Hello, and welcome to "Slow Path to Trust II: Dove Edition", the sequel to "Slow Path to Trust". This will be my update thread for my new Diamond Dove, whom I've decided to name "Joey". Why? I have no idea.

Anyways, like it's prequel, this will follow the path of a bird who learns to trust his new owner, and a human who will learn from her mistakes along the way. Unlike the bird that starred in the prequel, Joey was never tame to begin with, and so it will take even more effort for him to learn to trust his new friends. However, with a little help from the star of the original "Slow Path to Trust" (SPtT), Lucy the Cockatiel, Joey will learn that humans are not something to be afraid of. Nevertheless, it will be a bumpy ride for the tiny dove, as he will start to ask himself questions like: "How far will I go for some millet?", and "What is up with that one-eyed rectangle the human keeps pointing at me?"



Enough with the dramatic introduction now. I should probably start telling you guys what's really going on.

So the picture I took on my phone from the first taming session finally sent to my email. It was taken after I managed to get him to sit on my hand, after countless attempts of flying away from me.

It was taken on a little flip phone, so don't expect the quality to be top notch.
The bathroom session was basically to get an idea of just how untame he is. The bathroom is the smallest room I have, and I wanted to make sure he didn't hurt himself while crashing into anything. He does fine near me, but flies away if my hand comes near him, so stepping up is a little tricky, though not impossible.

Since then, I've moved our sessions to my bedroom, where Lucy accompanies us. At first, I wasn't sure how having Lucy here would help. I almost expected her to make things worse, given how hostile she acted towards him the first time she saw him in the cage above her cage. She's being good though, aside from giving me a hard time every once in a while, and it has helped a bit, having her here. Because of Lucy, I've not only gotten Joey to eat from a spray next to me, but I've also gotten him to sit on my laptop, eat from my hand, and eat while on my hand.





He's not used to the camera, so getting pictures while he's eating is not easy.

Even though the two are quite different from each other, doves and cockatiels, and so the whole "flock mentality" thing has worked surprisingly well. Of course, it has worked against my favor as well, since while I try to get Joey to step up, and he starts flying around the room, Lucy sometimes feels that she must fly around the room too. At least she steps up just fine.

Every once in a while, the Joey will coo at me. I try to mimic the coo, but I'm not very good at it, yet. He's getting more used to me, and every once in a while, gets closer to me, for the sake of curiosity. If my legs are on the bed, he'll sit on them. He just hasn't learned to step up yet. I don't think it helps, considering I have to grab him in order to bring him to my room in the first place. He will learn eventually, I hope.

He's so cute!!

It's very helpful having a tame bird to set a good example, but that only gets you so far and you still have to earn the trust of the untame bird. I've never tamed a dove so I don't know whether the general process is any different than with parrots. Some birds take to stepping up fairly easily and it's harder with others. Dweezil was the most clueless bird that I've ever taught to step up. He had absolutely no concept of what I wanted from him, and it took months for him to catch on. But he did get the idea eventually and is pretty good at stepping up now.

Doves are different from parrots in many ways. Diamond doves in particular tend to be more flighty than other dove species as well, so he's definitely a bit of a challenge. I read that trying to coo, and communicate with the dove will help. I'm starting to get better at it, though whenever I answer, he looks at me with a confused expression, and then Lucy feels like she should join in, and just let out a single chirp. It's kinda funny.

This was something I actually did with Lucy, too. I'd mimic her chirps, so she felt like she was communicating with me, or something. Eventually, I just started saying things like: "Yeah?" "Oh really?" "You sure?", to make her feel like she's talking. After a while, she started to really enjoy it.

Despite being completely unrelated species, it seems Joey is about as curious and nosy as Lucy, if not more. At one point, he just decided to fly over to the fish tank, and start pecking on the lid. Doves and non-parrots tend to peck at things to tell what they are, similar to how a parrot touches something with it's beak, to see what it is.

It would be really funny if Lucy learned to coo.

That would be hilarious. I don't think I'd ever hear the end of it between the two, if Lucy learned how to.

She would need to learn the patterns to. The difference between the calling and answering coo, and so on.

Well, I guess you can say that this session went less than perfect. Lucy hasn't been exactly helpful this time, and because Lucy didn't want to cooperate, Joey didn't either. The best thing Lucy did was stay calm, which gave some reassurance as he sat on my laptop.

He has been doing something kinda strange though. He flies towards me as if he wants to land near me, but chickens out at the last second and flies to the other side of the room. I stay completely still as he does this, hoping to not scare him, so he could at some point land near me on his own free will.

He is getting more comfortable in the room though, as he starts to fly to various objects and peck at them out of curiosity. He seems to be just as curious as every other parrot I've met.

I really have to stop writing these things before the session ends, because literally as soon as I posted, this happened:

I offered millet to Joey, and he started eating it. He seemed too destracted to realize that my finger was touching it. So I put my finger right next to him, on top of the laptop, and slowly separated the millet from my finger, the millet moving away from Joey. Joey followed it unfil he realized that my finger was right there. He hesitated, but stepped up onto my finger, only to quickly step back off and end up standing on the millet. Even though he didn't stay, voluntarily putting his foot on my finger is a big "step up" in progress.

Then eventually, Lucy started eating it, and they were sharing the millet for a while. Joey looked pretty happy, that he was eating. He's progressing surprisingly fast.

But then Lucy started getting cranky because it's past her bed time, and started hissing at Joey's every move, so I think I'm going to put them to bed now.

Joey seems to care a lot more about progress than my budgies do.

Nah, I just think he cares about millet, more. Doves are kinda... How you say, "simple", compared to parrots, and while I'm not sure how much of an pact that may have, I have a theory that it makes their motivations simpler, as well. This might be why they're pretty easy to tame in some ways, compared to parrots.