Gone fishin'

So, I have plans to fly Manzi. I'm going to scout out one more location. I heard it was a great place. Was using fishing line as a leash so Manzi could fly quite a ways from me without any problems. I would then manually wind up the fishing line, despite the difficulty of winding up over a hundred yards of tangled line. I'm not sure why it never occurred to me before, but I could have been using a fishing reel and pole for that. In addition, a reel will allow give without making Manzi come to a hard stop at the end.

So, I ordered the reel and it came yesterday. I have that ready to go, but I'm waiting for the fishing rod (to anchor the reel). I don't know much about fishing, so I'm hoping that the reel and rod work together. Some responses found on google, about which rod will fit which reel, made me laugh:

"As long as it's not a ridiculous mismatch like I stated at first, you should have no problem."

I'm not sure what is considered a "ridiculous mismatch" but hopefully my ability to read specs helped out somewhat. The rod will come sometime next week and then I'll give it a go.

I watch the parrot documentary, "Parrot Confidential" last night. It was excellent, but very sad as well about parrots kept as pets.

On Maui:

Her trick training has been a fail. I thought we were doing so well. She put on a perfect show for some visitors, doing on of her tricks on cue. Then suddenly, she regressed. Now, all she does is say, "work, work, work" while turning around. She won't do anything else, not even shout "Charge!" after doing a charge whistle. The last one was one of her most dependable tricks before. It is now like she is a broken record. Her flying has not regressed though. Now she flies to me a lot more confidently on command and she is even doing very small flights back to her perch. Eventually, I'm hoping she'll fly back and forth between me and her perch like Manzi does.

Manzi is pretty good about knowing not to fly to me when I call Maui. Maui does often fly when I call Manzi though. She really needs to work on her specificity of commands.

Stairs:

This is the first time I've lived in  a place with stairs. I didn't think they would be a big deal, but apparently they are very difficult for Manzi. He cannot fly up or down the stairs yet. He tries and only makes it about 2/3 the way up before he lands. At that point, he will wait for me to get him. He also struggles to fly down the stairs. It is too steep and too narrow, so instead of using momentum, he must muscle his way up and down.

Maui's new trick

Maui has a new trick. She can turn around on command.

Manzi gets so excited during training. I usually keep them separate during training because Manzi distracts Maui with his faster display of each trick. At first, when Maui wouldn't do the turn around trick at all, Manzi would do several spins, really wanting to get the treat.

I was concerned that Maui wasn't picking up on this trick, but then she suddenly did it. She isn't nearly as motivated as Manzi. If I have a treat and want Manzi to learn a new trick, he'll try all sorts of things to get the treat, like going through all his old tricks.

Her flying is much better and now she'll fly without having Manzi flying as well.

With flight training, I'm scoping out new parks. I think I'll stick with the beach. It has no trees or cars or powerlines. I need to start taking Manzi there to get him used to the area. I've been doing recalls with him inside every day and he is getting very dependable.