Julie Taylor-Browne
Camelidynamics Practitioner2
When we take our alpacas to a show we are probably asking the most we are ever likely to ask from them. They are often hurriedly halter trained, separated from their friends in the herd, loaded on to a trailer for what can be the first time, taken to an unfamiliar location, confined in a pen for up to three days with no opportunity to graze or exercise, taken out of their pen on their own, led into a show ring (sometimes with an unfamiliar and inexperienced handler) where they have their teeth, top knot, neck, tail, fleece and, if they are a male, testicles examined by a judge who has another 250 alpacas still to examine. The show ring (and the path to it) is thronged with small children with helium balloons or candy floss, barking dogs, people trying to stroke them and, to top it all, a tannoy will be issuing forth loud shrieks of feedback noise (oh yes, and the ring will probably be near the show jumping ring, backfiring steam engine display and/or fairground).
Throughout this we want them to be calm, quiet, move with grace and presence round the ring and not rear, run, cush, struggle or spit at anyone during the whole experience.
It is a testimony to the alpaca as a species that any of them do manage to achieve the above and some actually enjoy the whole show experience. Sadly, not all do and there are many alpacas who would do well in shows but are ‘too difficult’ to handle in the ring and who stay at home. There are also many, many owners who would like to show but have little idea how to prepare their alpacas successfully for the show ring.
I hope to give you some ideas in this article on how you might go about this and to share with you some of the steps I take when doing ‘show prep’. All my work is grounded in the Camelidynamics methods developed by Marty McGee Bennett for camelids and in TTEAM, the comprehensive horse and animal training methods developed by Linda Tellington-Jones and to them and to the other TTEAM instructors I am eternally grateful.
It is not possible to talk about preparing alpacas successfully without explaining that showing for me is the culmination of the whole system of Camelidynamics which starts from the very first time we work with a cria in its first week or month, and also encompasses how we ask an animal to stand still, how we develop its trust in us when we handle it and work with it when we halter and teach it to lead. We do all of these steps with kindness and respect for the animal and aim never to distress them or for them to lose their trust in us. Handling an animal well is a skill that can be learnt and like any skill, one that improves with practice.
Without the space to describe in detail all the above, although this is all covered (and more!) in the Camelid Companion by Marty McGee Bennett I would like to run through a few key steps for preparing your alpaca for showing.
1. Handle and train your alpacas in a catch pen. Working in a small area so that your alpaca is contained and not restrained is one of the most important features of Camelidynamics work. Catch pens are normally square pens made of alpaca/llama hurdles about 6ft x 6ft up to 8ft by 8ft and hold two or three animals in a pen. If you can catch and balance your alpaca and help it to stand still whilst not restraining it you have already covered a huge amount of preparation for the ring. We teach our alpacas to halter and the leading signal in the catch pen. The catch pen is THE place to prepare your alpaca for teeth, fleece and testicle examinations. If they can’t stand still in a pen and have their fleece examined they really aren’t going to do it in a show ring. The Camelidynamics methods use Ttouches or Tellington Touches, which the animals thoroughly enjoy, the ones we use on either side of the backbone, starting at the withers are called Abalones, a one and a quarter circle in a clockwise direction using the whole of your hand, with your fingers together. From here, you can start to part and lift the fleece. Later, practice this with one person holding the animal’s head, either in a technique we call the bracelet, or with a catch rope, or on a halter. You can move your abalones down towards the hips, do some circles around the tail and even circle the tail, a technique which reduces tension, before moving your circles down to the testicles.
If there any judges reading this please be gentle when examining testicles. For animals that haven’t had this sort of preparation examining the testicles in a too hasty or heavy handed fashion can lead to some challenging behaviours later in the show ring. We also use the Ttouches for preparing the face and lips for teeth checking. To practice showing the teeth, move the fingers of your right hand down so that you can use the tips of your fingers just inside the bottom part of the nose band to balance the head and then just slide your left hand up from the bracelet position to the lips and ‘scissor’ the lips apart with the index and middle fingers of your left hand. This way you don’t have to wrap your arm around the neck, losing the ability to keep your body away from the animal and preserve the ability to take a step in any direction to keep the animal in balance. There are also a lot of animals that react when you put your arm around the neck no matter how carefully you do it.
