I somehow missed some of these messages so just catching up now.
Very sorry to hear Debbie had a seizure. That must have been scary for everyone!
Things with Alfie are going well. I started some structured training with him back in November 2019 - started with 'touch' training where he has to gently touch the end of a chopstick to get a treat. If he bit too hard, no treat. This went well. He also learned to wave- he sort of knew the trick anyway but now its much more consistent. We also started trying to learn colours using an abacus style bird toy. He likes that one because he gets lots of treats! And we worked on recall training, plus returning to a perch. This really helped build back trust between the both of us and gave us a fun way to interact. Things are going really great these days. The training is still a little hit and miss sometimes- Alfie has to be in the right mood for a recall, for example. But it definitely helped improve our relationship- he lets me give him head scritches and will seek me out to come and sit with me and get up to mischief.
My housemate moved out in April 2020 so poor Alfie is stuck with just me again. I think he's just making do until someone more interesting comes along. 😄 He absolutely loves my mum - pretty sure I posted about that somewhere here. He goes all gooey and lovey for her and will sit with her for aaages getting loads of head scritches. It's very cute. I'm not on that level with him but I'll take what I can get! 😂
He's also getting pretty good at letting me know when he doesn't want to step up without biting. Previously if I offered a hand/arm and he didn't want to step up then he would just bite instantly. So I used to get him to step up on a perch instead. We turned this into a training exercise too- if he stepped up nicely he got a treat. He reliably steps up on to a perch and nowadays I can offer my hand/arm and he'll either turn away or walk away if he's not ready to step up. This is his polite way of saying 'no, not yet' instead of the instant bite. I know to back off and leave him be for a bit. Sometimes if I give him a minute then come back, he'll step up fine. Other times I have to grab a treat for him or use the perch instead if I need him to move sooner rather than later.
So it's going so much better than it was when I last posted in this thread.