Best Tips for Halter Training

I have been halter training the juvenile alpacas. We are late in doing this. Usually I have them trained at weaning, which is around six months of age. These guys are all ten, eleven or twelve months old. Moving to Montana and then back to Arizona meant a lot of things got delayed this year!

But the youngsters are coming along beautifully. I had a helper today - someone who had never trained an animal before. Of course, I had to train my helper first, before we could train the babies. While explaining the process I realized that the best advice I ever got for training alpacas came from a Special Ed teacher. She said that working with special ed kids requires you to think really hard about all the steps in the process of whatever skill you are trying to teach. "Chunk it down" is how she phrased it. It is a perfect motto for training animals.

We tend to think of outcomes. What do I want this animal to do? I want it to walk on a lead. So we grab the alpaca, shove a halter on its head, snap on a lead rope and off we go. Typically all hell breaks loose at this point, and we can't figure out what went wrong.

What went wrong is that we need to think of baby steps instead of the ultimate outcome. Even something as simple as walking on a lead comes from learning to do many smaller things. Some of the steps include:

-learning to have a human handler in close proximity without running away
-learning to stand quietly while restrained by an arm around the neck
-learning not to pull away when the halter is being put over the nose
-learning that the halter noseband will not cut off breathing (if it is positioned correctly, that is)
-learning to stand quietly when the headband latch is fastened
-learning to accept the feel of the halter on the head
-learning to accept the feel of the added weight of the lead rope snap hanging from the halter
-learning to accept the long 'snakey' looking lead rope
-learning that a tug on the lead rope, which creates pressure behind the alpaca's ears, means to move forward
-learning to keep moving forward until the handler stops
-learning that a tug to the side means to turn to that side
-learning to walk in unfamiliar areas with the handler, past scary things such as gates, vehicles, cats, wind-blown weeds, etc.
-learning to stop and stand when the handler stops
-learning not to race past the handler when spooked
-learning to allow the handler to approach and touch the alpaca
-learning to allow the handler to remove the halter without pulling away

Whew! That is a lengthy list for the most basic of alpaca training projects. It is always amazing to me how quickly the alpacas learn all this. I never teach lessons longer than 15 to 20 minutes, and in about three lessons I can have any alpaca walking pretty well on the lead. Give me another three lessons and they will look like they were born wearing a halter and walking on the lead.

These animals are really smart and learn fast. They will learn what you want them to learn, or they will learn something less helpful. It's all in how well you teach.

Alpacas Don't Like Change!

Have you ever noticed how annoying it is to break your routine? Or what a relief it is to get back to it? I travel quite a bit, and one of the things that I have noticed is that the closer that I can stick to my normal 'home' routine, even when I am half a continent away in a strange hotel room, the more grounded I feel.

After almost 14 years working with alpacas, I have no qualms at saying they feel the same way. Of course their routine does not involve a morning cup of tea or 20 minutes of yoga, but they do have a routine. Feeding schedules, type of feed, pen cleaning, moving between barns and pastures, cud chewing time...the more I can keep them on the same schedule, the more secure they are.

I have had visitors ask if the alpacas get bored, and surely they do if there is not enough in their daily routine for stimulation. But generally the more I can keep their daily schedule the same from day to day, the more calm the alpacas are. Moving things around - changing feeding times, switching pastures or stalls, putting different alpacas together - causes stress, which for an alpaca manifests as: more talking (whining), more spitting or aggressive behavior between alpacas, and less quiet time. Stressed alpacas, just like stressed humans, get sick more, especially ulcers.

So my role as alpaca caretaker is to try to keep the number of changes to a minimum, or, as the humerous saying goes: change is good - you go first! Of course, by keeping my alpacas' routines on schedule, I keep myself on schedule, and then I am also less stressed. It's the alpaca farm version of yoga!

Life is What Happens While You are Making Other Plans

Life takes interesting paths, most of which are not at all what we had planned. Well, as the saying goes, if you want to make God laugh, develop a plan. Our plan was to sell our Flagstaff house over 18 months or 2 years, and meanwhile slowly build our dream alpaca ranch on the 95 acres in central Montana that we purchased 12 years ago.

