friends and besides the sound of click will further make them scared. So here are a few steps on getting the right photo shoot of your pet.

Make Them Camera Friendly

It is very important to make your pet camera friendly. You can incur a few spoiled photos for that. Some of the pets like dogs or cats might even have a particular liking towards a certain photo or video cameras. So, you can take some of their photos from a digits camera and show them on the TV. Hence you need to make a schedule where you would snap and then put their photos on TV and show them full screen. It will attract them to the photos and whenever you will next take camera in hand they will be more than ready to give you the right pose.

Say Cheese

While we human being smile as soon as "Say Cheese" enters our ears, we cannot expect pets to react in this way. But still there are certain ways in which you can train them to react in a similar way. SO, every time you take a camera and want to take their photos say any particular word you pet can connect with. It might be "Tommy, Snap!" or "Pussy, Mew" or in case of birds you can go for certain sounds like kissing, or making sounds with your mouth. However, you need to ensure that in case you are using words you should give more emphasis on vowels rather than consonants.

Reward Them

Every time you take your pet's photo you need to reward them. If it is dog you can give it the food that they like the most while in the case of parrots you can treat it to its favorite fruits or grains. It will make them happy and rewarded and next time they would be more than willing to give you the best pose.

Do Not Expect Too Much

Many times people's expectations are just too high for the pets. With due respect to all your love and admiration towards your pet what you need to understand is that they we cannot communicate with them the same way as we can communicate with the human beings. So at times even after several attempts you need to be satisfied with 80% or 90% of your expectations because it is very possible that in an endeavor to make them pose to satisfy you 100% you might even miss the chance.

Take Help of the Technology

The technology today is so advanced that you can even time your camera in such a way that it can take the automatic snaps after every 2 or 3 seconds. That kind of camera would be perfectly fine for you as that will help you to capture 5-6 instances and thus you don’t need to worry if the very first photo does not come out fine.

Getting a right photo of your pet might not be an easy task. However there are several tricks to make it possible. But if after trying every trick you are not able to make your pet camera friendly then you can also go for the professional pet photo shooting services.

Cockatiels are lovely birds that make a great pet because of their intelligence, beauty and expressions. They can easily mimic the human language, In fact, they are always eager to learn new words and voices. How cute it sounds when they try to mimic our voices exactly the way we speak?

So, it would be a great idea to train you cockatiels, isn’t it? And believe us it will love it too. Here are a few tips to train your cockatiel how to speak:

Learn Their Language

The very first step towards training your cockatiel to speak is to communicate with them. No, we are not telling you to just keep on repeating the words in front of them. In fact, if you want them to learn how to speak your language, you need to learn their language first. Interact with the cockatiel; make a strong bond with them. Make them feel comfortable in your company. It will make the bird interested in spending time with you and learn what you teach them.

Here are 3 best ways to bond with them:

Ensure If Your Bird Is Healthy

Have you ever remembered how it felt when you had to study or do your homework while you were ill? It felt awful, right! And teacher always complained of wrong spellings and dirty handwriting. Why? Simple: Illness kept irritating you and prevented you from best performance.

The same is true in case of Cockatiel. If after repeated attempts it is not able to speak, it is more likely that your cockatiel is ill and needs veterinary care. Even if it does not show the symptoms of illness you can consult a vet just to confirm. Here, the primary concern should be the health of your loving cockatiel.

The Ambiance

Another thing to ensure is that it is being trained in a noise free ambiance. Here, by noise free we not only mean audible noise. You should make sure that the ambiance should be free of visual distractions too. Cockatiel by nature can get excited easily and they are very curious birds. So, more they will be distracted more excited they become and it will prevent them from learning new words.

Go Steadily

Also ensure to teach it one word at a time. Many people expect the birds to speak fluently within several weeks. So, they start teaching them many phrases and words at the single time. It confuses the bird and prevents it from learning. Can you climb up several stairs at a time? No. you have to climb up the steps one by one. In the same way, you cockatiel can only learn gradually: from simplest words to more complex phrases and then to singing and other vocal expressions.

Associate Words with Emotions

The cockatiel is fairly intelligent bird so most of the times you will notice that many words make them react more expressively than others. Hence you need to observe the visual expressions: A swelled chest indicates excitement, enlarged eye pupil also conveys an active expression. Depending upon these expressions, you can decide the words that attract those most and try to concentrate on those words too.

Reward Them

Each time the bird endeavors to repeat a word or sentence, you should reward it suitably. Gradually decrease the frequency and rather focus on quality of the treat. That simply means, initially you can treat them any random bird food each time they endeavor to speak. Then gradually treat them only when they come very near to the word you speak. It will help them understand that it is only when they mimic you most closely that they can get the reward. It will help them to learn fast.

Use More Vowels than Consonants

Try to teach the singing and rhyming words to tour birds in initial phase. These are the words that are rich in vowels. Like: “come here” is not among them but "go" "eat" "sit" are certainly among them. It is because if you observe the cockatiels own language it is rich in vowels with almost no consonants.

Conclusion

Everyone cockatiel adopter wants his bird to speak fluently and clearly. But you need to incur quality time for it. In fact, training a cockatiel is a multi-phase process. You first need to bond with them, and then train them easy words that they like the most and can easily mimic. After then you can move gradually to more complex. This kind of well structure training will make the basic fundamentals clear for them and it will be easier for them to learn, mimic and retain any particular words or phrase.