Aggressive behavior, lately

[Taylorsdaddy]

Hello friends.

Would like some feedback, if anyone else has experienced this.

Taylor, the 6 year-old Grey, has started to pounce and be very clingy-possessive when he knows we are preparing to leave the house.

The ironing board comes out, shirts and slacks get pressed, then the whole shower scene happens. When it's time to leave, he'll clamp down and will not let go and get on his cage. When he finally gives in, he'll go one step further and fly and bite the back of my neck.

He'll also respond the same way when we're trying to keep him from chewing on the drawers of the bathroom sinks. Tried keeping him out of the area when the whole ritual of getting ready for work happens, to keep from having the altercations, but my partner thinks it's not the way to go about it.

Discipline, he says! Any ideas?

[ranaz]

He is just being a kid who is growing up and trying to assert his own personality. He is trying to stretch the limits and testing you to see what boundaries you made for him. Best way is to ignore his behavior when he does this and do not make a big deal out of it. Stand firmly and put him to his cage... he is just being himself I guess...

[Taylorsdaddy]

Ranaz, thanks. I agree 100%

P.S. Taylor thinks he is a programmer like me. If he got near that keyboard all the keys would be popped off in 5 minutes or less.

[ranaz]

oh... welcome to greys world...thats the norm...any keyboard takes few minutes to be totally torn apart...tell me about it... I had to replace my laptop keys twice and my mobile phone keyboard (takes less than a minute to be completely distroyed) 4 times so far....

[Morana]

I noticed that kind of behavior when I picked up my mobile phone. I don't talk much, but send messages quite a lot and I write down the alarms a lot, so when Zak sees me going for the cell phone he gets really pissed and lounges at the phone and me. He is really killing the phone at that point and won't hesitate to give me a hard bite too! :-S As I can't have this kind of behavior, for quite a while, I left the cell in the other room. I would even go in the other room to type messages. So as Zak didn't see a cell phone in quite a while I figured it would be safe to introduce it again in different circumstances. He obviously wanted the attention so when the cell beeps I'll go to Zak and talk to him, or cuddle,..-in other words, I would pay attention to him rather than to pick up the cell. I repeated this a lot. So now, when I have a cell in my hand and I see Zak lowering his head like he wants to cuddle I leave typing on the cell (but still holding it in my hand) and I cuddle Zakica and give him kisses. I am really sensitive to that. Why? Because Zak is testing me (and conditioning me a bit too, from time to time). The way I see it, he wants to check (when I'm typing) whether cell phone is more important to me than him, in that particular moment, and my reaction is definitely saying NO! We came to the point that when I am on my cell,typing or talking, Zak is not lounging anymore and I don't have to be cuddling him and kissing him all the time too for our arrangement to work:-) Maybe there is even a better way to get what you and your bird want but I am happy our arrangement worked out the way it did;-)

Hope this helps;-)

[Taylorsdaddy]

Thanks, Morana.

We're trying some distraction ideas. It requires so much time, especially when there's a time schedule.

But is discipline rather than distraction better? Or can one use discipline at all to stop the biting and resistant behavior?

I've tried NOT to make a big deal out of it, but he'll really take a bite while clamping down on my hand. OUCH!

I'd like to switch the routine, maybe close the door while getting ready for work. Is this a bad thing?

His wings are not clipped, so he's allowed to fly from room to room.

Has he got WAY too much freedom?

I appreciate your response.

[Morana]

I would never say that a flighted parrot has too much freedom living in our apartments/houses because it is just a house and most of our flighted companions are restricted just to that space.

Also, I don't think closing the door would solve the problem. It may be combined with something else in order to work. I don't understand what do you mean by "discipline". I figure that the best way to remodel behavior is through positive reinforcement. Reprogram his behavior by "distracting" him at that particular time (when you are heading off) by something else he enjoys. Maybe even to avoid the situation when he is out of the cage when you are leaving..? How come you don't put him in a cage while you go to work? The new thing I tried with Zakica, because he started screaming whenever I want to leave the apartment is not to bring myself in the situation that I have to force him into the cage. Half an hour before I go, I ofter (in his bowl) a bit of his favorite fruit and for it he goes inside (most of the time anyway). Then I try to be around the cage a bit more, maybe talk to him. His new toy is already hanging in the cage. So, just before I go to work I give him food to eat. I don't starve him so he wouldn't notice anything but food, instead, in the evening he eats as much as he wants and if I have to go out in the morning, he'll get his food just before I go to work. In this scenario I wouldn't let him out of the cage at all before work to avoid forcing him back in because I haven't trained him to go to his cage for positive reinforcement yet. If I am at home, and I know I'll have to go out at one point, I arrange everything so he'll get a bit hungry before I go so when he gets his food he is pretty preoccupied with it. I am also praising him, whenever he gets in the cage and starts playing/eating. My point is, I tried to create a moment when he'll be rewarded, in some way, for being distracted=quiet. It seems to be working. I'm really new at this, so I'm sure someone else, with more experience, will have even better examples:-) There might even be some holes in my method but I'm not aware of them yet. As I said before, someone with more experience in that field will have a more accurate advice to give;-)

[Popsicle]

The solution is buying touch screen phones and iPad. hehe

[Popsicle]

Now talking about the main problem... What I've read and heard from other people is that if something like this is happening, you should try and change your routine a bit so it doesn't become so obvious that you are going out. And doesn't encourage a bad behaviour (an attempt to stop you from going out). Another thing is making sure you always give him treats and/or toys he really likes just before you walk out the door so he will stop being so naughty and instead he will associate you leaving to something good. Hope something works.