Today, we’d like to introduce you to Serena Lapp. Serena was introduced to us by the brilliant and talented Cassie Malina.
Serena, thank you so much for joining us today. We’d love for you to bring our readers up to speed – can you introduce yourself and share your story?
It started with a Louie. Back in 2020 my mom got sick and I knew she would no longer be able to care for her parrot Louie. He was nearing 40 years of age and, starting with my aunt, had been in my family since weaning. Him and I were never friends. He once bit me as a teen and laughed and laughed. So knowing how much he was loved by my mom and that I was his best next option I started a journey of learning. I learned about proper husbandry (something he hadn’t had due to lack of resources and education) and behavior in hopes we could at least tolerate each other in time with hopes of an actual friendship for his best life. When Louie came home I had him in a temp cage so his could be redone. It was way to nice and solid to replace and throw away. Much to my surprise the second day he was home I was doing the things that “they” recommend and talking to him while sitting nearby and he seemed to ask for a step up! I was so nervous and I told him “I will do this because you ask but if you bite me it is going to be a long life together!” He did NOT bite and it would seem chose me and we have been the best of friends ever since. He accepted the new diet I gave him without fuss and has been unlike anything you read about Amazon parrots. I thought to myself ‘gee I can’t have a whole ton of parrots but I sure love them’ and set out to find a way to volunteer and help other displaced and rehomed parrots. Now I have FOUR more and a full flock of five parrots. 2 were foster fails, one was a straight adoption and the final member was another inherited bird from another aunt. Our fourth parrot, the straight adoption, was who led me to find Cassie. Herbie is an Umbrella Cockatoo and very much he is everything you read about cockatoos, lol. I started to see we were in over our heads and quickly heading down a road that would lead us to becoming a cockatoo rehoming statistic. I, however, am not a quitter and as someone who has worked with humans with trauma I knew getting help was our best chance for preventing anymore rehoming type trauma on Herbie. I totally lucked out finding Cassie locally. I needed to be able to do at least some in person training as that’s my best learning style. Do you know how few behaviorists there are for birds? Not enough that’s for sure. Well Cassie has been able to help me connect my human behavior training and knowledge to my pet training and so fast our trajectory with Herbie has changed and there are no fears or even considerations of rehoming. We focus on husbandry training and behaviors that stimulate the birds mentally for their best health. We do do some trick training but reducing their stress and guiding them on their best life journeys is priority. It’s been over a year now and thanks to Cassie our mixed flock is working fantastically and everyone is thriving and healthy.
Let’s talk about your work and career – what else should we know?
I am a caregiver and professional volunteer. I work with kids and parrots mostly but have also done elderly caregiving. I guess I would say what sets me aside from others is the desire to keep families together. This includes pets in their homes. I am starting my journey to become a behavior consultant for animals (specialty in avian and exotics) and hope to one day be able to provide services that would take a situation where a pet is possibly on the verge of rehoming or surrender to a shelter and turn it around to a place the pets can stay and everyone be happy and stay a unified family unit.
Cassie Malina and Awesome Animal Solutions have been great to us and I know you’ve got a great relationship with them as well. Maybe you can tell our audience a bit about Cassie Malina and Awesome Animal Solutions and your experience with them.
Cassie and Awesome Animal Solutions is a behaviorist for animals with a strong background/focus on the avian variety. I admire Cassie because she isn’t just your average trick teacher. She uses behavioral science to modify behaviors of the parronts and empower them so that they can successfully use those same tools to enrich the lives of their feathered babies and everyone can live in harmony. When I first started looking for Cassie it was because we were struggling with our cockatoo. I say ours but he is really husbands and that bond was causing issues. Cockatoos are super hard to work with because they are so easily reinforced. Seriously, the wrong (or right) colored shirt could reinforce an excited behavior. The wind blew your hair at the wrong time and darn it if the cockatoo didn’t decide that is just what they needed to keep doing the really annoying thing they were doing! I was starting to worry we had made a mistake and weren’t the right family for our Herbie. But I wasn’t going down that easily so I started looking for help and found that help in Cassie. She was able to help me use my human behavior background and connect it it to my parrots. Herbie, in the beginning, could only come out with my husband present and even with him wasn’t good at stepping up and was a bite risk. Now Herbie can be out with either of us, does cooperative nail trims and just generally functions well as a part of the family!! We are starting some tricks with him but his main training is healthy boundaries for all. The transformation has been amazing and because of Cassie that has also transferred to ALL of my other pets as well feather, fur and all! I know most people think of tricks like waving, high fives etc when they think of training pets but it really is so much more than that! Cassie does a fantastic job teaching all of it and she empowered me to be a better pet parent.
Instagram: @bird_power_
