We were very fortunate that Ozzy came to us with very little baggage. However he is young, and I knew that his personality would change a great deal over the years.
ABA taught us to watch Ozzy for his reactions and body language to everything. We learned to not reinforce bad habits (while cuddling and sitting on shoulders may be cute), it can lead to very bad situations later. We learned to feed into his trust account daily, so that when we must do something he isn’t fond of … he is still accepting and trusts us to do it. We sat up our home for his comforts, removed things that might cause conflicts. We have created a flexible schedule, so that he is comfortable when schedule changes occur. We use very clear and concise verbiage when we are about to do something, we never use tricks because he will remember this.
ABA made us stop and view the world through Ozzy’s eye’s. While we will never know fully what is going on in their thought process, we will continually try to make the necessary adjustments so that we all live comfortably together. Our life with Ozzy is truly lovely, there have been some bumps, but nothing we could not work through due to having the knowledge and training from ABA. We are a success story forever in progress.
The principles in using ABA can be used anywhere in your life, with people and our companions. I highly encourage everyone to read this book. It has made all the difference in our lives with our Feathered Angels.
Deborah
Copyright © 2011 Deborah FeatheredAngels
All rights reserved
(My articles are free to repost, just do so in their entirety)
here is a link for the book
Feathered Angels 