 My name is Marlene McCohen and I'm here with my sister. Hi guys, I'm Jenna McCohen for you guys who don't know me and we have today a few special guest stars and we would like to welcome you to Parent Tip Tuesday. We have Cody the African Gray and right behind us we have Jersey, our umbrella cockatoo and we have Picasso for you guys today. Now today we have so many guest stars because as promised Jenna is here to help me demonstrate the model rival technique. This is an incredible technique. If you have read the book Alex and Me by Dr. Irene Pepperberg you will see that she used this technique to train Alex how to talk and how to do tricks and it has proven to be extremely effective when working with your parents. Now the reason I'm a fan of this technique is because I use this to teach my African Gray George how to talk but not only how to talk, how to do tricks, how to identify objects and he was especially receptive to the model rival technique. Now before we do the demo with Cody and Jenna I want to tell you guys a few things about how it can be used. First of all you can use this technique to teach your parent how to say specific things that you want him to know. You can teach your bird how to identify colors and objects and you can teach your bird tricks like I mentioned before. In my hand by the way are some treats and Cody saw this happen. Treats are extremely effective and useful in this technique if your bird is food driven. Now I actually didn't think Cody was especially food driven so I was going to demonstrate this technique with a lot of love and attention directed at my sister and vice versa but I thought I should have the treats on hand to show you guys how to use them. Come here buddy. Oh really? Yeah? Is that where you want to hang? Well Cody may not be the perfect bird for this demo right now he seems especially rambuntrous. I expected Cody to be love driven because Cody is especially attached to me so I was going to do this demo with me giving Jenna a lot of attention when it comes to Cody. However most birds are treat driven so I have a few treats in my hand as does Jenna and we are going to use those with Cody as well just in case he enjoys this food and also to show you guys how the model rival technique works using both food and love whatever your bird is driven by. Now who is the model slash rival and why do we call it a model and a rival? Well Jenna is going to be acting as both the model and the rival. Let me tell you why we call it that. She is the model because she is going to be the person demonstrating the act. So in that aspect Jenna is actually the model however she is also the rival because as you guys know birds tend to be one person or have their one person that they really love even if they're well socialized with the rest of the family. Cody is attached to me Cody likes my attention 100% of the time therefore if Jenna gets rewarded for doing something correctly or picking up on the right cue Cody is going to look at Jenna like she is now the rival so she's turned from the model into the rival and what happens when you have a rival you want to do what they do or do it better. So that basically trains the parrot how to do the right thing to get the attention that Jenna was getting so that Jenna no longer gets that attention and it can be turned on the parrot. This is extremely effective with parrots. If you watched my previous parrot tip Tuesday where I talk about birds being like serial killers this is a great example of why they want all of the attention. Jenna has immediately become the rival. It's also important to keep in mind that if you don't have someone you consider a rival for the bird let's say your parrot is well socialized with everybody in the family it's okay to use anybody available to do this technique because birds want attention so they don't really want anyone else getting the attention either way. So this technique can completely be used with anybody that is available but you guys know from our last story time Sunday about Cody Cody already has a little bit of a rival attitude towards Jenna so she's going to be the perfect person for this demonstration. Now it's not just humans that can be the rival birds can see other parrots as rivals too. So a bird that you own that is already good at doing tricks or already great at pleasing you can be an excellent rival for your parrot too. So consider that as well. Now let's get started. You have your treats? I have my treats. Now Jenna has her treats and we're ready to go. I have to tell you guys this is actually Cody's first time doing this. I haven't done this much with Cody. I've been teaching him mostly alone in the house talking to him as we discussed before but I thought Cody would be great for this video because Jenna has previously been a rival to him and because this works so well on African greys and it's exactly what I did with my bird George. So let's start off with an object. Remember you can teach your bird so many different things with this technique down to color, product, matter, matter, paper like Alex did. Alex was able to tell you what matter what color but with Cody we're going to start with something simple. Now Jenna is going to essentially act as another bird would. So we're going to have Jenna go through this process just like we are going to do with Cody. So everything we think Cody is going to do, we're going to make Jenna do it. So here is the demo. Jenna, what color? I have a treat. Very good. Now Jenna is going to in turn ask me. I don't know if you