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RogerP wrote:

... it has been kinda up and down.

...up and down with his mental health, with the rolling pin, with the towel...
LOL! (I'm just teasing you Rog!!! You know I you!!!

He wont admit it, but he's doing great! Rehomes are a challenge, and it sounds like Roger is doing a stand-up job. After hearing about his (and everyone else's) experiences, I KNOW I got really lucky with Bucky. I don't think I could take a chance like that again ... I don't have the patience.

can we have an update roger? i was wondering how arthur was doing! also some more pictures!

He seems perfectly happy to come out of the cage and will readily go sit on top of it. However, now when he decides to take off (from the doorway of his cage today), even when I leave him alone to explore, he runs or flies away whenever I try to get near him. Last night I spent over an hour with him on the floor. Even though he will take treats from my hands while on the floor, as soon as I try to get him to step up he flies away from me. It seems a mixed blessing; he is willing to leave the cage, but will no longer step up for me.

The only pictures I might have would be Arthur sitting on his cage, doing nothing. Not terribly exciting. I'll see what I can do for some more.

it seems likr things are going well! now that hes off his cage hopefully he'll start to trust you and let you pick him up

No luck with him letting me pick him up. He does nothing but run away from me. When he first came home he was reluctant to leave the cage, but once off would step up for me and hang around for laddering, or sitting on my chest or shoulder.

Now he regularly jumps off the cage, and even if I let him wander around on the floor he will run away from me whenever I come near him. I have had to towel him the last two nights to get him back into his cage. I sit and talk to him and rub his head and beak while he is towelled, but it does not seem to help. I have attempted target training inside the cage, but it does not seem to matter how small the target stick, he runs away to the far side of the cage and will not come anywhere near it.

It feels like I am going backwards, not making progress!

I know its hard but patience and time is what Arthur needs. We have no idea what he's been through so its hard to understand his fear of you. Have you tried having a female work with him? He might be afraid of men

OK, I'm clearly not the bird whisperer, so take this for what it's worth (which is likely even less than you've paid for it :-)

It sounds to me as if there is a pattern established where he thinks what you do is chase him and catch him. I'm not sure petting him while he's toweled is the right answer, because it might be too much like taking advantage of the situation. I think you need to break the pattern where you have to keep catching him. I don't know if that means not letting him out at all, or letting him out only in a very enclosed room where you can afford to wait for him to go back of his own volition or what. But it sounds as if your dominant form of interaction is you catching him. I suppose it's even possible he thinks that's what's supposed to happen or that it's fun. Can you bribe him at all?

When you present a target and he withdraws from it, what do you do? I think it's normal to withdraw from the unfamiliar object at first. The game would be to just leave it in one position for long enough for him to make the slightest move in it's direction and then reward that. Even if the move in that direction was for some reason other than to explore the target, reward it, and let him figure it out. As long as you have an effective reward, it will eventually work. With horses, when you clicker train, the first thing you teach for the bridge conditioning is for the horse to turn it's head away from you -- this stops 1200lbs of animal from mugging you for treats, which would be an easy wrong lesson to teach. They obviously don't do this initially for any reason related to the training, you just wait until they get distracted by something and look away, click and reward. Eventually they connect the dots.

For some reason I missed the last two posts (sorry Deb and Coral). Coral, you could be right, he seems to respond okay when my wife talks to him. However she is petrified of being bitten, so she is unlikely to do more than feed him treats through the cage. He used to be fine with me once off the cage. I am the one who has wrecked that, not the previous owner. So hopefully I can fix it, too.

Deb, I will try your suggestion to see what happens. We had the last traumatic event, I hope for a while. Arthur's cage arrived and I finished building it late Wednesday night. I put him into the cage tonight (man wasn't that fun - not!). He was not happy but was taking treats again through the bars before bed, so hopefully he will bounce back sooner.

I hope I can move to the positive now. I may leave him in the cage for a few days and see if the targeting could work. I am starting to think maybe I have made a mistake, but I am committed now (maybe I should be) and I will not give up this easily. I will keep everyone posted.