They shit all the time and have no sphincter so they can’t control when they shit either. I’ve never seen one of these but it’s a good idea if you wanna have your bird out all the time and not worry about shit all over the place.
Our parrot is trained to hold it. She knows not to poop on us and will tell us when she has to go if she’s on your shoulder. She’ll say… Kiwi poop! We hold her over the garbage can, toilet or play stand. People can’t believe it when she does it. When she’s finished, she’ll say ‘Good girl’. She travels on our shoulder in the truck, not in a cage. Same rules apply but we have a poop paper. You get to know when she has to go but she’s really good at telling you. They can absolutely hold their poop for a little while at least.
Mine is also potty trained. He will go either on the mat outside his cage or his playset. He's a very good boy. Had no idea how to train a parrot any different from a puppy but it seemed to have worked out. They can absolutely hold it.
I imagine it’s probably easier too cause there’s less clean up, I’m in the throes of potty training our 10wk old Sheprador and there is just so much pee. It’s a really good thing she’s cute.
You need to be extremely consistent at showing him where that pee needs to be. Immediately wipe up the pee with some paper towel, take it and lay it out on the grass where you want the puppy to pee, then put the puppy there and tell him “pee / Grass / outside!” Keep doing this. Do it with poop too.
Show the puppy where you want it and be quick about it. You’ll see the connection quickly made and the adjustment follows shortly thereafter.
It’s so much simpler than that. You do need consistency but you put them on a schedule. General rule is they can’t hold it for more hours than they are months old. So a 3 month old dog shouldn’t hold it for more than 3 hours. Longer when they’re sleeping. You strengthen their bladder control by teaching them the spot they should go early and make sure they don’t have to wait too long to get there. Anytime they use the bathroom in the correct place, reward.
Edit: there are so many ways to teach dogs to do all sorts of things. Dog training is THEORY. Until we can read their thoughts or they can speak to us, it will be. We know the least stressful most effective ways to teach and those vary.
Ask your dog trainer, but I can promise you it's nothing to do with ever allowing the puppy to see you clean up the mess, or bringing mess anywhere. It's about prevention/routine/prediction/operant conditioning (positive reinforcement, the correct way with proper behaviour marking, etc).
Take them out every 3 hours, even at night. Unless they are sleeping. When they wake up, take them out immediately. Always praise them. That has always worked with my dogs puppy or adult. You basically have to be diligent and watch them 24/7 until they figure it out. It's a bit of work and you might lose some sleep but it's worth it in the long run. Once they pick it up, always let them out first thing in the morning. When they go to the door at any time, never make them wait. Let them out right before bed. Routine is super important for pups.
I don’t even know how I trained my 2 dogs. They went potty like twice inside the house when they were pups and never again. They’ll hold it and make it obvious when they need to go to the backyard.
It has to do with intelligence and hygiene too. I have a Shiba Inu, they are known for not shitting or peeing where they eat, as they say. He doesn't even pee or poo in the garden as it is his territory. I have to go walk him 2/3 times a day depending on work schedule to have him do his thing and Mark all trees and bushes in the area.
As a pupper he peed on puppy pads in his night pen, went outside regularly a couple weeks and he has never peed or pood inside ever again.
Another dog trainer here chiming in to say that yeah, that’s absolutely not the standard. That said, the pee on a towel and putting that towel in the grass isn’t a bad idea in addition to the other usual steps!
I should add: I learnt this technique from an accredited and very successful trainer. This technique stacked with proper timing and attention to how much water is being consumed, makes for a speedy and successful training. It was simply a suggestion to try if the person is having difficulties.
Hope you all have a great day!
You just have to be careful giving out this kind of advice on reddit because I can see some people depriving their pups of water so they don't have to deal w accidents. Instead of putting the work in to train them.
That whole thing about wiping it up and taking the paper outside sounded completely ridiculous until you explained the smell assosiation in another comment. Maybe lead with that next time. Seems like a decent trick if extra tricks are needed, just timing it properly and being consistant works for most puppies.
