This month, the World Parrot Refuge will be the first Canadian recipient of multiple donations coming conceivably from all corners of the Earth. Let me explain.
Dr. Susan Friedman is a psychology professor at Utah State University and a practicing behaviourist. She was among the first, if not the first, behaviourist to bring applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) to parrots and their caregivers.
ABA is the analysis of the relationship between behaviour and the environment within which it occurs. Parrot caregivers often struggle with parrot behaviour which can be destructive, uncomfortable and/or painful. ABA helps caregivers understand why a behaviour occurs, and identify interventions that will change a behaviour.
In 2001, Dr. Friedman designed and began teaching a six-week on-line course called Living and Learning With Parrots (LLP). Students learn the basics of ABA and learn how to use it to identify and change the behaviours of their parrots that caregivers find problematic. Canadian Lee McGuire has been Dr. Friedman's teaching partner since 2004.
The course has been so successful that the 13-month wait to take the course when I took it in 2004 is now at least 24 months. It's now an eight-week course. Parrot caregivers from all walks of life and many countries continue to register for and take this course. And today graduates of that course help teach it, expanding the class size from an original 20 to 80 or so.
The fee for this course is a voluntary $50 donation to a charity chosen by Dr. Friedman as that class's recipient. The January 2014 LLP class donations recipient is the World Parrot Refuge in Coombs.
While Dr. Friedman is no doubt excited to know just how much will be donated by January's students, Wendy Huntbatch and charities like the World Parrot Refuge know that, whatever the amount, every dollar counts and will be appreciated.
Pat Phillips
Parksville
(Unbeknownst to me, my submission was edited somewhat before publishing. In my original I wrote that Dr. Friedman's choice of the World Parrot Refuge was also in houour of Lee McGuire.)
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