Don’t expect your alpaca to be able to do all of this all at once. Build up to it slowly and ideally work with your cria a few times a month to get them used to this and to the idea of standing still with you near to them. If you are working with an adult that is new to you, five minutes two to three times a week is ample for pen work. Build on success rather than practice misbehaviour. If you restrain your alpaca whilst trying to do this work – it will simply learn new evasion techniques.
2. Halter Fit. The first, and probably the most crucial, step is to have a well-fitting halter. The nose band should be well back towards the eye, the crown piece (the bit that goes round the back of the head) should be pretty tight (you should be able to get one finger underneath) as this is the part of the halter that holds the nose band in place. The chin piece should be snug but not tight so that the noseband and chin piece should make contact all around the face. Before you put the halter on – open the noseband up fully to its widest extent, put it on, and then fasten it at the crown piece.
Then tighten up the chin piece. The noseband should be situated on the bony part of the nose and there should be no possibility of it slipping forward onto the cartilage. If it does this can make the alpaca panic in the ring. Five to ten minutes after you have haltered the animal – check the fit again. The heat generated by the animal, and/or the heat of the sun will cause the halter to expand and it will have loosened and you will probably need to tighten it again at the crown piece.
3. Leading. I recommend that you clip the lead rope to the side of the halter (on the front part of the forward most ring). This gives you much better control over the animal’s movements with much smaller signals from you.
These signals become imperceptible to onlookers because you are able to pre-empt any unwanted behaviour before it happens. On our courses, we give our participants the opportunity to feel the difference between a lead rope clipped at the bottom of the halter and on the side. Both ‘handler’ and ‘animal’ are always surprised at the much larger scale of the signals needed when the lead is clipped on the bottom ring and the amount of pressure experienced by the animal on the back of the head. This makes them much more inclined to pull back to reduce the pressure on the head which is the exact opposite response of the one we want.
I teach alpacas to lead on a long line and with a wand. The benefit of the long line is that I can be a good distance in front of them and therefore they are more inclined to move when I ask them. If I am too close they are reluctant to move forward. The combination of the long line and the wand also prevents them from rushing past me. Horse leads are too short for this exercise.
Once I have taught the alpaca to lead we shorten up the lead a little and go out for an interesting walk. I always take my alpacas on an interesting and challenging, but not scary, first outing because I want them to listen to my signals and learn to trust me. At my farm I use a field with trees that we weave in and out of, I have also used my stable yard, my lane, my smallholding area and my garden. I never halter them in the field they live in and then lead them straight out into that field. It is too familiar to them and they are too keen to get back to it.
If possible I enlist some help and take two or three handlers with two or three alpacas. When the animals are walking reasonably and confidently we practice ‘going away and coming back,’ that is the majority of the group stays in one place whilst one is lead away on a little detour. The single animal has to practice moving away from the group and then walking back to them with self control. The handler has to practice resisting the temptation to pull back on the lead rope and making sure they stay in front, using their wand to make sure the alpaca moves slowly back to the group. I always do this exercise on the enjoyable walk section of the training when the animals are very relaxed. I’m sure I don’t need to tell you how very herd-focussed alpacas are. Some have never been separated from their friends since the day they are born so asking them to start doing this on show day can be too, too much.
4. Work your alpacas through some obstacles including a mock show ring. We set up an obstacle course in a field. Most of it is permanently set up so that I can train new arrivals, alpacas here for retraining and cria. The obstacles include a labyrinth, weaving poles, cavalletti or ground poles, a set up for asking animals to ‘limbo dance’ under different heights of tape and a number of other obstacles. Details of these can be found in a previous article*. For show prep I also set up a simple square made out of white plastic horse tape poles and some white horse tape. We take the animals though all the obstacles and then into the show ring, asking them to practice going round the outside, going across it diagonally, lining up beside each other, and then having their handler practice touching fleece, and showing teeth. When they are happy with this, the mock judge approaches and the handler handles whilst the judge judges. This is the hardest part for the animals so make sure you aren’t rushing the final step. Make sure your animals are happy to be handled by you in the ring first. Food can be a great distraction, I don’t use it to train, but it does have its uses for helping animals relax when the ‘judge’ approaches.
