For the past couple of days I have been working with Taylor and Bailey to get them ready to be shown at the A-OK Alpaca Blast Off  the 24, 25 of this month. 

I have started them out slowly by first just introducing the halter to them.  Taylor, who is a little more mellow than Bailey didn’t seem to mind it too much.  But, Bailey is a different story.  She has always been a little ‘high strung’.  As a young cria she was always running from us whereas Taylor didn’t mind coming up nose to nose and having a little visit.

I knew that Taylor would be a little easier to train and today she is already walking nicely with the halter and lead.

This is a picture of Taylor as a little cria.  She is a real nice Snowmass Royal Flush daughter and we are really excited about showing her this  year.  She has the cutest little marking on her face with that  ‘T’  in white.  You can probably guess that that is why we named her Taylor.  Also, there is a Taylor County in Texas!

Next comes Bailey…  She is a Stonewall Jaxon daughter and has Peruvian Oro in her background.  She is a beautiful little medium fawn girl.  But, like I said, she is a little    ’w i l d’.  Her halter training hasn’t gone as smoothly as Taylor’s has, but we are getting there.  When I first introduced her to the halter she jumped and spit.  She did all she could to get away from me.  But, I couldn’t let her get her way.  Very gently I put the halter on her and just let her walk around with it on for about 15 minutes to get used to the feel of it on her head.  I thought I would try a little work with the lead, but felt like just letting her get used to the feel of the halter would be enough for one day. 

A couple of days went by and we tried the halter again but this time added the lead rope.  She went crazy bucking up and down and snorting and spitting.  I was getting a little worried that she was going to take a very long time to train.  Then I remembered this body wrap thing we got when we went to a Camelidynamics clinic a few years ago.  It is a wide elastic wrap that when put on the alpaca properly helps then feel all put together so that they don’t fight against their training.  Once I put this on Bailey it was amazing how much calmer she became. It really is a very useful tool.

Bailey is now is her 4th day of halter training and has improved considerably.  She no longer bucks, spits and jumps in the air.  She not perfect yet, but I am sure that she will be with a few more training sessions.  She has calmed down considerably.

This is a pic of Bailey as a cria.  Isn’t she adorable!  I haven’t taken alpaca glamour shots of these two yet, but I will be doing that in the  next couple days so that they can have a nice little stall identification tag at the shows they are going to this year.