guys could see but I could see very closely how intently Cody was looking at this whole situation because so is now essentially if you'll notice because so is looking at this whole situation like Cody has a rival and he's very interested in what's happening too. Go ahead and ask me Jenna Marlene. What color? Yellow. Yay. Have a treat. Let's try it on Cody. Cody is not going to say yellow. He's never said it before but let's see what he does. Cody, what color? What color? Cody didn't know what he's supposed to do. So let's reiterate by showing it to Jenna. Jenna, what color? Yellow. Girl Jenna, yellow. Yay. Now this time Jenna is going to do it to me. Jenna, when you do it to me this time I'm going to say yellow in a very excited tone because remember birds love tones that are more excitable and interesting than other tones. So here we go. Marlene, what color? He knows that I didn't really eat it. Let's try it on Cody again. Cody, what color? What color? Let's try something else. Let's try something different. Jenna, Cody wants this so this is more interesting to him. What color? Green. Yay. Oh, treat. No. Treat. Yay. Okay, Jenna, ask me. Oh, Marlene, what color? Green. You want a treat? He's like, just give it to me. He's like, can I have that please? That is an example of the model rival technique. I chose something extremely hard. Cody has never said green. We've never introduced him to any colors and we've never tried this technique. It's a good idea to start with something simple, like saying hello or saying something that you may have heard the birds say already. We wanted to do it with the word what? Cody, say what because Cody knows how to say what. So we already know that the ability would be there, but now we would be teaching him to say it on cue. The reason I chose the cucumber and the lemon is because the abilities of the African Gray are so extensive that I wanted you to understand, like Alex, the African Gray, you could choose different colors, different shapes, blocks, types. There's so many things that you can teach your parrot. Not only that, you could teach your parrot to step up. That's an excellent way of getting them used to stepping up. You can also teach your parrot tricks using the model rival technique. Bang, bang, flip over and he's dead. I did that with George a lot, how to turn around. These are excellent ways and if you have another parrot that is good at this, then it's an even better way to demonstrate to your bird how to get what you want out of him. So this is excellent for tricks, excellent for talking, and excellent for cognitive learning as well. So try this with your bird and I don't think that you will regret it. Whoa, suddenly I am in a different room with a different bird. Hi Vinny, yes, Vinny and I hope that you enjoyed this video about the model rival technique. We have to admit something though. Do you know why I'm suddenly in this room without Jenna and without the rest of the birds? It's probably like midnight right now. I just found out that the end of the video I did not record. So we did this whole really cute thing with a jersey learning to give me a kiss and a demo with Picasso and it just did not tape. Such a mercury in retrograde type thing. And Jenna's already sleeping and so are the other birds, but I call Vinny my midnight bird. This is our alone time. He likes to come out at night and hang out with me and watch movies and have our alone time. You got to find some time for each and every bird and this is how Vinny and I do it. The other ones are kind of crankers. They need to go to bed at 10. Vinny likes to chill with me. He's a little bit older too, so he's much more mature. I don't actually know how old Vinny is because he is a rescue bird, but I know that he's older, right Vinny? So that's the story. Sometimes these things happen. Welcome to the world of YouTube and making it work. I hope you guys enjoyed this video and learned something from it. When I was signing off with my sister, I said, please follow Jenna on Instagram and Snapchat at JennaSara. She's a really good Snapchatter, by the way. She's really cute and follow me on Instagram at MarleneMcCohen and for those of you who want to show me your birds and come join our really fun group called Parrot Station, type in Parrot Station on Facebook, come join us, introduce your bird. I love to meet your birds and watch your bird videos. So please come visit us and subscribe of course, right Vinny? Tell them why subscribers are important for us to keep making these videos. Thank you guys so much. I'm so sorry that I lost some of the video. For that, I will put some bloopers at the end of this video. I hope you guys enjoy them. I love you guys so much. Bye. I thought I should have the treats on hand to show you guys how to use them. Come here buddy. Oh really? Yeah? Is that where you want to hang? Jersey! You have a friend. I'm sorry babe. What can we do with a kiss? Why do we kiss each other? Well, who's going to behave yourselves back there? Well, why do we call it a model and a rival? I'm going to tell you, except for the fact that Cody just ripped some hair out of my head. Oh what a cute. Oh, I'm not so short. Where do you want to go? You guys know I'm going to leave all this in because I know you enjoy it. Well, ah! Yeah, can Georges do that thing? Don't get my thumb. I think he saw the demo and he's pissed about it. I have to tell you guys, I was actually mad at it. Then it's even better than it's an even better way to demonstrate. Jersey, did you have fun today?