Day 2 of Trustbuilding with Sid

2pm- Well, last night before putting Sid to bed, April got home from work and went in and sat next to his cage. He was jumping around all over the cage, seemingly excited! Which is like 900X more movement than he did in the 12 hours prior with me! Then, apparently he regurgitated for her. wtf! I have to say I was kinda jealous and slightly depressed. lol

So, as recommended by the clicker forum, I took his food out of his cage before he went to bed to ensure he'd be a bit hungry in the morning. I woke up 30 minutes earlier than usual to start some clicker training.

First off, he slept the entire night upside down, hanging from his cage. That cannot be comfortable! Although I have heard that Senegals have no concept of gravity lol. So anyways, he wanted nothing to do with my training nonsense. He took one piece of apple from me and that was it. He was pretty much in statue bird mode. I did put his potential target stick a little close to him and he wigged out. So I'm thinking about waiting a few more days to where he's more comfy with me before trying targeting again since I don't want to sent him into a phobic meltdown. I really don't know how phobic he is or isn't, I'm only going by what his previous parents said. He doesn't seem to be phobic like I always picture it to be when I think of super phobic African Greys. He's interested in Gus, he's becoming more interested in us, he is not at all scared of either of my dogs... So I don't know.

So when I got home from work today, I opened the cage door and sat on the bed to do some net surfing on my netbook. And within 15 minutes, he was slowly coming out! He is now on top of the cage and looks like he really really wants to come over here and check things out. I'm not going to push anything so I'm just going to continue to relax here and play hard to get and see what happens. I'm in no hurry and I'd really rather go too slow than too fast. The goal is not to cause even a bite attempt. It's not that I'm afraid of being bitten. It's just that I never want him to equate me with biting or for him to ever know that biting me is a possibility.

9pm- I have officially concluded that Gus is not phobic. I'm sure he has a few things he's phobic about, but he doesn't seem to be phobic in the traditional use of the word. Luckily he is much mroe interested in food today. He also got really close to my bowl of brown rice, rice, salsa, and sour cream. Luckily I planned for this, hoping he'd want some, so I brought a plain brown rice. He seemed to like it! But he also didn't freak out when I put the spoon near him- he came closer to it. Didn't come too close but he did a good job.

He's yet to go back in his cage and has not moved away from me when I've walked past the cage several times to get things in the other room.

Now I've gotta figure a way to entice him back into the cage while not actually putting him in there myself, so that I can go pick up April from work. I think I'm going to try putting a big chunk of apple on his perch inside. We'll see...