Hey,

I bought a lovely pair of Java doves a while ago from another magician who had trained them for Dove holders, dove pans etc etc but never for return flight or anything like that. Sadly one of them died totally unexpectadly leaving only one so I stopped using him in my shows. As silly as it sounds I felt really sorry for Eldon(my dove) but he looks so bored just sat in his cage I still get him out but he's out of the habit. So I want to get him trained to flyback to me and get used to being a performing dove again, if that's the right phrase. So my question is can you re train a dove?

Thanks in advance,

Luke xx

Absolutely, in fact, the dove never really forgot what it was trained. If it was fully trained, you just need to work with it a little and the training will come back. It's like a person riding a bike. You never really forget how to ride.

As for training to to fly back. If it never did that before, you have a perfect dove for training. It will be something else for it to learn but with it's prior training, you're half way there already.

Just a question
I am not a bird magician

but a friend of mine told me
that there are some doves that are stupid
and it doesn't matter what you do
they will never learn... is that right?

just asking

I don't know if "stupid" is the right word but there are doves that just will not be trained no matter how hard you try.

Let me caveat that a little bit. With time and practice, almost every dove can be trained to sit on your finger or do a short jump but if you are looking for a fly back bird or one that will do something special, some birds will never learn to do it.

Maybe they say to themselves "I can do that but I'm not going to"

Some breeds are more difficult to train. For example, I have had two brown ring neck doves for about 8 years and they just will not train. It's even difficult to hold them for very long on my finger. On the other hand, most of my white doves are so tame and trained that I can walk outside with them and they stay put on my finger. One of them learned to fly back all by itself without any training.

Hahahaha! the Forest Gump of birds! I could see the movie now...every major event it's in the background doing the same trick the wrong way. The bird would even get to meet the former president a few times. Except George Bush wouldn't even realize it's a bird and not even close to human.

Hahaha yeah
I also don't know if the word was stupid
maybe slow.. or maybe they simply don't care
who knows

so.. then my friend was kind of right
some doves refuse to learn