by friend2parrots » Thu Mar 21, 2013 9:44 am
First of all, thanks for joining the forum and asking questions. It shows you are concerned about your birds welfare, and that's wonderful.
This situation can be managed, but there are certain things that I would like to point out:
-DO NOT CLIP THE BIRDS WINGS. there are various reasons - safety, health, wellbeing - why you shouldn't do this, which entire articles on this forum and in the blog cover in detail.
-The bird CANNOT be kept in the basement. Basements have fumes, poor ventilation, and poor light. also, it would deprive the bird of necessary visual stimuli and social interaction. so that is absolutely not an option.
- I think its great that your house has a spare room, and that your bird can fly freely in there. I think you should focus on turning that room into a BIRD ROOM, and designate it as such, so the bird can use that space for living and flying. the dog should never be permitted in this room. if you are concerned that the bird doesn't get to interact with you, that s a separate issue, which I will discuss below.
-do not clip your birds wings and try to let it "hang out" on top of a cage while your dog is walking by. this is a mistake a lot of people make, and it always ends in tragedy. conures are naturally aggressive species and WILL swoop down to attack dogs, even if their wings are clipped. they will get killed in the process, even if the dog "likes" them. the fact that your dog is already trying to kill the bird means ABSOLUTELY do not allow the two to be out in the same room at the same time.
- again, ABSOLUTELY do not allow the bird and the dog to be out in the same room at the same time. NO amount of training can change your dog's instinct to kill, or your conure's instinct to attack. even if they somehow look peaceful toward each other in the future, you should still NEVER let your bird out in the same room if the dogs there. it will result in the birds death. this has nothing to do with clipping. its about instinct. the two animals WILL express instinctive behaviors that you cannot control through training or clipping of the wings.
- Ok. now about the birds quality of life. you have to sit down and ask yourself what kind of life you want your bird to lead, and what it means to you. perhaps you are a dog lover, and this husky puppy was destined to come into your life. now that the puppy is here, though, what about the bird? if you care about your bird, you should dedicate time and energy to its care. a lot of people have bird rooms, but they usually have more than one bird in there, because it gets very lonely for a bird to be by itself in a room all alone. so if you are a "bird person" and want to have more birds, then you can start to plan in that direction. EDIT: even if you get just one more bird, it will make a world of difference for your conure's wellbeing, because it will give him necessary companionship when you are not there. also, you can think of moving some furniture in there - like a desk, a sofa, etc, and make it a place to hang out with your birds for a good portion of the day - at least several hours - a day. but your birds (if the conure is going to be in the bird room, I do think atleast one other bird to be in there with him is needed -that's my opinion) deserve and require a lot of time from you for their quality of life. however, if you are not sure you will be able to get another bird, or if youre not sure you will have enough time to interact with them, I am not sure what to tell you.
- in the end, its the birds welfare that you must consider. and all your decisions and actions must
ensure that the bird(s) is/are happy, gets exercise, companionship, etc.
others on this forum will probably have more advice for you on your situation.
all the best
EDIT: I edited stuff in the section about the bird room and a couple of other places in this post
Ringo - Green Cheek Conure
Toby - Bourke Parakeet