Back to square one

Yesterday Manzi got distracted outside and didn't want to fly anymore. I figured if I didn't give him any treats, he would be more interested the next morning (today). Today things started out great and he was making all his flights. Then, after going out to 100' Manzi missed the landing and circled around. He didn't come down to me though and after multiple circles he began flying too fast and finally landed extremely high up in a tree. After 30 minutes he finally tried to come back down, but couldn't make it all the way down and went back up after a scrub jay began pestering him and landed even higher up in a pine tree. He was in that tree for a full hour. He would try climbing down, but then kept getting poked by pine needles. After an hour, Manzi wasn't really trying to come down and he began making noises showing he was getting comfy. To give him a sense of urgency Cesar and I walked away about 150 feet and began talking at a distance. That worked and Manzi began to make a real effort to get down. After flying to me he was going so fast and bump my hand but was way to fast to actually land. He circled a couple of times again and landed very close to me in a small tree. This time I was able to climb up it and grab him. I put him on my shoulder as I was climbing down and he hung on for his dear life. This whole thing shook him up quite a bit.

I need to rethink my approach. He is still having problems flying downwards at an angle and instead of getting better, Manzi is getting more and more scared. So for now, I am going to stick with indoor flights for a few days and then do outdoor flights at small distances for at least a week without increasing the distance. That way he is still happy and gets rewarded, yet he won't have to be afraid of getting stuck in a tree for a while. When he is very comfortable with that, I'll increase the distance very slowly. I think this has been a matter of me asking too much too quickly. We'll see how this goes.