Our experiences with llama training were shaped by our good fortune to meet Bobra Goldsmith, and we have used her methods primarily. There are quite a few other good resources online for llama training, and here I will describe two that belong to old friends of mine and one newer one.
[1] An old friend is Marty McGee Bennett. She and I happened to be roommates in 1987 at the International Llama Association conference where Linda Tellington-Jones demonstrated her groundbreaking TTEAM methods to the llama community. Marty became deeply involved in this work, and Kelly and I made a video with her and Linda — long out of print now, as Marty has refined the methods tremendously since those early days. We went on to make videos with Linda about the Tellington Touch with dogs and the TTouch with cats.
After Marty studied intensively with Linda Tellington-Jones, she developed Camelidynamics, which is derived from Linda’s work but adds Marty’s own profound understanding of camelids (that is, llamas, alpacas, and their wild relatives guancos and vicunas) to the process. Her website is http://www.camelidynamics.com and it too is well worth exploring. Her workshop schedule and the training information products she has created are there too.
[2] Our friend Cathy Spalding teaches a lot of workshops with llamas and alpacas, and she and her husband Craig have a herd themselves — it was all llamas when we lived near them in Olympia, WA, and used to go out to their place sometimes. Her site http://www.gentlespiritllamas.com is well worth browsing around — and here is a page that lists many of the useful articles on the site: http://www.gentlespiritllamas.com/html/articles/articles_index.htm Cathy also studied with Linda Tellington-Jones.
When I was at the site recently, the workshop schedule ended with a workshop that was already over. You will find a lot of llama websites that tend to be a bit behind, because the people tend to be out with the animals; I suspect that’s the case here. It’s easy to contact the Spaldings from the site. Oh, and the “Questions from Readers” section has some interesting things too.
[3] Terry Crowfoot and her husband live in the south of England and have seven llamas. Her website is http://www.llama-training.co.uk/ and it’s a lot of fun. I mean, really a lot! Kelly and I have just been howling with laughter as llama Dillon takes Terry’s hat off over and over again and as other llamas play soccer. (She thinks they can’t see the ball, but Kelly commented that he thinks they can, as llamas’ eyes stick out way more than you might imagine.)
There is text commentary too. This site is a work in progress, with short videos and comments going up regularly. Terry explains how her training approaches descend from the pioneering work of dolphin trainer Karen Pryor, who is now famous in the dog world (and other places) for clicker training. That figured, I thought, as I use methods of Pryor’s in dog training and know how effective they are.
Of course, Google and the other search engines will take you to more good llama training sites. Whatever you do, if you have llamas, do get into the joys of training these highly intelligent and curious animals!