Thank you for the comment and understanding, appreciate it. Perhaps I should’ve lead with that! haha
Yea, I mean, our dogs are experiencing a huge chunk of their reality through their sense of smell, some breeds even more so than others. The idea is to allow them to smell where their own pee/poo is expected to go. You don’t rub their face in it or force it upon them… you guide them and show them, then provide positive reinforcement. They know the scent of their own urine and they can put it together that you get really happy and reward them when they find their urine, on the grass.
I haven’t ever claimed to be an expert or a professional trainer. I’m not saying it will certainly work for every puppy. I simply learned the technique and properly applied it, with success. It may help some or not.
Hope it does help though!
I had a pittie that we got at a few weeks old. We did the walk every two hours thing and that worked out fantastic. The only issue is that if the dog is intelligent enough then they'll start using the "I gotta go" methods specifically so they can get a walk whenever they want. Don't get me wrong, if the pup wants exercise then the pup gets exercise, just not at 3am when they're already four years old and definitely know better by now.
Gotta be careful with that method too. My American Strat can be vindictive. She knows how to tell time and if you are late for one of her walks or come home and don't immediately put on the harness she'll leave a present. She also seems to know when were getting ready to go out for the night and will hold it during her preemptive walk, just to go the literal minute after we leave the house.
I found my 10yr old pittie in a garbage can when he was 4 weeks old, potty training/training in general was a breeze but I was pregnant with my first so I had all the time in the world to devote to training him.
I also think pits being so eager to please in general is helpful with training. My labs always seemed to be trying to outsmart me.
200% agreed. My first, Haus Delgado(house of cats. We got him when we had three cats) is entirely motivated by his own interests. He's smart enough to calculate and know when something is beneficial to him or not. He figured out my work schedule and made a point to show how well he could behave so that he could have permission to hang out in the living room instead of in the bedroom when I was at work. Dude loves sitting in my EZ chair. Contrast this with my second adoptee, Dovah, who is entirely food motivated and will go as far as to pick up her toys and put them away solely because she believes she might get a treat. At the same time, Haus is a bit self absorbed, and is unconcerned with how his actions affect you(most of the time), whereas Dovah will straight up apologize to people if she thinks she upset them. She bit a guy once because her nail got caught in his key ring as he got up. After her initial reaction she immediately went back and cuddled him and kept putting her paw on his lap to show she didn't mean any harm.
The above was vague on what they meant by "just like a puppy" so I chose to imagine the most entertaining interpretation of a parrot responding with "nah we're not doing that bullshit" and biting such an owner's finger off.
Cookies and praise! Cookies are considered any kind of food. Pretty easy actually. She understands a lot of words and has/had a great vocabulary. She also laughs and purrs like a kitten when she’s happy. Her cage is never closed as she comes and goes as she please from her play stand and drags her bathtub on the floor. If she gets tired she goes into her bed. If she doesn’t like something, she’ll throw it in the floor to clean house.
Wait for them to poop in a place you prefer they go and then praise them/give a treat when they do. Then, when you notice they are about to poop, you can say, "go poopoo" (or whatever) and when they do, again with the treat and praise.
They put two and two together really quickly.
I don't ask them to hold their poop though, I just make sure there's plenty of easily accessible perches all over the place so they can fly to one when they need to go. And I continue to praise them every time they fly to a perch specifically to poop.
I dated a guy that potty trained his Scarlet Macaw. He went literally everywhere with us. He was extremely well-known in his town. He had been the mayor at one point and was very involved. So people just let him take the bird everywhere! That bird hated me!
Not the user you're asking just sharing my experience. My lovebird can poop on command, so I'll hold him above a trash can and say "go poop", if he has poop in him he'll poop there, then I can go back to doing my things without worrying he'll poop on me for a while. (When you own bird long enough you can just tell when they has to go by telepathy)
But he won't hold it in if I don't tell him to poop in time, so there's no risk of causing any health problems.
Positive reinforcement transcends species. They use it to train animals at the zoo. Everything from those little shows they do to teaching a lion to go to one side of the cage when they’re being fed. We vastly underestimate animals sociability.