When our home in Flagstaff sold within 2 months of listing, we had to make a decision...move north without any facilities in place or move to a rental property. We could not find any rentals suitable for livestock within driving distance of Flagstaff, where Don's optometric practice is still open. Since we needed his income to pull this off, we opted to move the alpacas north with me as their caretaker, while Don was to stay in northern Arizona.

So in April of this year I headed to Lewistown, Montana with all 34 alpacas, cats and dogs. The plan was to live in a motor home while our barn, including the apartment, was quickly built. Unfortunately this was the most bizarre Montana weather year that anyone can recall. We had snow (lots of it) until early June, then rain until mid-July. The shortest summer on record ended with frost in early September and the return of winter October 1st. The strange weather created many construction delays.

Faced with a still-incomplete and untested facility and a serious Montana winter on the doorstep, Don and I determined that the safest course of action was to move back to warmer climes. In the best of circumstances, dealing with winter in the northcountry is no joke, but combine that with one person trying to handle over 30 head of livestock and there was a recipe for disaster building.

Fortunately, life presented us with an amazing alternative option. Our close friends, Mark and Rachel Hendrickson, had retired from the alpaca business a couple of years ago and their awesome facility was sitting virtually empty, along with a lovely two story home formerly used by caretakers.

While it has been an expensive change in plans, we now have the alpacas and the pets settled into their new accommodations in the rolling oak-covered hills of southeastern Arizona. Blue skies and sunny days have replaced gale force winds and horizontal snow. Living at Heartland Ranch is like having a spa-retreat experience while we wait for better weather to arrive in Montana - not in our original plans but truly the best of Plan B's.

Bebe Katz and the Big Owl

First, an explanation of the name. Bebe Katz' real name is Smokey. He is a long haired lynx-point siamese kitty we adopted from a shelter. Somehow when he was little he got stuck with the nickname. We continue to call him Bebe Katz (pronounced Baby Cats) even though he is now getting close to 2 years old. Since he answers to it, we figure he does not mind.

One evening I was working outside here at the Montana ranch when I saw a big owl fly over, swooping kind of low. It was clearly hunting. The evening was dark enough that I could not tell what kind of owl it was, but it was a big one and it cruised over the gravel parking area in front of the barn. I figured it was hunting mice.

Then, surprisingly, the owl swooped around and headed back toward me. It must have seen something, so I looked where it was going, and there, in the dusk, in the middle of the parking area, hunting his own mice, was Bebe Katz. This owl was big, and I know that owls will take cats sometimes, so I began racing over to save my kitty from the big bad owl.

However I underestimated Bebe Katz. He must have heard the owl approaching, for he looked up over his shoulder and spotted the bird. And without a second thought, he made his own attack, leaping straight up almost 4 feet in the air and grabbing for it with his front paws. I don't know who was more surprised, me or the owl. The bird sped off and I grabbed Bebe Katz and took him inside for the night. I still wonder what he would have done if he had caught that owl!

The Best Laid Plans...

Well, as the quote goes, our best laid plan to get our Montana ranch up and running before winter has been trumped by the earliest arrival of winter weather that anyone here can remember. This comes on the heels of the coldest, snowiest spring that anyone can remember, and the coldest, wettest summer. Thanks to all the weather delays, we find ourselves approaching winter (and it looks like it will be a hard one) without the facility being completely finished.

After the first two snow storms in September that dropped over a foot of snow, followed by the week of sub-freezing daytime high temperatures, Don came up from Arizona to check on me. We reviewed our options and decided that discretion is the better part of valor in this case...we will move the herd back to Arizona for the winter. While costly and a lot of work, this feels like the right decision. It is safer for me and for the alpacas. We will try again to get moved in up here next spring.

So starting in early November, look for us at Heartland Ranch, home of Mark and Rachel Hendrickson (and, formerly, Heartland Ranch Alpacas). Heartland Ranch is located about 30 miles north of the Mexico boarder, and about an hour southeast of Tucson. Come see us if you are in the area!

Here's a photo of the barn on our farm in Montana. It's 60 X 60 feet, with stalls and office downstairs and a 900 square foot apartment upstairs!