Zack and I have been busy over the last several weeks with halter training. It always amazes me how some animals take to it easily, and some do not.
Of our 2011 cria to train, Shamballa right off the bat was a champ on the halter:
Lady Bing did pretty well too, only needed some fine tuning by us (I love the black around her eyes and nose):
Thunder, he's a pistol. We did it all with him: tied his halter to the fence to get him used to the halter, haltered with a friend, walked on his own, and practiced judging. By the end of February he was fine standing and letting us pick at him (practice judging), but walking was still his struggle. We spent some sessions just walking with him and that helped a ton. Last Sunday Zack and I deamed him fully trained. *phew* We will continue to work with him because we want him to be very comfortable on the halter so when we get to a show, at least the halter will be familiar when so much of his surroundings won't be.
Our little Dutch:
I don't even know what to say about her. I've tried all my tricks. While she's made huge improvements, we aren't where I want to be. She will walk, but walks with her head and neck bend forward. It looks awful. I will say that we have practiced standing and having the alpacas reviewed all over so that the actually judging should go ok. For Dutch it is totally about her inability to walk nice on the lead. We'll keep practicing and hope for the best. My bigger fear is that last year we had this situation with Copper and I really thought once we got to the show it would be ok. It wasn't. He got last place and the judge said it was because he couldn't evaluate his confirmation because he walked so poorly on the lead. How embarassing!!
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