4. Train yourself! The next point on training your animal to behave in the ring is to train yourself. Don’t tug or drag the animal along. Alpacas are very good at lowering their centre of mass by extending their neck, widening their feet and shifting their weight to the rear in response to steady pressure on the head. If they plant you need to ease off on the lead rope completely, relax, take a deep breath and then give it the signal you have taught them when you ‘ask’ them to move. We teach a gentle ‘ratchet’ signal on our courses. Once they are walking – don’t put steady pressure on the rope, aim to have a slight ‘belly’ in the line, this will encourage them to have self-carriage and step out nicely. The second you put pressure on the line, you are throwing them off balance and affecting their gait. Next time you are at show; watch the other handlers and their lead ropes and see this for yourself.
When asking your alpaca to stand quietly in the ring – this is another opportunity for you to watch yourself, you will need to hold the lead rope quite close to the halter, but again, watch there is no steady pressure, and there is a small amount of slack in the lead rope. If you are bored or nervous or surreptitiously communicating with your colleagues outside the ring be careful that you don’t a) jiggle the line annoyingly b) be heavy handed and drag the animals head down and c) put pressure in the line, pulling the alpaca into you. If you pull their heads toward you – the law of equal and opposite forces mean that their bottoms will swing out and you will have one of those circling alpacas that we see all too often.
It is very amusing for the public to watch alpacas leap into the air when the judge comes to look at the fleece, but it is less amusing for the alpaca, the handler, the ring steward and the judge. Some pointers may help here:
a)If you know your animal is likely to do this, you may become heavier handed and put steady pressure on the lead rope or try to hold the animal down. Because both of these encourage the animals to leap up, counter intuitively the handler needs to lighten up at this point.
b) You, may get nervous when the judge approaches. Try to breath. Better still, when you exhale, exhale slowly and audibly (to the alpaca). This makes a big difference to both of you. Your level of tension, your tendency to heavy handedness and your body language will all be affected, and will in turn affect your alpaca. As you already know, alpacas are sensitive and in tune with what you are feeling.
c. Make a virtual catch pen in the ring. This can be achieved if the handler stands about a foot in front of the alpaca, the judge stands on one side and leans over to check the fleece and the ring steward stands on the opposite side from the judge. The handler can have one hand on the lead rope and one on the alpaca’s neck and is able to rebalance the alpaca should it start to shift its weight just before making an unwanted move.
Finally some tips for helping your alpaca relax at a show.
• Practice loading and unloading your alpacas before the show. Put straw on the ramp to make it seem safer. Give hay in the trailer to eat.
• Make sure they have hay to eat in the pen, as chewing relaxes them.
• Take their halters off between classes to ensure proper eating, drinking and ruminating. Improper digestion can lead to diarrhea.
• Make sure there are some pellets of droppings in the pen when you first put your animals in their pens. They hate to go on clean straw and will get stressed ‘holding it in.’ If you don’t give them the opportunity to let them go in the pen by putting in a few droppings they invariably either walk very strangely around the ring or even worse go to the toilet in the middle of it. Put droppings in your trailer as well otherwise they will have a very uncomfortable journey.
• If you know ttouch, do this in the collecting ring, particularly mouth work.
• Smile … and enjoy yourself.
References and links
Why do Obstacles? Alpaca Magazine. Winter 206/07 pp. 41-45.
You can find out more about Julie Taylor-Browne and Camelidynamics including courses, The Camelid Companion, DVDs and equipment on: www.carthveanalpacas.com,
Find Marty McGee Bennett and the Camelidynamics Guild on www.camelidynamics.com and Linda Tellington-Jones and TTEAM on www.tteam-ttouch.com