RESCUED BIRD LEARNED TO TALK FROM THE OTHER BIRD, NOT ME
I have had Bobby, a male cockatiel for 5 years. He says,'Come here bird, pretty bird, Here’s for my pretty bird," whistles, and mumbles. My neighbor rescued a male parakeet 4 years ago, and gave him to me. I named him Max, for Miracle Max in The Princess Bride. I tried to get the bird to talk, but to no avail. BUT, he picked it all up from Bobby Bird!
Sadly, Max flew up to that bird heaven in the sky a couple of years ago. We all had a good time together while he was here.
My dog learned by watching cats as a puppy to cover his poo. I have to be careful because he does it with his hind legs and can really make a mess of someones wood chip mulch.
My Dad had a Parakeet he taught to say “You old Shit”. When the landlady would come to get the rent she would go over to say hi to Pretty Boy and he would say, “You Old Shit”.
I used to have a small flock of sheep, just four total (although there was a definite pecking order, and they split into two smaller flocks.) Anyway, I would let them out of their fold to follow me to a diffferent part of the yard at feeding time. Sometimes we’d have sheep races, but that’s another story.
They’d all crowd around while I scooped corn and feed into a bucket, and they liked it when I gave them a nibble by hand. Jamie,* especially, liked free treats, and would barge his fat way forward to nudge at my leg or side while I was still scooping. One day I had their bucket filled, and was giving them little handfuls, when I got distracted by a neighbour. I was talking to him, and giving treats to greedy sheep who were both nudging, and in the case of Jamie, rising up on his back legs like a terrier will beg for food. Eventually, Jamie would sit up and beg like the world’s fatters, wooliest schnauzer.
Then I got Jack, who was a bottle-fed, six-month-old Border Leicester wether. Jack thought he was a dog, because he’d been a runt, and spoiled as a baby by his owner family. They didn’t want to eat him, so they traded him to me for several pairs of homespun, handknit socks.
Jack knew his name, liked to come into the house and hang out, play hide-and-seek, and on his own, learned to sit up and beg while watching Jamie.
*For the Doctor Who fans among the crowd, Jamie had a twin sister called Zoe.
The neighbor dog, who we’ve kind of adopted, learned to use the doggie door from watching my other two dogs. I might have given him one treat one time, but the other dogs took a lot longer for me to teach them.
It’s hilarious now - one dog will spot a squirrel, and Zoom! They’re off! Splat splat splat… (sound of plastic door going three times in succession.)
I’m not sure how I would have trained an animal to do this, let alone two; it’s just something they do.
We have two cats (5 years apart in age), and two litter boxes. Sometime in the first 6 months of getting the younger one, the agreement was reached that the red litter box is used for pee and the beige one for poo. There are very, very rarely any exceptions to this, and if there are, it is clearly from the younger cat peeing in the poo box (the cats are of significantly different sizes, as are their deposits!)
It’s weird, but kind of convenient for cleaning. The red box gets dumped nearly in its entirety, and the beige one gets sifted more.