Big difference, with the puggle.
When I Googled "puggle" I got three photos. Two were baby monotremes. One was a dog.
Here is a link:
http://www.fourthcrossingwildlife.com/echidna_puggle.htm
I hope the breeder's association doesn't register the name "puggle", it could get very confusing.
About pets - we're making great strides with the budgies. They need gentle handling and they also do better when the person handling them is calm. They seem to sense your mood. The first budgies we got, two years ago, were allegedly hand-raised young ones but we now realise they were cage-raised older birds (several months old at least) and well used to being in a large flight cage with a large flock. Although those two bonded well to each other, they were VERY difficult to handle, very wild.
However, there are some GREAT websites with information and since then I've learned that even the really wild budgies can be tamed. I want to make it clear - when I say "wild" budgies, I do not mean budgies taken from the wild. We wouldn't do that. Besides, we are too far south. Wild budgies live in the north of Australia, especially around Kakadu.
One of the budgies died last year just after we got back form New Zealand. We think it caught flu from difficult child 1, who was looking after them. Daisy, the remaining budgie, really missed her mate and became even harder to handle.
A few months ago we bought (from a pet shop this time) a baby budgie. He's a little bigger (which tells me he's an English budgie, a domesticated variety many generations removed from the wild). He was quite 'wild' when we got him, he tried to bite the shop assistant as soon as she reached in to grab him. He was too young to be able to bite down hard, though. And he tried to bite us a few times - same result. His wing was over-clipped, so he can't fly very well although he's learning to adapt.
The thing is, he's become tame very quickly because difficult child 3 has been handling him a lot. A clipped budgie that can't fly very far is very dependent on his owner to read his signals and tend to his needs. Lucky the budgie learned very quickly that we would take him where he wanted to go; and he indicates where he wants to go by taking off and trying to fly in that direction. Sometimes he just cranes his neck in that direction. He chirps a lot just before he takes off, we're recognising his signals there, too. And because of his clipped wing, he flies a few feet and descends to the floor. When he lands, he trots around craning his neck for us to come pick him up and take him to his cage, or to the perch where Daisy is sitting.
Lucky has been hand-tame since his first week. And then we discovered (through a very useful website) that you can train budgies with reward food, especially millet. And much as Lucky enjoys his seed and being carried, he goes crazy over millet.
Then we introduced Daisy to millet. Taming her isn't easy, she's two years old and very skittish. But she will now tolerate a hand in her cage. That took about two months of patience and persistence. She also will go back to her cage at sunset. And once she learned about millet, she saw that Lucky was getting fed a lot of millet while sitting on my arm so she will now perch on my arm at the same time, sharing the millet.
We may never get any further than that with Daisy, but Lucky's extreme tameness and gentle nature make up for it. difficult child 3 spends most of his time at home, with Lucky perched on his shoulder. Lucky hears difficult child 3's voice in the morning and begins to chirp loudly, repeatedly, asking to be got out of his cage.
Mess - minimal. A seed-fed budgie has dry droppings and not many of those. We made a play-gym tree stand thing, which Lucky can spend time perched on. Droppings can collect under that, but we can take it outside or empty it over the bin. Daisy perches in my bathroom over the loo and droppings collect on the cistern. We have a paper towel there to catch droppings, so it's easy to change that over.
Other food - we're getting them used to at least trying fresh vegetables, but neither of them is really keep to do more than taste.
For a smarter version of a budgie, but almost the same size - a cockatiel is great.
Anything much larger can be louder, or a problem in other ways. Larger parrots are also more long-lived and hence are a longer-term responsibility. But they make wonderful pets, if you're inclined to taming them and allowing them freedom outside a cage.
It does take responsible ownership and supervision with younger children, though.
easy child 2/difficult child 2's exBF had a pet Rainbow Lorikeet which sadly spent most of its time in the (admittedly large) cage. The boy was at school most of the time and then out with friends while the mother was either at work or out at night socialising ("Son? WHAT son? Oh, THAT kid?"). She badly neglected her son's emotional needs so you can imagine what she was like with the bird. Poor thing was a basket case when we met him, trying to mate with his water dish. Apart from saying his name and screeching, the only sound he made was to imitate a ringing telephone. It was probably the only sound it ever heard for most of the days.
So anyway, that's my bid in for a bird as a pet.
Marg
do pets make a difference in behavior with children with adhd/odd/dbd type of problems? adrianne's is 11 (right?) but my son is only 3. so im wondering if anyone has had or has pets with difficult child's this young and has it made a positive difference? weve been tossing around the idea of a dog for awhile, but just not sure with everything he has going on Know what I mean??