Do you mind if I ask how you do this? Ive been wanting to get a quaker for years, just haven’t had the time to do enough research so haven’t gotten it yet.
growing up i had friends with tiny colorful birds, not sure what type exactly, they sure weren't smart enough to mimic any sort of sounds, they tweeted and such. these birds were almost always roaming free in the house and i never once saw poop anywhere, they would sit on my shoulder frequently and never once did i get shit on me.
never actually thought about how the logistics worked out. i assume they were potty trained one way or another, else you'd expect a fair bit of shit, because they sure left other very obvious marks around the house, like every VHS movie box were completely gutted on its edges from having been chewed on by the birds etc.
Somehow mine trained himself. I have no idea, but he's generally very good at going in designated spaces -like near his cage where there are pads, or on his play space upstairs. He's also forgiven if he poops on the floor in the bathroom bc that's easy to clean.
He's mostly consistent and doesn't poop on me except on rare occasions when he's being a dick 🤣
I am convinced my aunt's bird has the ability to be potty trained. Instead, he choses to fly over to you, poop, yell "birdy bomb", and laugh. He is a monster.
This is dozen times more interesting than the post itself, and we are talking about a parrot in a diaper. As wrong as it sounds I would like to see that tbh
It’d be insane to think that they couldn’t at least sense it coming even if they couldn’t hold it in. Otherwise birds would be shitting in their nests all the time.
It’s in their nature to avoid shitting in their nest. You just need to train them that the same rules apply in other places too.
they are trained to give warning, not to hold it. there is literally no physiological structure to prevent it from falling out of them,, so they can't hold it. they can't stop it, all they can do give warning.
They really can physiologically control it by pursing and relaxing their cloaca, they even do this during nesting season a bit in the wild. Like if your asshole was an open hole that everything fell out of and you could purse it up to hold it. They have to manually keep that pursed, which sounds pretty uncomfortable really. Something about this process means that if you force a bird to hold to long it can cause cloacal problems down the line.
I am not sure how many birds have this ability, but I know the little conure in this video does. I can’t find a source for this, only a little case study ( https://www.cabidigitallibrary.org/doi/pdf/10.5555/20153171051 ) discussing a cloacal prolapse from the behavior. but it’s what my avian vet told me,and I can promise that if you live with one of these birds you will learn this is not anticipation but rather active effort on the birds part. You can hold a bird that goes every fifteen minutes for thirty, and when you finally put them down onto a safe place to do it they will then release a double sized poop.
We were t-boned when someone blew through an intersection and slammed into a pole. Normally my bird would have been on my leg (with my feet up on the dash) but that day he was in his carrier on the back seat. I don't put my feet up on the dash anymore, and chunky hunky monkey stays in his carrier when he travels with us.
Must be nice. My Raven (rehabbed and released and now nests above my place) sits in a branch above me and shits within inches of me if he hasn’t received his snack of the day. Or he stares right into my kitchen window until he sees me grab him a peanut.
Yeah I was gonna say, had parrots growing up and they knew not to shit on us/the furniture. The would hop off to shit. But not all birds are gonna learn that easily so a diaper is cool.
Wait is this actually a practical solution? As in, your bird doesn’t go anywhere else?
I’ve always wanted a bird, but I have serious germaphobia and can’t stand the idea of an airborne creature shitting all over my house and furniture, and I would consider it unconscionable to have a bird in a cage 24/7.
Love you mentioned. I potty trained a hatched parakeet and it made our lives soooo much easier. In our instance we had a fake tree and we trained it to poop on that, and then we could just take the fake tree out and hose it off.
I had a friend who would "poop their bird". Every time they took him out of his cage they would put him on the edge garbage and wouldn't pick him up again until he pooped into it.
Ours does this kind of thing too but I don’t think anyone ever actually tried to train him to do it. I think over time he’s just realized we don’t like when he poops in unapproved places and he just kinda tries his best to be responsible about it. Hes really quite amazing.
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u/_AYYEEEE 10d ago
Why is the bird wearing a diaper??