Llama Training: What You Should Teach Your Llamas
submitted: 2008-04-08 19:41:06 |
by: RosanaHart
Total views: 15 |
Word Count: 511 |
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If you have ever been around llamas, you will know that they learn very quickly and that their intelligence is remarkable. You can learn to train them, and it's important to teach llamas a few basic things that will make its life with people much easier:
1. To be haltered.
2. To hike with you on a leash that they don't pull taut.
3. To load into a vehicle.
4. To accept handling all over its body.
Beyond the basics, people train llamas to do a variety of things. Perhaps most common is training to accept a pack so that the animal can carry a load. Llamas are sometimes trained to drive to cart. They can also be taught to "kush" which means to sit down; of course, if you train that, you also want to train the llama to get back up on command!
Bobra Goldsmith, a pioneering llama trainer, observes, "You can teach a llama to do something after several repetitions. It often surprises people how quickly llamas learn."
After I heard Bobra say that once, I thought I would test out her assertion by counting how many repetitions it did take before my llama Whiskers would willingly enter my VW van through the side door. I didn't have to count very far, just to five! Afterwards, he would always jump right in the van when we wanted to take him somewhere. Sometimes it was many months between outings, but he never forgot. In contrast, I have never succeeded in teaching any of my dogs something in only five trials.
Speaking of dogs, llamas learn much more quickly than dogs to walk easily when on a leash. Where a typical dog will be pulling this way and that at first, llamas are far more likely to keep the leash quite loose. So it's great fun to hike with them. By the way, if you are out hiking with a llama and you see one or more horses coming along the trail towards you, do give way to them. Horses can be rather afraid of llamas when they first meet.
Bobra has developed a series of methods for training llamas. For example, for getting a llama to accept the halter easily, she uses a slow motion technique. Llamas like the calm and steady approach, and they learn to be haltered very easily with this method. Her training routines are also used, by herself and by many others, with alpacas.
She trains llamas of all ages, and you can learn to do it too. While you might wish that all your llamas would be already trained when you get them, you are likely to find some that need more work. This is because people often don't know how to train or they just don't bother. But you can get a DVD online which shows Bobra Goldsmith's methods. It's useful for learning to train llamas, naturally -- that's what it was made for -- but it also turns out that quite a few people get the DVD before they get llamas, to get a sense of what is involved in llama training.
About the Author
For more about expert llama trainer Bobra Goldsmith and her methods, visit this llama training page. Rosana Hart is the author of two books on llamas and worked with Bobra to produce the DVD.
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