Pudge+Page

................................................................................................................ Pudgeball the Parakeet Pudgeball (AKA Pudge, Pudger) is a 9 month old, common white-based "sky blue" male parakeet. I bought him at 3 months of age at PETCO (cliche, I know).

__Pudge's Ever-Expanding Vocabulary__: Pudge(y) Mommy Baby Bird Puppy Man Love you Peanut Pig Super Happy Hi

<span style="color: #000080; font-family: Georgia,serif;">__Taming Pudge__: <span style="color: #000080; font-family: Georgia,serif;">Training any animal take a certain level of patience and respect. Birds, however, command a LOT of patience (well, at least mine did). When we first brought Pudge home, he was a very timid little bird. We let him get accustomed to his new home and would spend at least 30 minutes every day just talking to him so that he would get used to our voies and realize that we weren't going to harm him. Going from a pet store environment to a home environment is extremely stressful for parakeets, especially due to the fact that in a pet store they are surrounded by other birds, however, as soon as they get into a home environment, often times they are the only bird in the vicinity. So, after about a week of simply talking to him, I would slowly place my hand in his cage. I wouldn't go anywhere near him, I would just place my hand inside the cage. This was to familiarize him with my "scent" and to help him realize that despite the menacing appearance of my hand, I was in no way going to harm him. After about another week or so of that, I would put a little bit of his favourite ** (Mr. G asks: "What, are we in England now?") <span style="color: #008080; font-family: Georgia,serif;">(Cheyenne states: "Well, there's no need to be sassy, now, Mr. Gingrich!") ** treat in my hand so he would be more and more tempted to come investigate it. With time, he did start exploring my hand (especially my fingernails...to this day he still is fascinated by them). Three weeks later I would start inching my hand towards the cage door, with him perching on me. Slowly but surely, he would let me take him closer and closer to the door until one day, when he let me take him outside.

<span style="color: #000080; font-family: Georgia,serif;">" __<span style="color: #000080; font-family: Georgia,serif;">Step up! __<span style="color: #000080; font-family: Georgia,serif;">" <span style="color: #000080; font-family: Georgia,serif;">A vital training technique used with birds is the "step up" command. This is used to get the bird to perch on your hand, finger, or whatever else you place in front of it. To help your bird understand this, any time he steps up onto another perch, object, etc. say in a firm (yet gentle) voice "Step up!" Without this simple command, your bird will become generally much more unruly and hard to handle. Pudge learns extremely quickly so it took him probably only a week or so to fully grasp this concept.

__<span style="color: #000080; font-family: Georgia,serif;">Getting Pudge to Come to Me __ <span style="color: #000080; font-family: Georgia,serif;">We (my mother and I) experimented with several methods to train Pudge to come to us when we wanted him to. Having your bird out of his cage and not training him to come to you when summoned is a recipe for disaster. So, initally we tried training him with a voice command, however, that didn't seem to work very well. Birds generally tend to respond better to actions rather than words, which they just seem to repeat. Then, we tried wiggling our fingers to get him to hop from one hand to the next. For no apparent reason, it worked (perhaps he thought my fingers were food? This has been known to happen...). After establishing that, we tried him with longer distances. It turned out that Pudge wasn't able to really see our fingers wiggling, so instead we started to pat wherever we wanted him to go. Initially, we had Pudge's wings clipped to prevent him from flying too far away while we were training him, however, now that he is fully trained, we let his wings grow out :)

__<span style="color: #000080; font-family: Georgia,serif;">Teaching Pudge to Speak __ <span style="color: #000080; font-family: Georgia,serif;">There really isn't too much one can do to teach a bird how to speak. Naturally, males tend to be more inclined to speak, so it makes sense that Pudge's vocabulary is as extensive as it is. In order to get Pudger to speak, we simply repeated words/phrases over and over again until he picked them up. It's quite entertaining watching him try to figure out how to form new words because it sounds rather like he's mumbling. Listed above are all of the words he can say, however, he often combines them. A few of his most popular "Pudge Phrases" are "baby bird," "Pudge Pudge Pudge," "puppy man," "peanut man," "Pudge baby," and "Pudge mommy."

__<span style="color: #000080; font-family: Georgia,serif;">Pudge's Tricks/Games and Toys __ <span style="color: #000080; font-family: Georgia,serif;">Though we are still working on getting him to do more complicated ones, Pudge already knows several simple tricks and enjoys making up games. One of his all-time favourite games is seeing how quickly he can hop from my head to the back of the couch and back on to my head without slipping or falling.

<span style="color: #000080; font-family: Georgia,serif;">Pudge has a rather large variety of toys (he's a spoiled little bird). His favourite toy, however, is a disco ball that I got him a few months ago. He's fond of grabbing the top part with his beak and pulling it towards him, then releasing it so it swings back and forth ( a few times it has actually hit him, startling him so much so that it knocked him off his perch).