I've been lurking for a few weeks now, so I'm finally getting around to saying Hi! I"m a working mom with a husband and a son and a zillion pets. I have an elderly giant cat, a middle aged miniature poodle (both rescues), we have a red eared slider turtle and some koi in a pond in the back yard and I have 3 budgies named Cloud, Ninja and an english budgie named Waffles. I also recently added a 4 month old 'tiel to the family and my son named him Coyote. He is, from what I've recently learned, a "dirty face" pied and is super cute. He's picked me as his person and likes scritches and to hang out on my shoulder. He's been with us for about 3 weeks now and I've started clicker/target training him and he's picking it up faster than I can cope with! I read the info here on clicker training and am going to try to teach him how to fetch since he picked up the target stick idea in literally 1 day.
So far, my only issues are 1) I am mildly allergic to his powder down and so I'm working on ways to combat that and 2) I have a small home and his cage is in our living area. I realized that he was not getting enough sleep and I've read so much about issues that come up when they have long days, so I just started putting him in a small cage that I take to a back room so he can sleep somewhere more quiet and then put him back in his main cage immediately every morning. He seems to be taking it well.
I also have to keep an eye on my cat. I really can't have them out at the same time because even though he's a very old guy and has literally never caught a living thing in his entire life, he immediately went into pounce mode the other day when Coyote flew to the floor. He didn't get anywhere near him because we were all keeping a close eye but it was a lesson to be learned, that even at that age he can and will go for Coyote, no ifs ands or buts. So I have to keep Coyote in the cage longer than I'd like and I have to keep my old cat locked in a back room for longer than I'd like. It is, however, a situation that will resolve itself within the next year or so I think. My poor old man is running out of steam.
Anyways, that's enough about me! I'm probably going to go back to mainly lurking and enjoying reading everything here.